The Challenges to Nation-Building in Afghanistan continues.... The civil war in Afghanistan (1992-1996) after the Soviet withdrawal led to the different regions drifting apart. The neighbouring states supported their respective warlords, politically, militarily and financially. The warlords, in turn, developed closer connections with these states than other parts of Afghanistan. This also had economic consequences as Barnett Rubin has shown that the different regions of Afghanistan were tied into the economic systems of the neighbouring states, while internal trade almost came to a standstill. Both scholarly and policy approaches to contemporary civil conflict have been dominated by the part played by identity issues. Another concern has been with the alleged erosion of moral and civic virtues by what is seen as an upsurge of irrational, criminal behaviour, if not of entire communities, then of social substrata who have taken control of them. Societal cleavages between competing ethnic, linguistic, religious, regional and economic groups frequently cause or exacerbate fragmentation, undercutting the concept of the nation and thereby posing a huge challenge to reconstruction and other aspects of peacebuilding. Peace-building has to address issues like ethnic hatreds by promoting rule of law and criminal justice, and building institutions to substitute local rule with guided good governance. Warlordism and Overt Conflict Generally in countries emerging from war, overt armed conflict may have come to an end but low-level violence continues for many years, involving former factions, demobilized combatants, bandits or militias. Besides fighting the remnants of the Taleban and Al-qaida, which remain dominant in the south of Afghanistan and has destabilized large parts of that region, the dominance of so-called warlords has also remained as a major security threat. The most prominent individual examples of these so-called warlords were Rashid Dostum, Mohammad Fahim and Ismail Khan, who became the archetypes or icons of today’s warlordism.