The Challenges to Nation-Building
in Afghanistan
continues...

The process initiated by the Bonn Agreement faced challenges of political, economic and social dimensions. Certain challenges had been identified by the World Bank, which included the widespread destruction of infrastructure; low social indicators; prevalence of drugs and arms; delicate, uncertain and factionalised politics; legacy of a three year drought and extremely weak administrative capacity. The poor infrastructure of the country, the continuing drought, the high number of Internally Displaced Persons and refugees in neighbouring countries, the gender inequality—all adds to the enormity of the transitional challenge.

The unsettled military and political environment along with the competing regional and international interests further threatens to influence the process and outcome. Issues like societal cleavages, international response to reconstruction, regional networks, the low development indicators, the fragile security, absence of government institutions and socio-economic devastation posed as major quandary.

Peacebuilding needed to address all these issues. It is necessary that the process of nation-building, democratisation and institution building have to be explored and understood through the lens of the societal cleavages that exist in Afghan society. It also has to take into account the viability of imposing a central form of government in an essentially ‘tribal’ and ‘decentralized’ society and polity. The importance of the region, regional cooperation and formulation of a rational foreign policy remain as important issues. Topical issues like the complications of a war economy, drugs and the arms trafficking, the politics of energy, refugee rehabilitation and their integration into the economy need to be addressed.

The socio-cultural issues related to the challenges of the empowerment of women in a democratic Afghanistan, the development of popular culture in terms of the status of traditional Afghan culture in the post Taleban period, the reemergence of sporting traditions with special emphasis on the role of sport in the process of empowerment of women and envisaging regional cooperation through collaboration in the sphere of sport and the preservation of cultural heritage and heritage sites which are under threat. This chapter is an attempt to look into the complexities, nuances and inter-relation of all these challenges.

To be continued..