Situating Workable Response continues....

Peace-building needed to address all these issues. It is necessary that

the process of nation-building, democratisation and institution-building

have to be 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 mainstream 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 (folk culture, music) in the post

Taleban period, the re-emergence of sporting traditions with special

emphasis on the role of sport in the process of empowerment of women

and envisaging regional cooperation through collaboration and the

preservation of cultural heritage and heritage sites which are under threat.

The fifth chapter looks into the nuances and inter-relation of all these

challenges to nation-building under three specific but overlapping

categories namely social, economic and political.

To be continued....