Games without Rules: The Often-Interrupted History of Afghanistan

by Tamim Ansary

The problem is not that Afghans unite and then cannot be conquered; the problem is that Afghans fragment and then cannot be governed. The great powers have a stake in making Afghanistan more governable, but the only people who can achieve this happy result are Afghans—because it depends on the resolution of contradictions within Afghan culture. Once the foreign power withdraws in disgust from a country it has helped render ungovernable, some new permutation of the Afghan urban (or rural) ruling classes comes back to power, its prestige renewed by the role it has (supposedly) played in driving out foreigners.