By Vaishnavi Upadhyay
Imagine a state that never fully formed. A place where warlords collect taxes, tribal elders deliver justice, communists enforce land reform, and Islamic clerics command armies. All claim power. Some even claim legitimacy. But none have full control.
This was Afghanistan between 1973 and 2001. A nation sundered by coups, civil war, invasions, and foreign interventions. But it was also a landscape stitched together by resilience, informal governance, and fractured legitimacy. No single faction, domestic or foreign, ever consolidated power across the country.
So what happens to nation-building when the battlefield is not just physical but ideological, tribal, and economic?
The trivial forces of tribal-ethnic networks, competing ideologies, and war economies interact to shape Afghanistan’s fractured political order. In doing so, it reveals the limits of conventional nation-building and makes us rethink what legitimacy and governance mean in fragile nations.
How Ideology Fractured Afghanistan’s Statehood: Checkmate in Kabul
Afghanistan’s modern political history reads like a high-stakes chess match with one side pushing for Marxist revolution and the other assembling around religion and tradition. (Naz & Jaspal, 2018) But instead of a decisive victory, what emerged was something far more chaotic: a fractured state where no single ideology could hold the board.
It all began in the 1970s, when the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) split between the Khalq faction led by Nur Mohammad Taraki and the more Moscow-friendly Parcham faction under Babrak Karmal came to power. (Wade, 1981) Their dream? A radical transformation of Afghan Society. That meant land reforms, the abolition of usury, and a restructured rural economy. In theory, this was modernisation. In practice, it was tone-deaf governance.
As scholar Thomas Barfield put it, these policies “violated practically every Afghan cultural norm.” (Wade, 1981) The result? Widespread resentment. /What began as reform quickly ignited a revolt, as many Afghans came to see the PDPA not just as a government, but as a foreign puppet regime installed by Soviet tanks. (Wade, 1981)
On the other side of Afghanistan’s ideological divide stood the Mujahideen, Islamist fighters who opposed the PDPA’s secular, Soviet-backed rule. Backed by Pakistan, the U.S., and Saudi Arabia, they framed their cause as both a jihad and a war of liberation. (REDDY, 2014)
Later, the Taliban emerged, rejecting foreign influence and tribal politics alike. Their goal was a purist Islamist state, enforced in a parallel justice system rooted in Sharia law. They even refused a constitution unless it was “based on the holy Islam”. (REDDY, 2014)
This ideological clash produced a Hybrid Political Order, a mix of state, insurgent and traditional powers. While the Kabul government held cities, the Taliban governed rural areas, often supporting services like clinics or schools under their own terms. Meanwhile, local jirgas and shuras continued delivering justice, often earning more trust than formal institutions. (Dorronsoro, 2011)
In this fragmented system, authority didn’t always equal legitimacy. Both communists and the Taliban ruled by force, but neither gained widespread public trust. The result? A state in pieces where power never vanished, just kept changing hands and forms.
Tribes Before the State
In Afghanistan, power often flows not through state institutions but through tribes, ethnic ties, and informal councils. While foreign observers focus on who controls Kabul, many Afghans look to their local jirga or shura to maintain order in places the government barely touches.
Ethnic and tribal loyalties have long shaped who gets protection, resources, and power. What began as political rivalries between groups like Jamaat-e-Islami and Hezb-e-Islami has morphed into deep ethnic divides like the persistent tensions between Pashtun Taliban and Tajik-dominated factions like Jamiat-e-Islami. (Dorronsoro, 2011) In provinces like Kapisa, Pashtun Taliban and Tajik-dominated factions like Jamat-e-Islami. In provinces like Kapisa, Pashtun resentment over Tajik influence has sparked Taliban demands to redraw district lines, aiming for ethnic majorities. (Dorronsoro, 2011) Even the national army hasn’t been spared; accusations of ethnic imbalance plague its recruitment and structure.
In this fragmented landscape, informal institutions often succeed where formal ones fail. Jirgas among Pashtuns and shuras among Dari-speakers handle governance with surprising effectiveness. (REDDY, 2014) The Taliban, despite their brutality, earned local legitimacy by offering swift justice, even enforcing settlements in intertribal conflicts with military backing. In contrast, the government’s courts were slow, corrupt, or absent altogether.
This reflects the Hybrid Political Order at play: overlapping layers of formal and informal rule, where traditional structures often hold more sway than state systems. Programs like the National Solidarity Programme frequently operated beyond government control—sometimes under Taliban oversight, who allowed them to function while quietly setting their own rules. (Dorronsoro, 2011)
Warlords and ex-commanders, many with roots in the 1980s Mujahideen era, continued to mobilise support through ethnic and tribal networks. (Dorronsoro, 2011) Some even held government positions, blurring the line between official authority and private militias. Their legitimacy came not from constitutions but from kinship and control.
Still, it’s important not to romanticise this local legitimacy. These traditional systems often marginalise women and exclude democratic principles. Many Afghans remain sceptical of democracy itself, equating it with Westernisation and cultural erosion. (REDDY, 2014) Yet, in the absence of a strong state, these informal power structures have created a durable, if uneasy, form of governance.
How Afghanistan’s War Economy Undermined the State : Guns, Drugs, and Deals
Afghanistan’s conflict isn’t just fought with ideology or bullets—it’s funded by a sprawling war economy that’s becoming deeply woven into the country’s political fabric. From Kalashnikovs to opium, from foreign aid to tribal smuggling networks, economic survival has often mattered more than any flag or faith. (Dorronsoro, 2011)
Looking at the soaring price of AK-47s in Kunar signals a clear demand in a region flooded with weapons. In provinces like Nangarhar, Badakhshan, and Kunar, booming opium production reveals just how limited the central government’s control really is. (Dorronsoro, 2011) Border tribes, like the Shinwari, not only run smuggling routes but also operate heroin labs. (Dorronsoro, 2011) These aren’t isolated criminals—they’re local powerbrokers in a fragmented state.
Meanwhile, foreign money keeps pouring in, from development aid and “reintegration” programs to covert funding of political factions. Far from stabilising the country, this cash often fuels rivalry. (Dorronsoro, 2011) In Jalalabad, for instance, ex-commanders clashed over how profits from illicit activities were split, accusing the governor of hoarding the spoils. (Nations, 2024)
This is the classic Political Economy of Conflict, which is that flowing resources create incentives for fragmentation, not unity. (Naz & Jaspal, 2018) Afghan political parties often act less like structured movements and more like personal fiefdoms, built around charismatic leaders seeking power, patronage, and external funding.
The result? A “progressive deconstruction” of the Afghan state. Cities and district centres may be under Kabul’s flag, but much of the countryside answers to warlords, Taliban commanders, or tribal councils. The Taliban, for example, didn’t just fight; they governed. (Dorronsoro, 2011) Their justice system, however harsh, was often seen as more impartial than corrupt state courts. They even allowed NGOs to operate in some areas, so long as basic services reached the people.
Afghanistan’s reality is a patchwork of power, where formal government, informal councils, and insurgents coexist and compete. In this hybrid landscape, economic interest, not ideology, is often the strongest force shaping who governs and who survives.
Conclusion
Afghanistan’s tale is not just one of a failed state; rather, it is one of disjointed but effective alternatives that arose in the face of ongoing unrest. Tribes, militias, clergy, and local councils took control as the central government attempted to establish authority; frequently, they did so with greater credibility than formal institutions ever attained.
We need to expand our notion of legitimacy and governance in order to comprehend unstable regimes like Afghanistan. Here, those in positions of authority were not always well-dressed or supported by constitutions. It was frequently controlled by unofficial agreements, spoke Pashto or Dari in jirgas, and followed the logic of survival rather than the law.
This aspect was frequently overlooked by international interventions, which prioritised army training, elections, and top-down changes over the regular networks that held many communities together. In precarious situations, legitimacy is constantly contested in valleys, villages, and border markets rather than being proclaimed from the capital.
If Afghanistan teaches us anything, it’s that hybrid governance isn’t a failure—it’s a reality. The challenge isn’t to erase these systems, but to understand and work with them.
So, what if the real failure wasn’t Afghanistan’s fragmentation, but our refusal to recognise that fragmentation as a form of order?
