Building the Afghan State

While the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 quickly defeated the ruling Taliban, it has so far not led to the establishment of a successor government with power and influence beyond the capital, Kabul. Local militia leaders, many of them hostile to President Hamid Karzai's interim government, hold sway in many parts of the country—and there is little evidence to suggest that such "warlordism" will be contained at any point in the near future.

The country's continued balkanization is likely to impede the implementation of a viable and meaningful constitution and could jeopardize nationwide elections planned for June 2004, according to Barnett Rubin, an Afghanistan expert who helped draft the 2001 Bonn process for Afghanistan's political reconstruction. At a forum on April 11, 2003 at the Open Society Institute's New York offices, Rubin discussed the country's current political and security situation and argued that the international community's main priority should be to curtail the power of Afghan warlords in order to stave off renewed conflict and to create conditions in which a constitution will mean something.

Read a full summary of the forum.