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Afghanistan and the Failure of Liberal

Peacebuilding

Toby Dodge

To cite this article: Toby Dodge (2021) Afghanistan and the Failure of Liberal Peacebuilding,
Survival, 63:5, 47-58, DOI: 10.1080/00396338.2021.1982197

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Afghanistan and the Failure of
Liberal Peacebuilding
Toby Dodge

The tragedy surrounding the fall of Kabul to Taliban forces in August has
generated a great deal of soul-searching, recrimination and anger. Once
the initial wave of instant punditry has ebbed, how will we understand
the failure that has undermined two decades of international intervention
in Afghanistan? The core problem dogging post-9/11 involvement in the
country was the very ambition of the endeavour – the expansion of the
mission from the immediate targeting of al-Qaeda and its host, the Taliban,
in 2001 to the costly and unsustainable commitment to liberal peacebuilding
that started in 2003 and shaped the mission until its ignominious end in
2021. It is this expansion, and the ambitions it implied, that ultimately
resulted in defeat.1
Ironically, given his role in ending the US presence, Zalmay Khalilzad
first promoted the liberal-peacebuilding agenda in 2002 and 2003 from his
position on George W. Bush’s National Security Council staff. Subsequently,
as US ambassador to Afghanistan from 2004 to 2005, Khalilzad was charged
with implementing the ambitious commitment to state-building that he
had helped persuade Bush to adopt. Finally, in the face of failure, from
2018 onwards Khalilzad negotiated, as special envoy to Afghanistan under
Donald Trump and Joe Biden, a peace deal that became the vehicle for the
United States to leave Afghanistan and the Taliban to seize control of Kabul.

Toby Dodge teaches in the International Relations Department at the London School of Economics and
Political Science.

Survival | vol. 63 no. 5 | October–November 2021 | pp. 47–58DOI 10.1080/00396338.2021.1982197

48 | Toby Dodge

Mission creep and systemic dysfunction

In the planning for the invasion of Afghanistan, initial policy objectives were
shaped by the hostility to liberal peacebuilding that candidate Bush had reg-
istered in his presidential-election campaign.2 In the immediate aftermath of
9/11, Bush repeated his electoral injunction: ‘I don’t want to nation-build
with troops.’3 In National Security Council meetings there was a working
assumption that once the Taliban and al-Qaeda were removed, US troops
would be withdrawn as soon as possible.4 On the ground in Afghanistan,
from November 2001 until June 2003, antipathy towards the commitments
involved in liberal peacebuilding led the US to deploy minimal troops and
resources. In December 2001, there were only 1,300 US troops in-country.
For the first four months of its existence, from December 2001 to March
2002, Hamid Karzai’s provisional government had no budget to pay civil
servants or police officers.5 Karzai’s inability to project power across the
country earned him the disparaging moniker ‘the Mayor of Kabul’.
The policy of Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations’ special representa-
tive for Afghanistan, supported this minimalist approach to defeating
the Taliban and ridding Afghanistan of al-Qaeda. He argued that a large
international presence in the country was neither possible nor desirable.
Instead, there should be a ‘light footprint’, with an emphasis placed on
indigenous capacity-building that would be exogenously funded.6 By the
end of 2002, however, Donald Rumsfeld, the US secretary of defense, was
receiving detailed reports suggesting that this policy was not producing
stability. The Northern Alliance’s domination of the fledgling government
and the re-empowerment of warlords from the pre-Taliban era had started
to alienate key interest groups and stop the reconstruction of adminis-
trative capacity.7 Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, tasked
Khalilzad with developing a new Afghan policy to deal with these unfore-
seen problems.8
Bush and the National Security Council agreed on a new policy, dubbed
‘Accelerating Success’, in June 2003. This new policy saw Khalilzad appointed
as ambassador to Afghanistan, a post he accepted only on the understanding
that the US would greatly increase the resources it spent and commitment
it extended to Afghanistan.9 The new policy took as its template the central
 Afghanistan and the Failure of Liberal Peacebuilding | 49

tenets of liberal peacebuilding, of which the Bush administration had previ-

ously been so scornful.
In outlining the policy he helped draft and was now appointed to imple-
ment, Khalilzad reproduced the four analytic components that shaped
the liberal-peacebuilding agenda as it had developed in the post-Cold
War era, which some called the ‘decade of intervention’. The key objec-
tives of Accelerating Success were political, institutional, economic and
coercive. The political track aimed to bring legitimacy to Afghanistan’s
new ruling elites but also to constrain their actions by holding presiden-
tial and parliamentary elections as soon as logistically possible. In theory,
the legitimacy of the state would be enhanced by creating an ethnic and
religious balance in the staffing of all key ministries. Institutionally, the
goal was ‘to enable the Afghan government to stand on its own feet’ –
that is, to ‘put in place an effective government’. The third aim was ‘to
work with the Afghan government to improve the quality of life of the
people and to put in place an economic infrastructure to support a private
sector-led economy’. Finally, the plan intended to establish a state ‘coer-
cively strong enough to deliver stability and the rule of law across the
geographic extent of its territory’. This involved developing Afghan secu-
rity institutions, and in particular the rapid and extensive expansion of
the Afghan National Army.10
The United Nations’ commitment to a ‘light footprint’ was jettisoned.
UN Security Council Resolution 1510, adopted in October 2003, focused on
‘extending central government authority to all parts of Afghanistan’ and
authorised the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to expand its
operations from Kabul across the country.11 The resolution had a catch-all
commitment that mandated ISAF to create a secure environment to facili-
tate reconstruction and lay the foundations for a peaceful new order.12
The United States, in addition to rapidly increasing the number of US
troops deployed in the country, saw a rapid increase in its financial obli-
gations for reconstituting the institutional capacity of the state. Of the $87
billion appropriated by Congress in November 2003, $11bn was allocated
for Afghan reconstruction.13 At this moment, in the wake of the invasion of
Iraq and the parallel increase in commitment to Afghanistan, the United
50 | Toby Dodge

States’ efforts to stabilise the two countries came into direct resource com-
petition with each other. Afghanistan lost.14
The Bush administration’s commitment to Accelerating Success not only
erased its own modest initial approach to stabilising Afghanistan but yielded
a rapid increase in international personnel and funding entering the country.
Driven by rising violence, this expanded commitment to Afghanistan was
further institutionalised through NATO’s adoption of its ‘Comprehensive
Approach’ at the Riga Summit in November 2006.15 The Obama adminis-
tration’s announcement of its own Afghanistan-policy review in December
2009 marked another step increase in the troops and resources sent to the
country.16 The overall record is one of continual expansion. In 2001–02,
the Department of Defense spent $20bn and the Department of State $800
million on Afghanistan.17 By August 2021, the US government had spent at
total of $145bn in attempting to rebuild the Afghan state, with an additional
$837bn expended on fighting the Taliban.18
Khalilzad’s implementation of Accelerating Success made building a
new Afghan state the central policy objective. In theory at least, the new
state would be strong enough to impose order and guarantee the rule of
law across its territory. To that end, Accelerating Success set about trying
to create highly centralised institutions in Kabul. It aimed to construct
governmental institutional capacity that could drive reconstruction and
development forward throughout the country and thereby gain democratic
legitimacy from its population. These gargantuan ambitions overestimated
the ability of the international community to deliver the expertise and com-
mitment needed in the short term, let alone medium or long term. They
also failed to account for the incapacity of the myriad non-governmental,
governmental and international organisations to coordinate the delivery of
their own development aid.
US economic policy in Afghanistan followed the free-market prescrip-
tions of prevailing neoliberal doctrine. Astri Suhrke has argued that what
distinguished Afghanistan from other post-Cold War interventions was
the ‘radical and coherent form that characterised economic policy from the
very beginning’.19 The US Agency for International Development’s (USAID)
policy for Afghanistan’s cotton-farming industry demonstrated the
 Afghanistan and the Failure of Liberal Peacebuilding | 51

dysfunction arising from such an ideologically rigid approach to economic

development. USAID refused to invest in the expansion of cotton farming
because it did not believe the country could compete in world markets.
Experienced aid workers repeatedly challenged this global-free-market
approach by highlighting the local realities of Afghanistan, arguing that
cotton was one of the few sustainable crops that stood a chance of luring
farmers away from poppy farming for the production of opium.20
The US also prioritised electricity production as a key driver of eco-
nomic development, spending $1.7bn on the sector. However, by 2013,
only 28% of Afghan households were connected to the national grid and
73% of all electricity was imported from neighbouring countries. In addi-
tion, although $1.5bn had been spent on rebuilding road infrastructure, the
Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction in 2013 assessed
that Afghanistan’s road infrastructure was deteriorating, mainly due to the
poor quality of initial construction, poor maintenance and overloading.21
Meanwhile, US and NATO commitments to the coercive institutions of the
Afghan state steadily and steeply increased. In December 2002, NATO com-
mitted itself to building a 70,000-strong Afghan national army. This figure
was revised upwards to 122,000 in September 2008. In 2009, when Barack
Obama authorised the surge of American combat troops to Afghanistan, he
also vowed to build Afghan security forces totalling 352,000 personnel.22 By
2017, $70bn – 60% of the total US reconstruction budget – was for the coer-
cive organs of the state.23

Critical failures
Post-intervention attempts at reforming state–society relations and build-
ing sustainable state infrastructure made little durable progress over 20
years. The civilian institutions of the state remained largely absent from the
vast majority of the population’s everyday lives. Economic policies, while
to some extent linking the population with international markets, did not
widely secure the exercise of individual economic liberty, let alone the
creation of an indigenous bourgeoisie. Instead, foreign direct investment
concentrated on what could be termed the ‘rentier’ sectors of the economy,
namely minerals and mining. This left Afghanistan wholly dependent upon
52 | Toby Dodge

foreign aid, with 97% of its gross domestic product coming from interna-
tional donor-related activity.24
The political dispensation was profoundly flawed. Afghanistan’s consti-
tution, drafted in 2003 and approved by a Loya Jirga – the recreation of
a traditional ‘grand assembly’ of Afghan tribal leaders – in 2004, sought
to create a highly centralised state, with all the coercive and civic institu-
tional capacity that involved. Under Article 64, the president appointed all
cabinet ministers, the attorney general, the head of the central bank, the
national-security director, judges, officers of the armed forces and police,
and national-security as well as other high-ranking officials.25 Concentrating
this much power in one set of hands was justified at the time by the need to
streamline executive decision-making and stand up the new state as quickly
as possible.
In line with the precepts of liberal peacebuilding, the Afghan state was
to be both legitimised and constrained through the mechanisms of a new
democratic system. Karzai’s role as interim president was accepted at an
emergency Loya Jirga in Kabul in June 2002. Thus, he did not face a real
electoral test until the first post-regime-change presidential elections in
October 2004. With the advantages of incumbency, Karzai won an impres-
sive victory, taking 55.4% of the vote while his nearest rival gained only
16.3%.26 But the electoral system established by Khalilzad as a key part of
Accelerating Success – the single non-transferable vote – hindered the for-
mation of collective party interests and fractured voting patterns, severing
voters’ ties to their elected representatives.27 It was further undermined by
widespread and systematic cheating, later described by the special inspec-
tor as ‘a type of competitive sport’ occurring ‘throughout the entire election
cycle, from the hiring of election officials and staff … to the electoral dispute
resolution process’.28
Karzai’s re-election in August 2009 was marred by widespread and
obvious electoral fraud, and the systematic hindrance of political parties’
ability to mobilise voters.29 The subsequent presidential elections in 2014
and 2019 involved, if anything, even greater fraud and controversy, though
the international community had spent an estimated $1.2bn to support the
electoral process.30 Unsurprisingly, voter turnout slumped from a high of
 Afghanistan and the Failure of Liberal Peacebuilding | 53

83% in 2004 to just 19% in 2019.31 As a result, parliament lost influence, and
democracy lost traction. Overall, chronic electoral fraud precluded whatever
democracy evolved in Afghanistan from winning legitimacy or constrain-
ing the country’s ruling elite from undermining it.
In the diplomatic arena, although there was a significant opportunity
to forge some form of modus vivendi with the Taliban immediately after
US troops took Kabul in 2001, it took until 2011 for the US to start overt
negotiations with them in an attempt to reduce the cost of its extended
commitments.32 Not until September 2018, when Trump’s secretary of
state, Mike Pompeo, named Khalilzad as the newly established Special
Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation, did an exit strategy based on
a deal with Taliban leaders begin to take shape. But the final deal, witnessed
by Pompeo but signed by Khalilzad and Taliban leader Mullah Abdul
Ghani Baradar in February 2020, had nothing to do with securing the lofty
aims of Accelerating Success. Instead, the agreement was based, almost in
its entirety, on the Trump administration’s desire to withdraw US troops as
quickly as possible.33
After nearly two decades of costly conflict and failed state-building,
Trump unceremoniously dropped any commitment to liberal peacebuilding
in favour of his mantra of ‘America first’, regardless of the consequences. To
reach the deal, the US excluded the Afghan government from negotiations
and, in exchange for its firm commitment to pull troops out, required only
vague promises from the Taliban not to realign with al-Qaeda and other
transnational Islamic radicals. As Kate Clarke has persuasively argued, this
was essentially ‘a withdrawal deal dressed up as a peace agreement’.34 It
was left up to the newly elected Biden, a long-term opponent of America’s
military role in Afghanistan, to honour the deal made by his predecessor
and remove the remaining US troops.

Technocratic blindness
The US effort undertaken in 2003 to create a strong centralised state, had
it been successful, would have been truly revolutionary. In arguing for
and seeking to implement Accelerating Success, Khalilzad must have had
some understanding that in trying to achieve such a goal, the US and NATO
54 | Toby Dodge

would be attempting to comprehensively revise the Afghan state’s historical

relationship with its own society.35 His confidence that this could be done
must have been anchored not in any rational assessment of the US gov-
ernment’s ability to transform Afghanistan, but in his faith in the universal
applicability of the liberal-peacebuilding model that had come to dominate
international interventions in the 1990s. It did clearly identify the problems
to be solved in a weak or non-existent state and specify the ways to solve
them, but these solutions were dependent upon a long, costly and ultimately
unsustainable commitment to state-building.
In spite of that commitment, however, the model failed to create the
sustainable coercive and civil institutions required. It did establish a new
ruling elite in Kabul, but this elite was heavily dependent upon US support
to survive. When that support was removed, the Afghan army and police
force collapsed and allowed a far smaller Taliban force effectively to take
over the country. The collapse of the Afghan security forces and the flight
of most of its ruling elite into exile raises profound questions – not so much
about US strategic commitments to the international order, but rather about
the international community’s ability to successfully engage in extended
exercises in liberal peacebuilding.
In February 2007, a nation-building team at the RAND Corporation, led by
Ambassador James Dobbins – one of the architects of the 2001 Bonn Agreement
for establishing a post-Taliban government – published The Beginner’s Guide
to Nation-building.36 Given the ambiguous results delivered by exogenous
attempts to recreate indigenous state institutions in the aftermath of the Cold
War, the book could have incorporated a degree of caution or even modesty
about what could be achieved by such endeavours. However, the guide
simply reproduced the central pillars of liberal peacebuilding, unabashedly
explaining to its readers how to deliver order, the rule of law, governance
and democratisation. It also argued that there was a direct and apparently
uncomplicated relationship between the level of resources invested in nation-
building and the degree of success that could be expected. So confident were
the authors of the universal applicability of their quasi-scientific method that
they included an equation that prescribed the numbers of soldiers and police
needed per head of population to ensure stability.37
 Afghanistan and the Failure of Liberal Peacebuilding | 55

RAND offered no discussion of country-specific issues with respect to the

objects of intervention, such as existing institutional capacity or the historical
relationship between the state and society. Instead, the guide eschewed,
in the words of one critic, any ‘deep knowledge of specific countries and
regions in favour of gross comparative generalisations’.38 Similarly, an
internally coherent but empirically sterile universal template for correct and
sustainable state–society relations was applied to Afghanistan irrespective
of its political and economic history, and consequently without due regard
to the enormity of the task of rebuilding its polity.

* * *

The failure to deliver the planned political transformation in Afghanistan

has been immensely costly to the Afghan population. While the conventional
perception from afar has been that the Afghan army and police fought the
Taliban half-heartedly, between 66,000 and 69,000 of their personnel have
been killed since 2001. An estimated 47,245 Afghan civilians have died
as a direct result of the war.39 These numbers alone invalidate the liberal-
peacebuilding model that drove the intervention. It should be removed
from the policymaker’s toolbox.

Notes
1 For greater detail on liberal peacebuild-
ing, see Toby Dodge, ‘The Ideological
Roots of Failure: The Application
of Kinetic Neo-liberalism to Iraq’,
International Affairs, vol. 86, no. 6,
November 2010, pp. 1,269–86; and
Toby Dodge, ‘Intervention and Dreams
of Exogenous Statebuilding: The
Application of Liberal Peacebuilding
in Afghanistan and Iraq’, Review of
International Studies, vol. 39, no. 5,
November 2013, pp. 1,189–212.
2 See Condoleezza Rice, ‘Promoting
the National Interest’, Foreign Affairs,
vol. 79, no. 1, January/February 2000,
pp. 45–62.
3 Quoted in Bob Woodward, Bush at
War (New York: Simon & Shuster,
2002), p. 229.
4 See Seth G. Jones, In the Graveyard of
Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan
(New York: W. W. Norton and
Company, 2009), p. 112.
5 See Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos:
The United States and the Failure of
Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan,
and Central Asia (New York: Viking,
2008), pp. 63, 99, 129.
56 | Toby Dodge
6 See Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires,
p. 118; and Astri Suhrke, When More
Is Less: The International Project in
Afghanistan (London: C. Hurst & Co.,
2011), pp. 29–32.
7 See US Government Accountability
Office, ‘Afghanistan Reconstruction:
Despite Some Progress, Deteriorating
Security and Other Obstacles
Continue to Threaten Achievement of
U.S. Goals’, Report to Congressional
Committees, July 2005, p. 10, https://
www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/
GAOREPORTS-GAO-05-742/html/
GAOREPORTS-GAO-05-742.htm;
David Rohde and David E. Sanger,
‘How a “Good War” in Afghanistan
Went Bad’, New York Times, 12
August 2007, http://www.nytimes.
com/2007/08/12/world/asia/12afghan.
html?pagewanted=all&_r=0; and S.
Frederick Starr, ‘U.S. Afghanistan
Policy: It’s Working’, Central Asia–
Caucasus Institute, Paul H. Nitze
School of Advanced International
Studies, Johns Hopkins University,
October 2004, p. 3, https://
silkroadstudies.org/resources/
pdf/SilkRoadPapers/2004_starr_
us-afghanistan-policy-its-working.pdf.
8 See Marin Strmecki, ‘Lessons Learned
Record of Interview’, Afghanistan
Papers, Washington Post, 19 October
2015, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/graphics/2019/investigations/
afghanistan-papers/documents-
database/?document=background_
ll_01_xx_xx_10192015.
9 See Rohde and Sanger, ‘How a “Good
War” in Afghanistan Went Bad’.
10 Zalmay Khalilzad, speech at the
Centre for Strategic and International
Studies, Washington DC, 4 April 2004.
See also White House, ‘Accelerating
Success in Afghanistan in 2004:
An Assessment’, 18 January 2005,
available at http://library.rumsfeld.
com/doclib/sp/440/From%20
the%20White%20House%20re%20
Accelerating%20Success%20in%20
Afghanistan%20in%202004%20an%20
Assessment%2001-18-2005.pdf.
11 UN Security Council Resolution 1510,
13 October 2003, United Nations
Digital Library, https://digitallibrary.
un.org/record/503843?ln=en.
12 See Suhrke, When More Is Less, p. 85.
13 Doug Sample, ‘New Afghan
Ambassador to Help Country “Stand on
Its Own Feet”’, USA American Forces
Press Service, 20 November 2003.
14 See James Dobbins, ‘Lessons Learned
Interview’, Afghanistan Papers,
Washington Post, 11 January 2016,
https://www.washingtonpost.
com/graphics/2019/investigations/
afghanistan-papers/documents-
database/?document=dobbins_james_
ll_02212018.
15 See M.J. Williams, The Good War:
NATO and the Liberal Conscience in
Afghanistan (Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011), p. 104.
16 Barack Obama, ‘Remarks by the
President in Address to the Nation
on the Way Forward in Afghanistan
and Pakistan’, United States Military
Academy at West Point, White House
Archives, 1 December 2009, https://
obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/
the-press-office/remarks-president-
address-nation-way-forward-
afghanistan-and-pakistan.
17 See Ian S. Livingston and Michael
O’Hanlon, ‘Afghan Index’, Brookings
Institution, 19 March, 2013, p. 17,
 Afghanistan and the Failure of Liberal Peacebuilding | 57
https://www.brookings.edu/research/
afghanistan-index/.
18 Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction,
‘What We Need to Learn: Lessons
from Twenty Years of Afghanistan
Reconstruction’, August 2021, p. ix,
https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/lessons-
learned/SIGAR-21-46-LL.pdf.
19 Suhrke, When More Is Less, p. 170.
20 See Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Little
America: The War Within the War for
Afghanistan (London: Bloomsbury,
2012), p. 103.
21 Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction,
‘Quarterly Report to the United
States Congress’, January 2013,
p. 144, http://www.sigar.mil/pdf/
quarterlyreports/2013-01-30qr.pdf. See
also Julian Borger, ‘Afghanistan Faces
$4bn Defence Funding Shortfall’,
Guardian, 1 December 2011, http://
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/
dec/01/afghanistan-faces-defence-
funding-shortfall?INTCMP=SRCH.
22 See International Crisis Group, ‘A
Force in Fragments: Reconstituting the
Afghan National Army’, Asia Report
no. 190, 12 May 2010, p. 7, https://
d2071andvip0wj.cloudfront.net/190-
a-force-in-fragments-reconstituting-
the-afghan-national-army.pdf; Special
Inspector General for Afghanistan
Reconstruction, ‘Reconstructing
the Afghan National Defense and
Security Forces: Lessons From the
U.S. Experience in Afghanistan’,
September 2017, https://www.sigar.
mil/pdf/lessonslearned/sigar-17-
62-ll.pdf; and Obaid Younossi et al.,
The Long March: Building an Afghan
National Army (Santa Monica, CA:
RAND Corporation, 2009), pp. 12–17,
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/
rand/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_
MG845.pdf.
23 Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction,
‘Reconstructing the Afghan
National Defense and Security
Forces: Lessons from the U.S.
Experience in Afghanistan’.
24 Martine van Bijlert, ‘What the US
Senate Report on Afghanistan Does
and Doesn’t Say’, Afghanistan
Analysts Network, 13 June
2011, https://www.afghanistan-
analysts.org/en/reports/
economy-development-environment/
what-the-us-senates-report-on-
afghanistan-does-and-doesnt-say/.
25 ‘The Constitution of the Islamic
Republic of Afghanistan’, International
Committee of the Red Cross, https://
ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl-
nat.nsf/0/180edfd48a4ccd47c125767000
2c2bd2/$FILE/The%20Constitution%20
of%20Afghanistan.pdf.
26 See Rashid, Descent into Chaos, p. 216.
27 See Independent Election Commission
of Afghanistan, ‘Afghan Electoral
System’, 29 August 2019, https://
www.iec.org.af/en/elections/
afghan-electoral-system.
28 Special Inspector General for
Afghanistan Reconstruction,
‘Elections: Lessons from the US
Experience in Afghanistan’, February
2021, p. 74, https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/
lessonslearned/SIGAR-21-16-LL.pdf.
29 See Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan:
A Cultural and Political History
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2010), p. 332; and Suhrke, When
More Is Less, p. 170.
58 | Toby Dodge

30 See Special Inspector General 34 Ibid.

for Afghanistan Reconstruction, 35 See Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural
‘Elections: Lessons from the US and Political History; and Thomas
Experience in Afghanistan’. Barfield and Neamatollah Nojumi,
31 International Institute for Democracy ‘Bringing More Effective Governance
and Electoral Assistance, ‘Afghanistan: to Afghanistan: 10 Pathways to
Voter Turnout by Election Type’, Stability’, Middle East Policy, vol. 17,
https://www.idea.int/data-tools/ no. 4, Winter 2010, pp. 40–52.
country-view/44/40. 36 James Dobbins et al., The Beginner’s
32 On earlier chances of conciliation, see Guide to Nation-building (Santa Monica,
Dobbins, ‘Lessons Learned Interview’. CA: RAND Corporation, 2007),
Regarding the start of negotiations https://www.rand.org/content/dam/
in 2011, see, for example, ‘Headway rand/pubs/monographs/2007/RAND_
in Taliban Talks May Be Months MG557.pdf.
Off: Gates’, Reuters, 19 June 2011, 37 Ibid., p. 45.
https://www.reuters.com/article/ 38 Tony Smith, A Pact With the Devil:
us-usa-afghanistan-taliban-idUS- Washington’s Bid for World Supremacy
TRE75I18H20110619. and the Betrayal of the American Promise
33 Kate Clarke, ‘The Taleban’s Rise (New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 151.
to Power: As the US Prepared for 39 Watson Institute for International
Peace, the Taleban Prepared for War’, and Public Affairs, Brown
Afghanistan Analysts Network, University, ‘U.S. Costs to Date for
21 August 2021, https://www. the War in Afghanistan’, August
afghanistan-analysts.org/en/reports/ 2021, https://watson.brown.
war-and-peace/the-talebans-rise-to- edu/costsofwar/figures/2021/
power-as-the-us-prepared-for-peace- human-and-budgetary-costs-date-us-
the-taleban-prepared-for-war/. war-afghanistan-2001-2022.

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