The Afghan Conundrum: intervention, statebuilding and resistance

Jonathan Goodhand is a Professor of Conflict and Development Studies at the University of SOAS. He has more than twenty five years experience of working in and on Afghanistan and has published widely on the political economy of conflict and peacebuilding. Mark Sedra is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and Balsillie School of International Affairs. He is also the Executive Director of the Centre for Security Governance, a non-profit think tank dedicated to the study of security transitions in fragile, failed and conflict-affected states.

1. Rethinking liberal peacebuilding, statebuilding and transition in Afghanistan: an introduction 2. Statebuilding in Afghanistan: challenges and pathologies 3. Statebuilding in Afghanistan: a contradictory engagement 4. Contested boundaries: NGOs and civil–military relations in Afghanistan 5. A tale of two retreats: Afghan transition in historical perspective 6. March towards democracy? The development of political movements in Afghanistan 7. The dynamics of informal political networks and statehood in post-2001 Afghanistan: a case study of the 2010–2011 Special Election Court crisis 8. Order, stability, and change in Afghanistan: from top-down to bottom-up state-making 9. The hollowing-out of the liberal peace project in Afghanistan: the case of security sector reform 10. Getting savages to fight barbarians: counterinsurgency and the remaking of Afghanistan 11. Nexuses of knowledge and power in Afghanistan: the rise and fall of the informal justice assemblage