The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System

Afghanistan has long been a country in turmoil. For decades, imperial powers, Islamic fundamentalists, tribal warriors, and communists have struggled for control of a nation that is geographically and ethnically fragmented. Their conflict reached a peak in the fourteen-year-long civil war that erupted in 1978, a war that resulted in the disintegration of Afghanistan as a state.
This fascinating book is a complete analysis of the Afghan civil war, from the 1978 communist coup to the fall of Najibullah, the last Soviet-installed president, in 1992. Drawing on interviews and unpublished private and government documents, Barnett Rubin shows how both the communist regime and the mujahidin (Islamic resistance) recruited leaders and mobilized resources for the conflict, and how international changes - from the election of Ronald Reagan to the collapse of the Soviet Union - affected the Afghan state. Rubin argues that the origins, conduct, and resolution of the war were a function of Afghanistan's connections to the international community, for Afghanistan was incorporated into a state system not of its own making, and foreign financial and military assistance transformed both tribalism and fundamentalism to the point that they are as much creations of international conflict as the resurgence of local traditions. Using theories of state formation and breakdown and of revolution, Rubin provides a comparative framework that makes it possible to integrate this investigation with other studies of Cold War regional conflict and post-Cold War state breakdown.

Barnett R. Rubin is associate professor of political science, director of the Center for the Study of Central Asia, and director of the Project on Political Order and Conflict in the Former Soviet Union at Columbia University.