Abstract
After what some historians have called the "imperial peace of the Cold War?, there has been an explosion of "failed states? in the Third World. A "failed state? is a country where the national political authority is unable to fulfill its basic responsibilities, such as providing its citizens security and justice . This situation usually implies a certain degree of anarchy, fostering violent internal conflicts for the control of what remains of state power. Indeed, while state formation refers to an unavoidable historical phenomenon, state-building involves a voluntarist dimension and the conscious planning of state development. It is almost impossible to over-estimate the immensity of the task of rebuilding Afghanistan into something resembling a coherent state. After 22 years of civil war (1979- 2001), the physical and political infrastructures are completely destroyed and Afghanistan is now one of the poorest nations in the world, highly divided between different ethnic groups.
