The Foreign Service Journal, December 2014

36 DECEMBER 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL The rise of the Taliban in the mid-1990s was both a reac- tion to the chaos and a search for order by a new generation nostalgic for tradition (especially in Pashtun communities), but fundamentally uprooted and unable to replicate it. us, Afghanistan’s violent political struggles are less a question of typical tribal unruliness than a chaotic search for political order amid the remnants of the pillars of stability smashed by Afghanistan’s clash with modernity. is search has been frustrated by the lack of any commanding political gure, as well as by the interventions of outside actors. Fur- ther, the failure to nd political consensus has created habits that actually make the search for consensus more di cult. The Post-2001 Disposition of Power Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the failure of Afghan leaders to take advantage of the opportunity o ered to them in 2001. e toppling of the Taliban regime by U.S. forces and the massive infusion of resources to back a new political order created political space for both order and modernization for the rst time since the 1960s. is space was, however, threatened from the beginning by the gradual re-emergence of two older and more destructive political movements. First, the Taliban began to reconstitute itself within sanctuaries neighboring Pakistan provided. At the same time, powerful gures who had emerged during the jihad and civil war also began to reconstitute their informal power. ey were participants in the new political order to the extent that it provided them resources, but they were also threat- ened by it—either because a genuine democratic order might exclude them, or because they lacked the ability to operate e ectively in a regime based on law and constitutionality. is reconstitution of informal power tested the con dence of the United States in the system it was promoting. Facing threats of instability from these power brokers, Western poli- cymakers sought accommodations in the name of stability. As Afghanistan expert omas Ruttig observed, “After 2001, the The bruising 2014 presidential election—particularly the manner of its resolution—was perhaps the final decisive act in the struggle for modernity and order. Posters of presidential contenders Ashraf Ghani Amadzai and Abdullah Abdullah above a street market in Gardez, the capital of Paktia province in southeastern Afghanistan. Casey Garret Johnson