Since September 11, 2001, the United States and its allies have involved themselves in matters of governance abroad, not out of an altruistic commitment to the spread of liberal democracy, but, rather, as a function of concerns about the presumed nexus between weak statehood and globalized violent extremism. How are fledgling regimes to navigate their own internal politics as a function of their status as clients in the greater Western effort to counter terror? Their approach to governance is often characterized as weak and corrupt and, therefore, an existential obstacle to the effort at hand. But what if that venality is not a bug but, rather, a feature of state-building in the shadow of counterterrorism, given the profound limits interveners place on the very regimes they claim to embolden? Can the kind of competition management a fledgling government must pursue under these terms succeed in advancing the consolidation of the state just the same? These are the questions Mukhopadhyay considered in her lecture through the lens of the Karzai government in Afghanistan, the first regime in the world to rise on the back of the so-called “Global War on Terror” and, thus, the paradigmatic case for this latest incarnation of international state-building.
Books Launch:
“Writings of Young Kakar”,
“Constitutionalism Movement; A National and Afghan Movement” and
“Mahmoud Tarzi and Declaration of Independence of Afghanistan”
March 5, 2023
Event Highlights The launch event of the three Published books on Feb 15, 2023 at
