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Afghanistan provides a significant geographical linkage for the regions of the Middle East, South Asia, and Western Asia; therefore, its stability is utmost important for regional as well as broader global accord. The two and half decades of the US military engagement inside Afghanistan had a qualified success as far as peace and stability goals were concerned. The Doha talks focused on the complete withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and the internal dialogues among the Afghan stakeholders. Here, the United States, China and Pakistan’s stakes inside Afghanistan became very significant in the context of counter- terrorism and peace. However, the policies of these three significant powers diverge over major elements of security and peace in the region. This paper attempts to explore such divergence and convergence in the multinational peace building approach in Afghanistan. A mixed methodology approach is used to investigate such divergence and convergence in the multinational approach to Afghanistan in the region. The findings of the paper suggest that the two major powers, the US and China are strategically involved in countering each other’s influence and retaining their dominance in Central Asian region, including Afghanistan. For Pakistan on the other hand, the major adversary to contain and confine in the region is India. The paper argues that the three nations can benefit on a common ground if a multilateral approach to peace building is carried out prudently for the sake of a long-term peace and stability in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the formation of the western state and alternate state. Topics discussed include Westphalian state system in Germany, the formal emergence of the modern state system in Europe with the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, and end of the Thirty Years war and the Medieval system of feudalism in Europe by this Treaty.

Beginning in the closing months of 2001, Afghanistan witnessed an international intervention, which started off as a reaction to the security threats from transnational extremist groups and, afterwards blossomed into a full fledged state building exercise. The international state building practice in Afghanistan is guided by the Western notion of a centralized, bureaucratized Weberian state that exercises a monopoly of power over violence within its territory. This conventional top down understanding of state building is in turn, manifested in attempts at constructing security sector apparatuses, a centralized bureaucracy for tax collection and service provision, a robust judiciary patterned on Western lines and political institutions based on liberal democratic model, including a constitution, elections, a civil society and a liberal market economy. The more than a decade long state building intervention has however, failed to improve Afghan state's coercive capacity, its functional competence in extending services beyond a few urban centres and its democratic legitimacy. Violence, conflict and insurgency have become common place in today's Afghanistan. This paper argues that the international state building practice is generating institutional paradoxes in Afghanistan and such paradoxes are hampering the attainment of desired state building goals. These paradoxes can be studied within a framework of tribulations in recruitment, training, retention, inadequacy of resources and infrastructural deficiencies, over-centralization without any meaningful devolution or decentralization of authority and finances, coordination dilemmas resulting from multiplicity of actors and agendas, overlapping of functions and responsibilities of state structures and donor assistance to the growth of a second civil service. Such dilemmas are generating institutional paradoxes: international efforts at 'capacity building' of formal state institutions are instead generating 'dependency' among the state structures. State institutions in post 2001 Afghanistan have grown to become actually more dependent on outside support and funding, carry weak operational capacity, are poorly coordinated, less decentralized and suffer from issues of long term sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The end of Cold War period significantly increased the frequency of civil war occurrences; resulting humanitarian and security challenges prompted the UN and international community to embark on a pro-active interventionist peace building and state building role in conflict states. Interventionist state building has developed as a major concern for the international state system in the last two decades. This paper argues that interventionist state building theory and practice is an extension of the contemporary state failure discourse. Since failed states are measured against Weberian criteria of stateness, state building is theorized as building of effective and capable formal state institutions and practiced as introduction of depoliticized, technical centralized institutions, including the security forces, a bureaucracy and judicial structures. It further stresses that the institutional model of state building when imposed in failed and conflict settings generates a set of paradoxes and dilemmas which complicates the attainment of state building goals. The findings of the paper suggest that paradoxes are generated because institution building aims at creating effective institutions, but its foreign control and component discourages local and indigenous ownership of the state building process and creates a culture of dependency. Institutional effectiveness is also restricted by coordination dilemmas resulting from involvement of multiple external actors in the restructuring of state institutions. Low resource commitments for institutional reforms and lack of accountability to the local populace by international transitional administrations create new sets of paradoxes. All this is further complicated by resource diversion to NGOs and failures to decentralize administrative and revenue practices. These issues are discussed in the light of contemporary evidence from post-intervention state building practice in the Balkans (Bosnia and Kosovo), Cambodia, East Timor and Iraq. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]