Drawing on the author's long experience of living and working in Afghanistan, this title examines what the changes of years have meant in terms of Afghans' sense of their own identity and hopes for the future.

Politically marginal after the withdrawal of Soviet troops, it regained strategic importance after September 2001, as the first of a new generation of international interventions.Drawing on long experience of living and working in Afghanistan, Chris Johnson and Jolyon Leslie examine what the changes of recent years have meant in terms of Afghans' sense of their own identity and hopes for the future. They argue that lasting peace and stability will only be brought about through a form of engagement that respects the rights of Afghans to determine their own political future, while delivering on the responsibilities that come with military intervention.

IllustrationsAbbreviationsGlossaryPrefaceForeword - William MaleyMap1. The mirage of peace-- Illusions of peace - 'Liberation' - Raising the stakes - Bombing-in a peace - Losing hearts and minds - New beginnings? - 'Failure is not an option'2. Identity and society- New values and old - Rooted in Islam - Identity and others - Civil society? - Making decisions, being represented - War and social change - Ethnicity - Closing ranks - Managing the world beyond - Dreaming a past3. Ideology and difference- Confronting the Taliban - The UN and the Strategic Framework for Afghanistan - An alien way of looking at the world - Could it have been different? - The legacy of confrontation4. One size fits all - Afghanistan in the new world order- Reasons for war - Early courtship - Changing attitudes - Isolating the Taliban - Aid, rights and US project - Stitching up a country - Human rights - NGOs - wanting it both ways - Failing the Afghans5. The makings of a narco-state?- Seeding recovery - Or corrupting the state? - Transitional attitudes - Agency responses - Double standards - or caught in a bind?6. State- State and nation - A short history - The Taliban state - Aid and the state - The UN and the failed state model - The legacy of centralisation7. Bonn and beyond, part 1: The political transition- Inauspicious beginnings - Imagining a state - The political transition - Building state failure - Enduring security? 8. Bonn and beyond, part 2: The governance transition- The state: who is in control? - International failure - Letting the Afghans downConcluding ThoughtsWho's whoPartiesAn Afghan chronologyFurther readingReferencesIndex