Dr. Antonio Giustozzi
Introduction
Local governance relations in Afghanistan have recently come to constitute the epicentre of interventions by an array of (sometimes) contradictory intervening actors and institutions. For instance, over the last two decades, the central government has used and exploited local government resources in pursuit of an over-centralized governing structure. At the same time, however, international military forces have worked to bolster local government institutions for two purposes: force protection and winning the hearts and minds of local populations (see Nemat, 2015). Some international development institutions (e.g., World Bank, UNDP) have focused their interventions on state-building efforts, democratization, and institutional development. Other countries in the region as well as religious networks, such Salafi and Shi’a groups, have targeted Afghan communities for spreading their own influence by building madrasas or mosques and mobilizing people around them. The Taliban, too, had its own way of maintaining a more substantial presence at the sub-national level through the use of shadow provincial and district governors alongside military courts focused on the fast delivery of “justice.”[1] Hence, a clear understanding current local governance relations requires an in-depth picture of broader Afghan government relations and the interventions that preceded the Taliban’s return to power in mid-2021. This report’s aim is to unpack local and (especially) village-level government relations under Taliban rule by, for example, looking at the influence of different religious actors at the local level.
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