The September 11 attacks are presented as the catalyst for the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan and the international effort to build a new political order there. The book’s emphasis falls not on the attacks’ immediate details but on what followed: the Taliban regime was toppled, a plan for democratic government was agreed, and billions of dollars in aid flowed into a country whose institutions remained too weak to turn that money into public services or lasting state capacity.

From the attacks to intervention

Following the September 11 attacks by Al Qaeda, U.S.-led forces swiftly toppled the Taliban regime. The book identifies the immediate reason for the intervention as the regime’s harboring of key Al Qaeda members and refusal to hand them over. The attacks therefore enter this account as the precipitating event in a sequence that rapidly moved from military action to the problem of reconstructing Afghanistan.

A plan for a new government

In December 2001, leaders of the former Afghan mujahideen who had cooperated with U.S. forces reached the Bonn Agreement with key members of the Afghan diaspora, including Hamid Karzai. The agreement set out a plan for establishing a democratic regime. Its first step was a nationwide Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, which elected Karzai to lead an interim government. A majority of Afghans, the book notes, wanted to leave Taliban rule behind, and the international community initially believed that a substantial infusion of foreign aid could help the country move forward.

Aid and the weakening of the state

Representatives of the United Nations and major nongovernmental organizations soon arrived in Kabul. Billions of dollars followed, but the book contrasts the scale of the aid with its limited contribution to infrastructure, schools, public services, and the restoration of law and order. The first tranche instead commissioned an airline to transport international officials. Aid organizations then hired scarce English-speaking bureaucrats and remaining schoolteachers as drivers and interpreters, paying them multiples of prevailing Afghan salaries.

This recruitment drew a small pool of skilled workers away from public institutions and into jobs serving the aid community. With infrastructure still in tatters, aid flows began to undermine the Afghan state they were meant to strengthen. The episode thus turns the attacks’ aftermath into a warning against treating foreign money as a substitute for functioning institutions: the intervention removed the Taliban government, but the aid effort described here weakened the state’s capacity to provide the foundations of an inclusive political order.