Legal Rule and Tribal Politics: The US Army and the Taliban in Afghanistan (2001–13)

Abstract

This article investigates the implications of two competing modes of governance, those of the US Army and the Taliban, through the lens of the relations between property, citizenship and political authority in Kunar, Afghanistan, between 2001 and 2013. To account for the political struggle in the province, the author outlines two models of governance: a political one based on mediation and conciliation, which the US Army applied; and a legal one promoting direct relations between the rulers and the ruled, upheld by the Taliban. After looking at the political dynamics in Kunar since the nineteenth century and since 2001, I argue that it is paradoxically the Taliban that placed itself in continuity with the state, while the US Army played tribal politics and undermined the legitimacy of the regime it had helped to install in Kabul. Kunar is a case of an armed confrontation in which different militarized groups compete to impose their rule by controlling space and access to landed property.

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“…Taliban are often criticized for their harsh rule, and rightfully so. Still, they created courts, which filled a gap because government courts are considered corrupt (Baczko, 2016), and they have some role in administration and governance even before 2001 (Jackson & Weigand, 2020), including warlord governors (Mukhopadhyay, 2013) and warlord bureaucrats (Jackson & Amiri, 2019).…”

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“…In the first category, the regime (Shahrani, 2015); tribal politics (Baczko, 2016); and just war theory (Connah, 2020) play an important role in this issue. The application, impact, and effectiveness of a regime's use of military force in maintaining its authority has also become quite a hot topic of discussion on this issue.…”

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“…139 The Taliban's Judiciary As Baczko notes, the judicial system is generally the core institution of the Taliban's administration. 140 The Taliban seeks exclusiveness of authority, and this is key in the setup of its shadow government. 141 In most of the districts of Kunduz, there were one or more Taliban judges active on behalf of the insurgency.…”