more feasible and attractive due to weak local policing or inept and corrupt counterinsurgency practices.”28 Another study found that between 1816 and 1997, “effective bureaucratic and political systems reduced the rate of civil war activity.”29
In many cases, weak governments have stemmed from the legacy of colonization, since most colonies of the post-World War II era were unprepared for independence when it arrived. The imperial powers put little thought or effort into establishing in their colonies domestic governance structures that could function on their own.30 A few colonies, such as India and Sri Lanka, had been allowed a degree of self-government. But others, such as Somaliland, were little more than outposts. Somalia struggled with a weak state after its independence in 1960 and experienced several major insurgencies. The structural fragmentation of the Somali state was a relic of the circumstances of its independence, which required the unification of two separate colonial administrative structures. Each half of Somalia had its own judicial system, currency, administrative rules, taxation rates, accounting systems, and legal histories, which had to be unified into a single system.31 Somalia also faced a severe lack of resources. Scholar Patrick Brogan has written that Somalia confronted “a depressing future as a perpetually impoverished Third World country with very few natural resources, constantly burdened by drought and the refugees from Ethiopia.”32 Somalia’s security forces also lacked the capacity to contain conflict. Without a strong central state, the country reverted to its nineteenth-century condition—with no internationally recognized polity, no national administration exercising real authority, no formal legal system, no banking and insurance system, no police and public-security service, no electricity or piped-water system, and weak officials serving on a voluntary basis surrounded by violent bands of armed youths.33
In the Philippines, the weak state under Ferdinand Marcos contributed to the insurgency beginning in 1972. The army was “rotten to the core” and rampantly corrupt.34 Marcos himself was notorious for his graft. He dismantled the democratic structures bequeathed to the country by the United States and reduced an already-poor country to near-insolvency.35 In Lebanon, a delicate sectarian balance led to the emergence of a weak state in the 1970s, which fueled competition among the three leading religious communities —the Maronites, Sunnis, and Shi’ites—triggering an insurgency that lasted from 1975 1991.36
There are dozens of examples—from Bosnia and Georgia in Europe to Mozambique in Africa. In many cases, the states were so weak that they could not establish order in peripheral geographic areas. In each case, these gaps were filled by insurgents. In Cuba, Fidel Castro and his guerrillas used the Sierra Maestra Mountains as a base of support to train new recruits, rearm and regroup, and prepare for forays into the countryside.37 Again, in Peru, Shining Path units formed in Ayacucho, a rural area that had historically received little government attention and control. In Ayacucho, a Peruvian newspaper editor said, “There are no liberated areas, only abandoned areas.”38
In Congo, the insurgency that began in 1960 in Katanga Province was based on fundamental structural weaknesses inherited from Congo’s Belgian colonial legacy. To the degree that any state structure existed, it was “virtually improvis[ed] from scratch” and essentially a replica of the Belgian constitution that had been revised for the Congo only five months earlier.39 The constitutional framework of the government collapsed less than three months after independence. When Angola became independent in 1975, it inherited a weak state structure that suffered from a lack of adequate governmental capacity, bureaucratic structures, and governmental experience. Nearly all of the skilled labor in the country was Portuguese, and 90 percent of the Portuguese fled the country before independence. This loss of skilled labor led to plummeting agricultural exports and the collapse of the service sector.40 These structural weaknesses directly contributed to the rise of an insurgency.
The reverse is also true: strong governance can prevent insurgencies. There was a good possibility of an insurgency in Kenya in the 1980s because of intense ethnic antagonisms, electoral violence, and a coup attempt in August 1982. But the relative strength of the state helped avert major violence.41 Despite deep concerns about insurgencies arising in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were none. One factor was the rise of strong, though undemocratic, governments that were able to control their minority (and majority) populations.
Insurgent Motivations
If weak and ineffective governance served as a precondition, what motivated insurgent groups to fight? Some have argued that the ethnic grievances averted in some former Soviet republics were responsible for insurgent motivations. Ethnic ties, it is claimed, are stronger, more rigid, and more durable than the social ties in ordinary social or political groups.42 Consequently, ethnic combatants are more committed than other groups and less likely to make negotiated concessions. The Afghan insurgency seems to sustain the theory that ethnic violence is U-shaped. In other words, it is less likely to occur in highly homogeneous and highly heterogeneous countries and more likely in countries (such as Afghanistan) with an ethnic majority and numerous small ethnic minorities. 43 In addition, hypernationalist rhetoric and real atrocities can harden identities to the point that cross-ethnic political appeals are unlikely to be made and even less likely to be heard. As a result, restoring civil politics in multiethnic states shattered by war is difficult because the war itself destroys the possibilities for cooperation.44
Following the overthrow of the Taliban government in 2001, Afghanistan’s ethnic mix was approximately 50 percent Pashtun, with smaller percentages of Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras, and other ethnic groups.45 Such diversity, this argument assumes, created competing ethnic power centers, even among Northern Alliance forces.46 As early as 2001, the CIA had “detected serious rifts and competition between the Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks.” One assessment reported: “Afghanistan truly is a zero sum game. Anytime anyone advances all others consider this to be at their expense.”47 Consequently, many have assumed that the insurgency was caused by interethnic grievances, especially among Afghanistan’s Pashtuns, who believed they were being marginalized by northern ethnic groups.48 The United States and Afghan governments, according to Afghanistan expert Thomas H. Johnson, inevitably faced “an extremely difficult challenge of unifying a fragmented society and fostering the development of a national identity because each ethnic group [attempted] to gain a foothold in government often at the expense of other groups.” Since the “attempt at entering government is taken from an ethnic approach, rather than a national one, the fragmentation of society will continue until either one dominant ethnic group controls all of the governmental power or ethnic politics makes way for increased internal conflict.”49
But there is little evidence to support this argument. The Taliban and its network were not motivated to fight because of ethnic concerns. Nor did the population support the Taliban and other groups because of ethnic ties. In fact, there were deep divisions among the Pashtun ethnic majority about the Taliban. The Taliban had support from a number of Pashtun Ghilzai tribes, as well as such Durrani tribes as the Nurzai and Ishaqzai in southern Afghanistan. But most Durrani Pashtuns did not support the Taliban, nor did a number of other eastern and southern Pashtun groups. Nor was ethnicity a major factor in how Afghans voted. Hamid Karzai won the 2004 presidential elections with support in Pashtun provinces as well as in non-Pashtun northern provinces such as Balkh and Kunduz.50 In a 2004 Election Day survey during the presidential elections, only 2 percent of Afghans said they voted for a candidate based on ethnicity.51 In addition, public-opinion polls conducted in Afghanistan suggested that ethnic grievances were not a major concern of the Afghan population. An opinion poll conducted by the U.S. State Department, for example, found that most Hazaras, Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Uzbeks did not view ethnicity as a dividing factor. Instead, a large majority (85 percent) thought it was essential for Afghanistan to remain one nation. The data show that most Afghans did not see “their country headed toward an irresolvable ethnic clash” but rather endorsed a “unified, multi-ethnic state.”52 Other opinion polls found that most people identified themselves as Muslims and then Afghans, but rarely by ethnicity.53
Even among disaffected Afghans most likely to support the Taliban, ethnicity does not seem to have been a major concern. In a 2004 public-opinion poll conducted by the Asia Foundation, for example, Afghans reported being most concerned about governance failures.54 This finding was supported in later Asia Foundation polls.55
Rather than exacerbating tensions, the Afghan government successfully balanced the country’s ethnic groups through representation in the national government. Even though Tajik and Uzbek military forces were the leaders in the victory over the Taliban in 2001, Afghan representatives at the December 2001 Bonn Conference chose Karzai, a Pashtun, as their interim leader. James Dobbins, the U.S. envoy at the Bonn Conference, recalled that negotiators made a concerted effort to compose “a balanced cabinet, balanced among political factions, ethnicities, and
