Identity Politics and Statebuilding in Post-Bonn Afghanistan: The 2009 Presidential Election

Abstract

International statebuilding in Afghanistan must be considered in terms of identity politics as they have emerged since the Bonn Agreement of 2001. In light of this, Afghanistan's 2009 presidential election serves as a window on the broader post-Bonn statebuilding process in which factionalized elite networks have constituted an internationally supported regime that masquerades as a state. Comparing political cultural and political economic explanations for the factionalism that was widespread during the elections, the paper demonstrates that the identity politics were contingent on the business of vote-rigging. In this light, the internationally assisted state is shown to be a site for inter-factional and inter-elite competition. This is a fundamentally unstable outcome that highlights the role of Western-led statebuilding in consolidating the ethno-regional and factional divisions in Afghanistan's state.