Why Afghanistan is considered a “failed state”

Afghanistan exemplifies the chronic failure of external state-building efforts. Despite massive international intervention post-2001, the country’s institutions remained dependent and fragile. As noted by Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, the “bureaucratic legacies the country inherited from the Soviet era” remained intact and resisted reform, and the top-down institutional design did not embed legitimacy or resilience.

After the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 2021, the entire institutional scaffold collapsed almost immediately: provincial capitals fell in rapid succession, the national army melted away, and the Afghan state as previously structured ceased to function.
Moreover, governance was heavily centralized, unresponsive, and lacked accountability — such that the state lacked social penetration and legitimacy beyond Kabul