nistan.Most important is working with Afghans to change the image and role of the state, seen largely as a distant and indifferent if not hostile power. Local power structures that have largely grown up as defensive measures of self-rule to keep the state or powerholders away have to be incorporated into official structures of planning and service provision. It is unlikely that any central power will find it worthwhile to provide localities with much in the way of governance and services. For this very reason, Afghanistan needs a decentralized governance structure in which provinces and localities should receive official authority to tax and plan in consultation with local shuras (councils). In the past local societies developed unofficial power structures to shield themselves from the state, rather than participate it, and the centralizing mentality shared by the Taliban and much of their opposition reproduces that past pattern. Instead, modest local resources under local control could be directed into locally accountable planning processes rather than a dysfunctional central state. The central state will still be needed for provision of basic security and dispute resolution, but a clear division of labor among levels of governance will promote greater accountability over the reconstruction process.The disintegration of the state creates such potentials, though the criminalized economy that has filled the gap in providing livelihoods has created interests that will resist it. But unless peacemaking can appeal to the interests of powerful economic actors and transform them into agents of peace, it will be limited at best to halting fighting in one place before social and economic forces provoke it once again elsewhere in this dangerous region....
