This book covers the period spanning the international invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 to the foreign military withdrawal in 2014. It explores and dissects the conflictual encounter between international troops, statebuilders and donors on the one hand, and Afghan elites and the wider population on the other. It brings together a group of leading experts and analysts on Afghanistan who examine the varied reasons behind the mixed and often perverse effects of exogenous state-building and reflects upon their implications for wider theory and practice. The starting point of the various contributions is a serious engagement with empirical realities, drawing upon extended experience and field research. Their exploration of the unfolding dynamics and effects of external intervention raise fundamental questions about the core premises underlying the state-building project. This book was published as a special issue of Central Asian Survey.