DREW

PAPERS

THE

Marc E. Greene

Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

21

Deconstructing

Afghanistan

How Does America’s Past Inform

Afghanistan’s Future?
Air University

Steven L. Kwast, Lieutenant General, Commander and President

School of Advanced Air and Space Studies

Thomas D. McCarthy, Colonel, Commandant and Dean
AIR UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF ADVANCED AIR AND SPACE STUDIES

Deconstructing Afghanistan

How Does America’s Past Inform Afghanistan’s Future?

Marc E. Greene

Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Drew Paper No. 21

Air University Press

Air Force Research Institute

Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama 
Project Editor

Belinda L. Bazinet

Greene, Marc E., 1978-

 Deconstructing Afghanistan : how does America’s past inform 

Afghanistan’s future? / Marc E. Greene, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF.

 pages cm. — (Drew paper, ISSN 1941-3785 ; no. 21)

 Includes bibliographical references.

 ISBN 978-1-58566-236-4

 1. Afghanistan—Military policy. 2. National security—

Afghanistan. 3. Afghanistan—Social conditions. 4. Afghanistan—

Economic conditions. 5. Afghanistan—Relations—United States. 

6. United States—Relations—Afghanistan. 7. Southern States—

History—1865–1877. 8. Southern States—Social conditions. 

9. Southern States—Economic conditions. I. Title

 UA853.A3G74 2014

 958.104’71–dc23

 2014037719

Published by Air University Press in January 2015

Disclaimer

Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or 

implied within are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the School of Advanced Air and 

Space Studies, the Air Force Research Institute, Air University, 

the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any 

other US government agency. This publication is cleared for public 

release and unlimited distribution. 

This Drew Paper and others in the series are available electronically 

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The Drew Papers

The Drew Papers are award-winning master’s theses selected for publication by the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies (SAASS), Maxwell 

AFB, Alabama. This series of papers commemorates the distinguished career 

of Col Dennis “Denny” Drew, USAF, retired. In 30 years at Air University, 

Colonel Drew served on the Air Command and Staff College faculty, directed 

the Airpower Research Institute, and served as dean, associate dean, and professor of military strategy at SAASS. Colonel Drew is one of the Air Force’s 

most extensively published authors and an international speaker in high demand. He has lectured to over 100,000 students at Air University as well as to 

foreign military audiences. In 1985 he received the Muir S. Fairchild Award 

for outstanding contributions to Air University. In 2003 Queen Beatrix of the 

Netherlands made him a Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau for his contributions to education in the Royal Netherlands Air Force.

The Drew Papers are dedicated to promoting the understanding of air and 

space power theory and application. These studies are published by the Air 

University Press and broadly distributed throughout the US Air Force, the 

Department of Defense, and other governmental organizations, as well as to 

leading scholars, selected institutions of higher learning, public-policy institutes, and the media.
Please send inquiries or comments to

Commandant and Dean

School of Advanced Air and Space Studies

125 Chennault Circle

Maxwell AFB, AL 36112

Tel: (334) 953-5155

DSN: 493-5155

saass.admin@us.af.mil

iv
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Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Foreword ix

About the Author xi

Acknowledgments xiii

Abstract xv

 1 Introduction 1

 2 Historical Basis for Comparison 7

 3 Analysis Of Socio-Political Factors 21

 4 Analysis Of Security Factors 35

 5 Analysis Of Economic Factors 49

 6 Synthesis and Prediction 65

Abbreviations 85

Bibliography 87

vii

Illustrations

 1 Urban and Rural Ethnic Complexity in Afghanistan 14

 2 Radical Reconstruction Military Districts 23

 3 Reconciliation Rather Than Bloodshed, 17 February 1877 66

ix

Foreword

In Deconstructing Afghanistan: How Does America’s Past Inform Afghanistan’s Future?, Lt Col Marc Greene uses analogy to examine the US intervention in the South Asian nation. Analogy is thought’s constant handmaiden. 

It shapes decisions at every turn, individually and collectively, from crossing 

the street to going to war. Some analogies have attained legendary status in 

national security decision making: Western acquiescence to Adolf Hitler’s 

demands in Czechoslovakia instructs policy makers to engage early in budding international disputes, and American experience in Vietnam has 

taught three generations of military officers to conduct military campaigns 

aggressively. Not all smaller problems become larger ones, however, and not 

all aggressive combat succeeds, so analogy must be used carefully for it to 

enrich rather than impoverish decision making. The particular weight analogy 

plays in decision making is a function of numerous variables, including the 

complexity of the problem, perceived similarities between past condition 

and present circumstance, the proximity of past events to the present, and 

the stakes involved in the decision—and policy makers are wise to weigh 

each as they look to the past to shape the present and chart the future.

In the present work, Greene finds wanting the common analogies, particularly the Vietnam analogy, used to inform debate on the United States’ 

role in Afghanistan. Instead, he establishes a benchmark that both better fits 

and more accurately informs: the American experience following the Civil 

War from 1865 to 1877, known as the Reconstruction Era. For 12 years, 

former Union states cajoled, threatened, and sweet-talked former Confederate states as together they rebuilt societies torn by war, a process marked 

by both success and failure. Building upon similarity between nineteenthcentury Union and twenty-first-century American circumstances, as well as 

commonalities between Confederate and Afghani conditions, Greene argues 

the future of American intervention in Afghanistan is fraught with peril but 

not doomed to failure. He concludes that leaders in both Washington and 

Kabul must understand the limits of remaking society from afar and calibrate international ambitions with Afghan political topography because 

moderate objectives stand a far better chance of success than does transformative policy.
Colonel Greene’s Deconstructing Afghanistan received the Air Force Historical Foundation’s award for the best School of Advanced Air and Space 

Studies history thesis of 2013. I commend it to the reader as a superb example 

of how creative analysis of the past can be profitably used to inform the 

present and guide the future.

Thomas Alexander Hughes

Professor of Airpower History

School of Advanced Air and Space Studies
xi

About the Author

Lt Col Marc Greene graduated from the US Air Force Academy in 2000 

with a bachelor’s degree in operations research. After completing undergraduate pilot training at Laughlin AFB, Texas, in October 2001, he reported to 

McChord AFB, Washington, to fly the C-17 Globemaster III as a member of 

the 7th Airlift Squadron. During four years at McChord, he deployed multiple 

times in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, including a tour as C-17 detachment commander at Manas AB, Kyrgyzstan.

While at McChord, Colonel Greene was selected for the Air Force Intern 

Program with an assignment to the Pentagon. During his internship, he 

earned a master’s degree in organizational management from George Washington University and served as a member of the Chairman’s Action Group 

on the Joint Staff. He next served, for one year, as an operational strategist and 

deputy branch chief at Headquarters Air Force, within the Operations, Plans, 

and Requirements Directorate.

From the Pentagon, Colonel Greene returned to the Air Mobility Command to fly the C-17 at McGuire AFB, New Jersey. During the three-year assignment, he deployed again in support of Operations Enduring Freedom 

and Iraqi Freedom, directed joint base support for two airfields as assistant 

operations officer for the 305th Operations Support Squadron, and served as 

operations officer for the 6th Airlift Squadron. As operations officer, Colonel 

Greene ensured the operational readiness of 160 aircrew personnel and orchestrated more than 2,000 worldwide transport and training sorties. While 

stationed at McGuire, he was selected to attend the School of Advanced Air 

and Space Studies (SAASS) at Maxwell AFB, Alabama. Upon graduation from 

SAASS, Colonel Greene returned to the Pentagon and serves as a strategic 

planner on the Joint Staff.

xiii

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank several people whose support made this study possible. The idea for this project originated from discussions with two faculty 

members. Dr. James Forsyth met with me on several occasions early in the 

topic development process. As I struggled to find a relevant topic of sufficient 

interest, we discussed the ramifications of the US pivot to Asia and what the 

policy shift meant to other regions. Those discussions eventually focused on 

Afghanistan’s stability after 2014. Dr. Thomas Hughes suggested the Reconstruction period following the US Civil War as a point of historical comparison. Dr. Hughes also served as my thesis advisor, providing countless research 

suggestions and spending numerous hours reviewing the narrative throughout the development process. His critical feedback refined my ideas, enhanced 

my argumentation, and improved my writing mechanics. Next, I wish to 

thank Lt Col David Woodworth who served as my thesis reader and sounding 

board for issues pertaining to Afghanistan.

Finally, but most importantly, I would like to thank my loving family. I am 

especially grateful for the love and support of my wife. She was supportive 

throughout the entire process, offering edits and encouragement when I 

needed them most. Our daughter was a wonderful distraction and a reminder 

of what really matters. She was always ready to play a game of Little Tikes 

basketball, to read a book that had nothing to do with strategy, or to accompany me in the stroller during an afternoon run. 

xv

Abstract

This study suggests a path for Afghanistan’s post-2014 future based on the 

post–Civil War experience of the US South. A comparative history of both 

societies reveals the common presence of three foundational traits: highly differentiated class structures, ethnically and economically diverse societal mosaics, and a belief in peripheral and societal autonomy. I assess the prospects 

for either renewed civil war or stable peace in Afghanistan after US and coalition military forces complete their withdrawal. The study concludes that Afghanistan’s fate rests with the Afghan people and not the international community, despite the weight of effort expended by the US and coalition nations 

since October 2001.

Furthermore, regardless of the near universal assumption by pundits, politicians, and academics, this comparison with the South after April 1865 suggests that a significant possibility exists for political reconciliation with Taliban leaders, sustained peace, and stable, albeit slow, economic growth. 

Secondary findings suggest that Afghanistan’s historical existence as a rentier 

state will persist at least through 2025; social modernization efforts imposed 

by external influence, including gender equality, are likely to regress in future 

years; and the vast economic disparities resident in Afghan society will persist 

indefinitely.

1

Chapter 1

Introduction

The battle is now joined on many fronts. We will not waver; we will 

not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail. Peace and freedom 

will prevail.

—Pres. George W. Bush

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; 

that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this 

government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not 

perish from the earth.

—Pres. Abraham Lincoln

On 7 October 2001, Pres. George W. Bush addressed the nation from the 

White House Treaty Room less than four weeks after the 11 September 2001 

terrorist attacks that shook the United States from its hegemonic malaise. 

Since 1996, the international community had excoriated Mullah Omar’s Taliban 

for arcane social policies and human rights atrocities against Afghanistan’s 

minority populations, but failed to intervene in any meaningful way. However, 19 al-Qaeda militants prompted the United States to intercede militarily 

in Afghanistan’s latest civil war on behalf of the Northern Alliance—to retaliate 

against al-Qaeda and their Taliban allies. The Bush administration’s actions, 

with broad support from the international community, opened the War on 

Terror that extended well beyond the borders of Afghanistan.

International intervention in Afghanistan far exceeded the expectations of 

October 2001. The persistent American and coalition presence outlasted 

Bush’s tenure as president, the better financed military mission in Iraq, and 

Osama bin Laden’s leadership of al-Qaeda. However, rather than decisive 

victory, initial political and military success begat indecision, a costly insurgency, endemic corruption, a resurgent drug trade, and mounting cases of 

Afghan trainees using deadly force against their American and coalition 

trainers. The cascade of failures in Afghanistan was somewhat mitigated by 

successes including national elections, improved gender equality, infrastructure 

development, and the birth of indigenous security capacity. Ultimately, 
INTRODUCTION

2

though, what does the sum of experience in Afghanistan since 2001 forecast 

past the 2014 withdrawal of US and coalition military forces?

Political and military transition in 2014 will present significant challenges 

for the young Afghan government and unproven indigenous security forces. 

In April 2014 Afghanistan will attempt its first political transition since the 

end of Taliban rule, coincident with the traditional Taliban spring campaign 

season. By December US forces will dwindle to a token presence, as the 

political appetite for a sustained US role in Afghan security wanes in both 

nations. Despite the overwhelming weight of American and international 

effort, the overriding question remains: have 12 years of nation-building operations brought Afghanistan closer to peace and the society of states, or will 

Afghanistan revert to a cycle of civil war and renewed international isolation? 

Afghanistan’s modern history, replete with war and tribalism, and America’s 

not-so-distant experience in Vietnam have led most pundits, politicians, and 

academics to cast significant doubt over the prospect for peace past 2014. The 

Vietnam analogy offers harsh insights but represents only one potential viewpoint despite receiving the preponderance of attention. Vietnam remains 

popular because of its temporal proximity and the emotional response it continues to illicit in American society. Perhaps a historically more distant and 

less emotionally charged analogy might provide an alternative perspective to 

enrich the debate concerning Afghanistan’s future. 

The following analysis will present an alternative that remains unexplored 

to date—a comparison between present-day Afghanistan and the US South 

following the Civil War’s conclusion in 1865. Despite the obvious cultural 

chasm, Afghan and southern societies share three broad and deeply engrained 

traits: a highly differentiated class structure, an ethnically and economically 

diverse societal mosaic, and a belief in peripheral and societal autonomy. In 

both societies, the three traits evolved over lengthy periods and in accordance 

with internal beliefs and practice. During nation-building operations in 

Afghanistan and Reconstruction of the South, external interests sought to 

amend those deeply engrained traits as a means of forcing modernization 

and conformity. 

In both cases, apparently discrete objectives and finite horizons yielded to 

the realities of post-war societal dysfunction and lengthy occupation. In his 7 

October 2001 address, Bush cast a clear “with us or against us” stance, suggesting clear and restrictive military objectives that coincided with his established apprehension concerning nation-building activities. However, within 

three months specious clarity produced the circuitous nation-building program that Bush campaigned against during the 2000 election.
INTRODUCTION

3

In 1865, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln fractured political focus in 

the capital, eventually leading to open interparty confrontation between Republicans and Democrats and competing visions of the New South. In both 

circumstances, devastated societies were set adrift through a post-war period 

punctuated by insurgency, rampant corruption, political dysfunction, military intervention, and externally imposed social change. In the South, the 

conclusion of Reconstruction in 1877 produced a series of sweeping political 

and social reversals that cast the New South as an image resembling its antebellum past. 

Analogies: The Use and Misuse of History

The lessons of history routinely influence individuals entrusted to set 

responsible foreign policy but are often misinterpreted or misapplied.1

 History is a powerful but dangerous tutor; proper use stimulates a person’s imagination, but misuse distorts perception. The frequent misuse of history stems 

from a natural psychological tendency to “interpret new information in light 

of past experience.”2

 Richard Neustadt provides six ways decision makers 

commonly misuse history in everyday practice: hasty decision making, relying on vague analogies, inattention to an issue’s past, failing to question key 

presumptions, succumbing to dominant stereotypes, and making no effort to 

recognize available choices.3

 Combined, these six shortcomings characterize 

the cognitive limitations that affect all human beings, including decision 

makers marshaling history as a guide. 

To overcome cognitive limitations, foreign policy framers rely on personal 

and shared experience for guidance. Foreign policy decisions, especially those 

involving war and peace, involve degrees of complexity that extend beyond 

the cognitive capability of most individuals or advisory groups. Policy makers 

routinely search for historical accounts for valuable perspective subject to 

common psychological limitations. Temporally close experiences or those 

that were formative for an individual’s initial perceptions are typically the 

most influential.4

 Consequently, personal and recent historical experiences 

often bound understanding and the resultant array of possible decisions. Distant analogies often never receive consideration. 

Policy framers, consciously or otherwise, commonly make analogous 

connections between historical events and their present-day scenario as a 

systematic way of making policy decisions. Yuen Khong describes historical 

analogies as “knowledge structures” that help decision makers “order, interpret, and simplify . . . their environment.”5

 Knowledge structures reduce complexity to a manageable level, often enabling critical decisions despite 
INTRODUCTION

4

overwhelming complexity. Distilling a complex situation down to a simplified form allows an individual or group to avoid cognitive paralysis, 

though limits imposed by an analogy restrict the probability of successful 

decision making. 

Historical analogies are replete with cognitive traps. Fundamentally, an 

analogy implies that “if two or more events separated by time agree in one 

respect, then they may also agree in another.”6

 Assuming that one commonality 

equates to a more comprehensive or summary association smacks of reductionism in a complex world and offers what can be a false cognitive comfort 

in many instances. Thus, decision makers often rely on analogical reasoning 

when they have a diminished capacity to validate its accuracy, increasing the 

likelihood of a poor comparison and a bad policy decision.7

 Additionally, 

people are psychologically prone to use the first analogy encountered that 

provides any explanatory power, regardless of accuracy. 

The appropriate selection of an analogous circumstance depends on a 

proper understanding of context for all involved cases. Limited knowledge of 

historical detail or occasions marked by high degrees of fluidity increase the 

odds an analogy will be errantly selected or misapplied. Fundamental characteristics of a widely known historical event are often misapplied based on an 

insufficient knowledge of contextual nuisances. A failure to understand internal 

details or contributing external factors increases the opportunity to emphasize 

“superficial or irrelevant parallels.”8

 Historical analogies based solely on literal 

similarities negate the role of context and likely ensure the policy maker will 

misuse history. As a result, as Ernest May suggests, policy makers must employ a more developed use of history and a more discriminating approach 

that seeks out alternative analogies if they hope to use the past with profit.9

The comparison that follows will attempt a more meaningful historical comparison for Afghanistan than the Vietnam analogy.

Methodology

This analysis offers a prediction of Afghanistan’s future based on a historical 

comparison to the US South after April 1865. Three axes—sociopolitical, 

security, and economic factors—dissect both cases to permit a side-by-side 

comparison. Within each axis, these societal traits provide the basis for comparison: a highly differentiated class structure, an ethnically and economically diverse societal mosaic, and a belief in peripheral and societal autonomy. 

Chapter 2 presents a historical synopsis of the South and Afghanistan in 

order to explicate these three shared societal traits. For the South, the chapter 

covers society’s antebellum progression prior to 1861. For Afghanistan, the 
INTRODUCTION

5

historical account begins with its founding in 1747 and concludes with the 

1978 communist coup d’état and subsequent Soviet invasion. The chapter also 

presents a rudimentary encapsulation of the American Civil War, from 1861 

to the spring of 1865, and the long period of internal strife in Afghanistan, 

from 1978 through the end of 2001. This provides a common point of reference for the discussion presented in subsequent chapters. 

Chapters 3, 4, and 5 represent the core analysis for the South and Afghanistan based on sociopolitical, security, and economic factors, respectively. The 

three shared societal traits provide the structure based on a comparative analysis 

between the discrete periods of rebuilding that followed civil war in each 

society. The South’s Reconstruction period began in April 1865 and ended 

with Pres. Rutherford B. Hayes’s inauguration in early 1877. The comparative 

nation-building period in Afghanistan began with the installment of Hamid 

Karzai’s interim government in January 2002. The study assumes the period 

will conclude with the withdrawal of US and coalition forces in December 2014. 

Chapter 6 draws upon the South’s post-Reconstruction history, beginning in 

1877, as well as primary and secondary findings from the previous three 

chapters, to predict Afghanistan’s future beyond the 2014 withdrawal. This 

study concludes with an assessment of the potential for subsequent war and 

peace, as well as the pertinent factors that might lead to either scenario, and 

secondary findings related to externally imposed social modernization efforts 

and the relationship between political process and physical insurgency. 

Notes

(All notes appear in shortened form. For full details, see the appropriate entry in the bibliography.)

1. May, “Lessons” of the Past, ix.

2. Plous, Psychology of Judgment, 38.

3. Neustadt and May, Thinking in Time, 33.

4. Plous, Psychology of Judgment, 38.

5. Khong, Analogies at War, 13.

6. Ibid., 7.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid., 14.

9. May, “Lessons” of the Past, xii.

7

Chapter 2

Historical Basis for Comparison

A comparison of seemingly disparate histories of the pre–Civil War 

American South and Afghanistan prior to 2001 reveals three traits, or 

norms, common to both societies. First, vertically oriented class structures 

dominate both societies. The family unit is the building block of order and 

governance; ethnicity, gender, and wealth delineate individual status. Second, 

both societies are complex mosaics that display a capacity for strong cohesion and equally intense division despite extreme disparities in economic 

and social status. Third, both populations value peripheral and societal autonomy, to the point of war when faced with external interference. In the South, 

these traits developed over three centuries. In Afghanistan, the process occurred 

over several millennia. 

Old South: Historical Traits and Civil War Period

The antebellum South was a society of hierarchies based on race, gender, 

and social class. Influenced by their European origins, white male landowners 

determined the course of local communities and broader southern society. A 

privileged 1 percent—the planter aristocracy—controlled the political and 

economic climate.1

 By the mid-1800s, this de facto ruling class dominated the 

Democratic Party across the South.

The planter class governed the South for its benefit. Planter class males 

directed southern society to include education, religious affairs, and politics.2

The institution of slavery was their economic foundation, cotton their principle 

trade. The “plantation belt,” stretching across the Deep South from South 

Carolina to East Texas, had the region’s most fertile land, the preponderance 

of slaves, and the greatest concentration of southern wealth and power.3

 Despite 

modern misconceptions concerning slavery, slaveholders accounted for only 

25 percent of the southern white population.4

The remaining 75 percent of southern whites, the yeomanry and poor, 

formed the bulk of free southern society but found common cause with their 

wealthier counterparts. In the Deep South, where slavery was most prevalent, 

a vast economic gap existed between the planter class and yeomanry populations.5

 Only 3 percent of southern slaveholders were considered planter class. 

The remainder often had very few or just a single slave who worked alongside 

them on the family farm.6

 Yeomanry males accepted their lower status relative 
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

8

to the very top tier in exchange for a superior standing compared to the slave 

and female populations, benefiting in many ways from the planter class political policies.7

 Beyond the plantation belt where slavery was less prevalent or 

nonexistent, yeomanry farmers held no stake in the institution but managed 

to find common cause nonetheless. Everywhere in the South, even among 

Middle South mountaineers, significant segments of the yeomanry and the 

aristocracy shared a common belief in white supremacy.8

Generally held gender convictions buttressed beliefs of racial superiority; 

gender inequality was common to all societal hierarchies. In both planter 

class and yeomanry homes, males dictated daily routine.9

 Ironically, this 

same societal norm emerged among the freedman families after emancipation. Coincident with the dominant role of males was a universal “kinship 

[that] trumped class divisions.”10 In short, the family unit served as the basis 

of southern agrarian society. For the yeomanry, family and agriculture were 

inseparable due to a heavy reliance on subsistence farming through the 

early 1800s. 

Southern agrarian dependence and poor infrastructure reinforced existing 

social structures. The South’s principally rural composition permitted a decentralized political philosophy. Southern society did not require extensive 

infrastructure to operate, and plantation and family farms were largely selfsufficient. State and local governments imposed low taxes and “accorded upcountry yeoman authority over their own affairs.”11 The smaller government 

mentality came to define Southern Democrat political platforms by the mid1800s. Somewhat paradoxically, southern political unity at the federal level 

failed to translate uniformly at the state and local levels. Representation within 

state legislatures was a point of contention among the yeomanry and planter 

class, though never significant enough to disrupt societal order. Although the 

planter class argued that slave populations should count toward proportional 

representation, the yeomanry, often from upcountry regions without large 

slaveholding plantations, sought representation according to a “white basis.”12

Despite disagreements over issues like popular representation, the yeomanry 

predominantly supported the planter class agenda. 

Yeomanry compliance did not equate to social uniformity across the South. 

The pre-Civil War South was a complex mosaic divided geographically and 

politically in addition to its aforementioned social boundaries. Geographically, the South consisted of three divisible regions: the Border South, Middle 

South, and Deep South. The Border South comprised those states with legalized slavery that did not secede in 1861.13 The Middle South included Virginia, 

Tennessee, North Carolina, and Arkansas. Slavery was most prevalent in the 

remaining states, the Deep South.14 Within each region, slavery held a signifi-
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

9

cantly different importance. On the eve of war, slaves comprised nearly onehalf of the total population in the Deep South. By comparison, slaves were 

one-third of the population in Middle South states and less than one-eighth 

of the population in the Border South.15

Geographic divides existed within each region as well. The majority of free 

southern citizens accepted planter class and Democratic Party political dominance and the societal structure it imposed, but those who stood in opposition did so fervently. In New Orleans, the Deep South’s largest free black 

community of 11,000 collectively owned $2 million worth of property by 

1860. They privately financed schools, orphanages, and benevolent societies 

and “dominated skilled crafts like bricklaying, cigar making, carpentry, and 

shoemaking.”16 Ironically, some free blacks in New Orleans owned slaves. 

Antoine Dubuclet, a sugar planter before the war and Louisiana’s state treasurer during Reconstruction, owned a plantation with more than 100 slaves.17

Elsewhere in the South, white abolitionists, like Sarah and Angelina Grimke 

of South Carolina, demanded compensated emancipation for slaves as early 

as the 1830s.18

Despite growing resentment for slavery, two late eighteenth-century developments made abolition nearly impossible for southern society, particularly 

the Deep South. Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin and the political 

pressures of westward expansion precluded any possibility that southern legislators would voluntarily emancipate the slave population. Combined, both 

occurrences revived intense feelings of independence, reminiscent of those 

throughout the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War.

Notions of property rights, independence, and liberty based on a cultural 

truth that the family man alone was the master of his household coalesced 

with common social causes, including white supremacy, to unify southern 

defiance of centralized authority in Washington.19 When northerners attacked 

the institution of slavery, “the yeomanry viewed it more as an assault on the 

independent household” than a critique of southern race relations.20 Ironically, many northern citizens ascribed to similar notions of racial superiority. 

The South’s collective fervor first appeared economically. 

The US industrial revolution peaked in the first decades of the 1800s, 

sparking a market revolution and a significant development gap between 

North and South. The North, dependent on immigrant labor working for subhuman wages, professed a moral superiority over their southern brethren 

who relied on similar working conditions under the institution of slavery. 

North and South benefited from increased demand, but by midcentury, 

southerners felt subservient to northern interests because the North enjoyed 

“disproportionate growth, wealth, and power to control economic struc-
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

10

tures.”21 Interstate tariffs levied by northern states on the purchase of finished 

goods by the southern population added to subservient sentiment across the 

South.22 Meanwhile, mechanized production in northern factories increased 

demand for southern agricultural output, especially cotton. 

The cotton boom of the late 1840s and 1850s expanded crop production beyond the plantation belt. In South Carolina, 80 percent of up-country yeomanry 

who owned land “were enmeshed in the cotton economy,” and of these, half 

owned at least one slave.23 The market revolution transformed southern society 

and the role of slavery. Long defended as a social institution based on paternalism, slavery became the primary means by which southern farmers and planters believed they could achieve economic independence.24 Without slave labor, 

white farmers and plantation owners feared increased subjugation to the economic will of the North. British import practices compounded southern economic dependence on the North. As England’s manufacturing capacity grew 

through the mid-1800s, its manufacturers sought alternatives to high-priced 

southern cotton.25 Consequently, economic disenfranchisement across the 

agrarian South produced political upheaval.

By the 1850s southern Democrats viewed personal independence and state 

sovereignty, rather than slavery, as the principle points of national debate. 

Conversely, northern Republicans and abolitionists viewed “liberty, democracy, and capitalism as so intertwined as to be inseparable.”26 Slavery, a topic 

not adjudicated during the Constitutional Convention, grew increasingly 

toxic following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. By 1820 Congress agreed to 

the Missouri Compromise and its three-fifths provision allowing proslavery 

states to count 60 percent of their slave population toward proportional representation in Congress.27 Initially hailed as a victory by the South, the agreement relegated proslavery states to an inferior position by 1850.28

In 1857 the Supreme Court reversed all provisions of the Missouri Compromise with the Dred Scott vs. Sanford ruling, providing for the seemingly 

unlimited expansion of slavery and driving an irreparable wedge between 

North and South.29 The election of Abraham Lincoln, a noted abolitionist, as 

president in 1860 was the catalyst for South Carolina’s succession. Within 

three months, all Deep South states joined the secessionist cause; Middle 

South states followed suit after Confederate troops fired on federal troops at 

Fort Sumter.30

The US Civil War induced a disintegration of the pre-war southern social 

structure. The greatest divide emerged between the planter class and white 

yeomanry populations because the planter class’s wartime agenda levied a 

disproportionate burden on yeomanry males who comprised the majority of 

the Confederate Army.31 The 1862 passage of Confederate conscription laws 
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

11

was catastrophic for class relations. The laws, passed by planter class Democrats, exempted one white citizen for every 12 slaves to ensure plantation discipline. In reality, the laws provided a means of war avoidance for wealthy 

planters’ sons.32 Yeomanry planters, particularly those residing outside of the 

plantation belt, felt the planter class who led the South to war was “not bearing their fair share of the war’s burdens.”33 The collapse of social cohesion 

precipitated pockets of opposition and lawlessness.

Although the majority of free southerners “rallied to the Confederate 

cause,” localized opposition to secession emerged across the Middle South 

and eventually in the Deep South as fighting progressed with no feasible end. 

The split of Virginia and West Virginia was the most prescient case. Additionally, large groups of eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia residents voted 

against secession and war. In another instance, 8,000 men from Arkansas’s 

Ozark Mountains joined the Union Army.34 After 1863, initial enthusiasm 

turned to “disillusionment, draft evasion, and eventually outright resistance 

to Confederate authority.”35 In Mississippi, underground societies attempted 

to break the southern war effort, encouraged desertions, and targeted family 

members of those who would not abandon the Confederate cause. Across the 

South, the yeomanry divided against itself; men from the yeomanry comprised the majority of the Confederate Army as well as the bulk of deserters 

and resisters.36 The fierce drive for independence brought only death, destruction, and chaos. 

By 1863 Lincoln sought to mend social wounds and welcomed the South 

on terms more favorable than many northern Republicans preferred. He 

signed the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction on 8 December 1863. 

Under his plan, once 10 percent of the 1860 voting population swore allegiance 

to the Union, the state would be entitled to hold a state convention, draft a 

constitution prohibiting slavery, and elect congressional representation. Excluding high-ranking civilian and military authorities, Lincoln’s plan promised a 

full pardon and restoration of personal liberties for all those who swore allegiance. However, Lincoln’s plan offered little guidance concerning suffrage or 

judicial equality for former slaves.37 A month before the war ended, Congress 

created the Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s 

Bureau) within the War Department to assist with the transition of former 

slaves to freedom.38

The war continued until April 1865, but Reconstruction began as early as 

1862 in occupied territories of the South and in Union states with legalized 

slavery. Eastern Tennessee and southern Louisiana were the first areas occupied by Union troops. Lincoln appointed Andrew Johnson as Tennessee’s 

military governor in 1862, where he remained until joining Lincoln in 
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

12

Washington as vice president in 1865. As governor, Johnson shed his southern 

Democrat roots on two pivotal occasions. First, he fired the mayor of Nashville and the city council for refusing to swear allegiance to the Union. Second, 

with the support of 25,000 repatriated voters, the only legal voters according to Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation, Johnson passed a state referendum to 

abolish slavery.39

Coincidently, the four border states that remained with the Union—Kentucky, 

Missouri, Maryland, and West Virginia—underwent a social reconstruction 

of sorts after emancipation and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. 

Ratification passed by narrow margins in each of the four border states, demonstrating the thin social barriers that actually separated North from South.40

On the eve of surrender in April 1865, northern Republicans expected their 

thoroughly defeated foe to acknowledge defeat, reject slavery, and embrace 

southern unionists.41 The experience of Reconstruction, the second war, 

would indicate otherwise. 

Afghanistan: Historical Traits and Civil War Period

Vertical class structures permeate Afghan society, defining social interactions from national governance to the basic family unit. Male-dominated 

family structures form the basis for tribal authority and regional stability. 

During times of peace, these relationships have provided order; in war, they 

fomented deep societal divisions. At the national level, the Pashtun peoples of 

southern and eastern Afghanistan have dominated governance since Afghanistan’s formal birth in the mid-eighteenth century. 

Pashtun tribal leader Ahmad Shah Abdali founded Afghanistan in 1747 as 

a loose confederation of ethnically connected chieftaincies astride the waning 

Moghul and Safavid Empires in India and Persia.42 Abdali subsequently 

changed his surname, uniting his ethnic confederation of Pashtuns under the 

name Durrani. Durrani Pashtuns, including Pres. Hamid Karzai, have used 

their assessorial lineage as descendants of Ahmad Shah to justify their de 

facto ruling class status.43

The nature of Afghanistan’s origin historically limits the reach of centralized 

authority. Afghanistan’s stability has always rested on a delicate balance of 

central authority and peripheral autonomy. National governance traditionally 

extended to the six principle urban populations while the periphery remained 

insulated.44 The symbiotic relationship offered tacit endorsement of centrally 

controlled state affairs in exchange for localized tribal independence.45 During Afghanistan’s first two centuries as a modern state, the Sadozai (1747–

1818) and Barakzai (1826–1929) dynasties maintained a tenuous relationship 
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

13

with outlying Afghan tribes. At times, leaders “were able to exercise prescriptive and regulative functions in the Afghan polity,” and in other instances 

rulers “simply struggled to survive.”46 In contrast, King Zahir Shah’s monarchical reign from 1933 to 1973 was the most stable period in modern history 

and the last instance of broad peace. Zahir Shah’s influence “did not penetrate 

deep into the countryside,” but his government enjoyed widespread internal 

and external legitimacy.47

Peripheral autonomy meant individual Afghans survived only according 

to the support available through traditional family and tribal structures and 

not by centrally directed services. Consequently, Afghan political structures 

express ethnically driven tribal codes of conduct and broadly shared Islamic 

beliefs. For the Pashtun peoples, the Pashtunwali code predates the arrival of 

Islam and prioritizes “honor, hospitality, protection of women, and revenge.”48 

Islam first appeared with Arabian invaders in the late seventh century, but 

tribes did not passively succumb to the foreign theology or its secular implications. Instead, as future Afghan rulers and invaders concluded, the Arab 

armies confined their efforts to urban centers allowing rural tribes to convert 

gradually over time.49 As Islam spread, it reinforced the already patriarchal 

nature of regional tribes. Similarly, the Arab armies’ forceful conversion techniques coincided with the violent nature of existing diverse tribal codes that 

prioritized honor and revenge. The numerous tribal codes, representative of 

Afghanistan’s founding as a confederation of chieftaincies, typifies the ethnic 

diversity that still undergirds relative religious homogeneity in Afghanistan.50 

Since 1747 Afghanistan has existed as a complex societal mosaic. Pashtuns 

comprise the largest percentage of the modern-day state, but with roughly 40 

percent of the population, they do not hold a majority.51 The expansive state, 

which united under the leadership of Ahmad Shah, included Pashtun peoples 

beyond Afghanistan’s present national border with Pakistan. In fact, the designations of Pashtun and Afghan were interchangeable prior to 1772, when 

Ahmad Shah’s army captured the city of Kabul and subjugated the non-Pashtun 

tribes of present-day northern and western Afghanistan. Ahmad Shah subsequently transferred the Afghan capital from Pashtun-dominated Kandahar to 

centrally located Kabul.52 Currently, Afghanistan’s non-Pashtun ethnicities 

comprise the population’s remaining 60 percent: 30 percent Tajik, 15 percent 

Hazara, and roughly 15 percent a combination of Uzbek, Turkmen, and other 

peoples.53 Consequently, regionally focused ethnic complexity is inherent to 

Afghanistan (fig. 1). Based on history, large segments of the Pashtun population view ethnic Pashtuns as the only true Afghans, though even within the 

Pashtun population a significant divide exists.54
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

14

Figure 1. Urban and rural ethnic complexity in Afghanistan. (Reprinted from

Institute for the Study of War, “Afghanistan’s Ethno-Linguistic Groups,” 2009, 

http://www.understandingwar.org/map/afghanistans-ethno-linguistic-groups.)

The Pashtun population, like all Afghan tribal structures, evolved through 

conflict with history’s most dominant empires. The 400 Pashtun tribes belong to one of two dominant subgroups, Durrani or Ghilzai. The divide predates Durrani consolidation under Ahmad Shah. Ghilzai tribes dominated 

the eastern section of modern-day Afghanistan and western Pakistan and 

primarily quarreled with the Moghul Empire. Abdali, or Durrani, tribes resided in the region between Kandahar and Herat, clashing with the Safavid 

Empire, though the more warlike Ghilzai tribes were principally responsible for the end of Safavid influence in Pashtun territories.55 The Ghilzai 

tribes, adhering to traditional egalitarian structures common among rural 

tribal peoples, were “incapable of building a dynasty of their own. A generation later, their more hierarchical cousins, the Durrani Pashtuns,” proved 

more suited to dynastic rule.56
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

15

A century after the decline of the Moghul and Safavid Empires, Afghanistan became a frontline for Europe’s Great Game, a contest between the British 

and Russian states to colonize Central Asia. The Russians sought to dominate 

the Eurasian Steppe while the British were intent on checking Russian 

advances and protecting colonial holdings in India. The British Army extended 

territorial claims beyond India, enveloping Pashtun tribal lands and the city 

of Kabul. After three strategically indecisive and bloody contests with Afghan 

tribes, the British withdrew permanently and imposed the Durand line. The 

line separated Afghanistan and modern-day Pakistan and bisected Pashtun 

tribal claims for the benefit of Britain’s India holdings.57

Afghanistan’s intricate physical and ethnic geographies compounded the 

effects of historical complexity. Topography created distinct societies within 

the larger state. The Hindu Kush mountain range divides Afghanistan and its 

ethnic societies in half. Pashtuns dominate the south and east of Afghanistan 

while Tajik, Turkmen, and Uzbek populations principally reside in the regions northwest of Kabul.58 The Chahar Aimaq peoples, heavily influenced by 

their Persian descent, populate the west surrounding Herat.59 The Hazara 

tribes, descendants of Genghis Khan’s thirteenth century Mongol invaders, 

inhabit the mountainous region in between.60 Ahmad Shah’s decision to relocate his capital to Kabul in 1772 provided a more central location from which 

to govern, but did little to extend Pashtun influence to peripheral non-Pashtun 

tribal networks because of Afghanistan’s mountainous terrain. Consequently, 

rural tribes have historically been more conservative and more opposed to 

modernization than urban tribes. When central authority has imposed liberal 

social agendas on culturally opposed rural tribes, civil war has ensued.

Beginning with the Great Game period, rushed modernization programs 

consistently fomented conflict between urban rulers and peripheral communities.61 Modernization measures “affecting religion, culture, and the role of 

women” singly provided the most significant catalyst for civil conflict.62

After achieving victory and regaining self-rule from the British after the 

third Afghan-Anglo War in 1919, Afghanistan’s new ruler, Amanullah, pursued a liberal agenda of “taxation, conscription, and social changes, such as 

education for women.”63 Amanullah, who viewed himself as “an Afghan version of [Turkey’s] Kemal Attaturk,” suppressed revolts among eastern Afghan 

tribes. Eventually, Amanullah pushed his secular vision of a modern state too 

far, inciting the Civil War of 1929.64 Conversely, gradual modernization efforts 

were successful when restricted to urban areas under Zahir Shah from the 

1950s to the 1970s. Unfortunately, Daoud, Zahir Shah’s cousin and former 

prime minister, reversed those gains by aggressively extending social reforms 
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

16

to peripheral tribes following a coup d’état in 1973. This set the stage for revolt 

subsequent to the communist ascension in 1978. 

Just as the rural tribal structure demanded autonomy from central rule, 

Afghan society collectively remained fiercely defiant when faced with foreign 

aggression, earning Afghanistan an imposing reputation as the “graveyard of 

empires.” Afghan tribes have outlasted the Greeks, Mongols, Persians, Arabs, 

British, and Russians among others. Each civilization has left an indelible 

mark on the Afghan landscape, but Afghanistan, in turn, has reciprocated. 

The British required 80 years and three wars to reach the same conclusion the 

Soviets did in a decade. Consequently, all Afghans have a sense of national 

honor based largely on defeating invaders in battle.65 Their sense of independence also affects a ruler’s authority, whose legitimacy depends on the 

appearance of strength among domestic rivals and independence from foreign authority.66

Dependence, however, has been the norm for Afghanistan. The nation’s 

most stable periods have coincided with abundant foreign economic assistance. The British were the first modern state to provide aid in the nineteenth 

century.67 Foreign financial support from the Soviets and Americans also enabled Zahir Shah to perpetuate four decades of stability during the Cold War. 

The Soviets provided Afghanistan with $1.26 billion in economic aid and 

$1.25 billion in military aid between 1956 and 1978.68 Although acceptance of 

aid never produced a tangible benefit for the financier, a precipitous decline 

or wholesale discontinuance of aid produced a perilous power vacuum and 

insurrection. In 1842 a British decision to cut off aid in and around Kabul 

sparked a massacre of the British garrison and their defeat in the First Afghan 

War.69 A painting, The Remnants of the Army, portrays Dr. William Brydon as 

the lone British survivor from Kabul to cross the Khyber Pass back into Britishcontrolled India.70

Afghanistan’s most recent civil war period began in 1978, for reasons 

common to previous warring periods. After seizing control from Daoud 

Shah, Afghan leftists, supported by Soviet-trained Afghan army officers, 

“ran afoul of entrenched interests and a very conservative populace in the 

countryside that jealously guarded its autonomy.”71 The direct intervention 

by Soviet military forces in 1979, due to fears the Afghan government was 

gravitating to the US sphere of influence, compounded the threat of traditional Afghan autonomy. The Soviet presence provided a common cause for 

all Afghans not supportive of communist ideology. The mujahedeen banner 

also drew financial and military support from radical Islamist movements 

already active across the Middle East and Indonesia, the broader Muslim 

world, and the United States. Saudi Arabian and American monies financed 
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

17

Wahhabi madrassas and training centers in Western Pakistan to train Afghan 

fighters and exhaust Soviet will. The flow of young Afghan and Islamist 

fighters seemed endless. The Soviets shifted strategy in 1986 and withdrew 

by 1989, but the Islamist network in Pakistan and many foreign fighters remained 

to contest the Soviet-backed government in Kabul led by Najibullah, a communist but ethnic Pashtun.

The struggle over central authority continued after the withdrawal of Soviet 

troops. The Soviet government provided military aid to Najibullah’s regime 

for three additional years, but abruptly ceased when the government in Moscow 

collapsed.72 As with previous episodes in Afghanistan, the government could 

not survive without external assistance. Tajik and Uzbek mujahedeen fighters 

captured Kabul and imprisoned Najibullah in 1992, and “for the first time in 

300 years the Pashtuns had lost control of the capital.” An intra-Afghan contest 

for Kabul ensued immediately; Pashtun fighters led by Gulbuddin Hikmetyar 

laid siege to the city. 73 Total warfare and personal atrocities engulfed the 

Afghan state as former mujahedeen leaders turned warlords and brigands.

The Taliban offered a means to quell the warlord-induced chaos and restore Pashtuns to their preeminent position. Mullah Omar, a Ghilzai Pashtun, 

raised a 200-man tribal army in the summer of 1994 and defeated Kandahar’s 

principle warlord. Omar’s ranks swelled to 12,000 fighters by December, supported by the Pakistani madrassas that supplied the steady flow of anti-Soviet 

fighters.74 Taliban forces captured Kabul in 1996, publically executed Najibullah, 

and by 2001 controlled the entire state except its isolated northeast panhandle. 

As with the Afghan leftists who seized control in 1978, the Taliban’s Islamist 

ideology was every bit as foreign to Afghan society as the nineteenth-century 

British expeditions.

The Taliban, named for the madrassa student movement that supplied its 

fighters, was a collection of nontraditional Afghans. They advanced an Islamist ideology foreign to Afghan tribes that clung to blends of unique tribal 

codes and Islamic beliefs. As Taliban elements swept through tribal territories, they “implemented the strictest interpretation of Sharia law in the Muslim world. They closed down girls’ schools and banned women from working 

outside the home, smashed TV sets, forbade a whole array of sports and recreational activities and ordered all males to grow long beards.” 75 Taliban Pashtuns, many of whom spent their entire life as war refugees in the Pakistan 

madrassa system, knew little of traditional Afghan ways. Along with foreign 

Islamists, their ultraconservative brand of Islam forcefully replaced traditional Afghan tribal codes.

The imposition of Islamic authority was formalized on 4 April 1996; 

Omar donned the cloak of the Prophet Mohammed and declared himself 
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

18

Amir ul-Momineen, commander of the faithful, thereby professing his authority 

to lead all Afghans and the broader Muslim world.76 Omar’s lack of tribal lineage 

from Ahmad Shah Durrani and the broader absence of direct lineage to 

Mohammed offended non-Taliban Afghans and many Durrani tribes. Although Osama bin Laden and his highly trained Islamist army provided 

Omar with a means to gain decisive tactical advantage, Taliban military deficiencies left them unable to defeat the Northern Alliance outright. However, 

on 9 September 2001 al-Qaeda operatives posing as a western media crew 

assassinated Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Masoud. A Taliban 

victory seemed within reach. 

Omar’s 1997 decision to welcome bin Laden placed the Taliban regime on 

a collision course with the United States. American military involvement in 

October 2001, one month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City and 

Washington, DC, decisively turned the tide of Afghanistan’s civil war against 

the Taliban. Northern Alliance forces, supported by US Special Forces and 

coalition aircraft, rapidly drove the battered Taliban army back to the mountainous region along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border by the end of 2001. The 

speed of apparent victory surprised most, but the second war would be decidedly different.

Conclusion

The Reconstruction South and post-2001 Afghanistan share common 

circumstances as well as engrained societal traits that serve as the basis for 

comparison. Prior to war in both societies vertical differentiation based on 

economic and ethnic standing created a cast-like system. Each population 

was a complex mosaic of social and ethnic groups; both held class, ethnic, 

and societal autonomy in the highest regard. Additionally, both societies 

experienced sustained periods of relative peace followed by catastrophic 

civil war and externally imposed reconstruction. In the South and Afghanistan, 

external oversight and military presence following war suppressed traditional societal traits, but at least in the South, suppression did not equate to 

elimination once external pressures departed.

Notes

1. Bolton, “Planters, Plain Folk, and Poor Whites,” 76.

2. Foner, Reconstruction, 128.

3. Ibid.

4. Bolton, “Planters, Plain Folk, and Poor Whites,” 76.

5. Ibid., 82.
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

19

6. Ibid., 76.

7. This acknowledgement has been a recent admission among antebellum historians. Historians in the 1950s oversimplified southern class relationships with a belief that the yeomanry population was subservient to the planter class rather than supportive of their policies.

8. Foner, Reconstruction, 12.

9. Ibid., 88.

10. Ibid., 86.

11. Ibid., 13.

12. Ibid., 12.

13. The Border South included Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri.

14. Downing, A South Divided, 23.

15. Ibid., 73.

16. Foner, Reconstruction, 47–48.

17. Ibid., 47.

18. Downing, A South Divided, 28–31.

19. Hudson, “Slavery and the Old South,” 64.

20. Bolton, “Planters, Plain Folk, and Poor Whites,” 88.

21. Larsen, “Market Revolution,” 53.

22. Ibid., 54.

23. Bolton, “Planters, Plain Folk, and Poor Whites,” 84.

24. Ibid., 85.

25. Coben, “Northeastern Business and Radical Reconstruction,” 102.

26. Larson, “Market Revolution,” 56.

27. Ibid., 54.

28. The agreement permitted Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state to maintain 

balance between pro- and antislavery states in the House of Representatives. In exchange 

for legalized slavery in Missouri, slavery was outlawed north of the 36°30’ north latitude—

the present-day northern border of Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona.

29. Stewart, “Humanitarian Reform and Antislavery,” 53.

30. Downing, A South Divided, 37.

31. Foner, Reconstruction, 15.

32. Ibid.

33. Ibid., 14.

34. Ibid., 13.

35. Ibid., 101.

36. Ibid., 15–16.

37. Ibid., 36.

38. Millett and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 257.

39. Foner, Reconstruction, 43–44.

40. Ibid., 37.

41. Millett and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 257.

42. Saikal, Modern Afghanistan, 19.

43. Byrd, Lessons from Afghanistan’s History, 3.

44. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 21. The six principle urban centers are 

Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad, and Kunduz.

45. Byrd, Lessons from Afghanistan’s History, 4.

46. Saikal, Modern Afghanistan, 4.
HISTORICAL BASIS FOR COMPARISON

20

47. Byrd, Lessons from Afghanistan’s History, 2.

48. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 9.

49. Tanner, Afghanistan, 75–76.

50. Afghanistan is 99 percent Muslim—80 percent are Sunni and 20 percent are Shi’ite.

51. Tanner, Afghanistan, 7.

52. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 7.

53. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 7.

54. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 7. Rashid states, “Ancient invaders, such as the Persians, 

Greeks, and the Turkic tribes of Central Asians, Arabs, the Mongols under Genghis Khan in 

AD 1219, and the Moghuls, either swept through Afghanistan on their way to India and Persia, or occupied it. Each invasion left behind social, cultural, or ethnic legacies that were to 

add to the mosaic of modern Afghanistan.”

55. Tanner, Afghanistan, 114; and Barfield, Afghanistan, 89. 

56. Ibid.

57. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 16.

58. Rashid, Taliban, 7.

59. Barfield, Afghanistan, 28. The four tribes populate the ancient region of Ghor, though 

they dispersed in the nineteenth century after being violently targeted by the central government in Kabul.

60. Rashid, Taliban, 68.

61. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 20.

62. Byrd, Lessons from Afghanistan’s History, 4.

63. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 18.

64. Ibid.

65. Ibid., 10.

66. Byrd, Lessons from Afghanistan’s History, 3.

67. Ibid., 4.

68. Rashid, Taliban, 13.

69. Byrd, Lessons from Afghanistan’s History, 5.

70. Meyer and Brysac, Tournament of Shadows, 52.

71. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 20–21.

72. Byrd, Lessons from Afghanistan’s History, 9.

73. Rashid, Taliban, 21.

74. Ibid., 29.

75. Ibid. However, according to Barfield, a nuisance is also present in the Taliban’s imposition of more conservative social restraints that go beyond Islamic tenets, perhaps offering an 

explanation as to why Taliban rule was the strictest interpretation to Sharia Law in the Muslim world. Here, Barfield contends, is where the “long-standing clash of values between luxury-loving urbanites and the puritanical rural villagers” complicates the overly simplistic societal divisions attributed to religious and ethnic differences. Afghanistan, 65.

76. Ibid., 42.
21

Chapter 3

Analysis of Socio-Political Factors

Afghanistan’s path to reconstruction has been tread by “conflict between 

those [intent on] the reimplementation of a centralized, top-down, king-like 

authority, and those [seeking] a new model of political organization derived 

from the cooperation and consent of the governed.”1

 Reconstruction of the 

South followed a similar course. A comparison of the South and Afghanistan 

based on the three common societal traits—intertwined class structures, a 

complex social mosaic, and the desire for autonomy—reveals extensive sociopolitical symmetry. First, a clash between old and new societal structures 

defined reconstruction’s political progression in the South and Afghanistan. 

Second, both societies’ mosaic landscape cast widespread similarity concerning political participation and education of previously disenfranchised populations. Third, a shared group reverence for autonomy appeared from an 

internal clash between dependence on external support and resistance to foreign 

will. Ultimately, physical and psychological devastation wrought by civil war 

produced two populations in search of a stable future. 

Class Structure: Old versus New Form of Governance

Civil war and reconstruction challenged the prewar political order in the 

South and Afghanistan. In both cases, successful political ascent preceded 

fractional division, patronage politics, and political corruption that undermined popular support. Although the power struggle in Afghanistan was 

one predominantly defined by ethnic and tribal loyalty, the South’s struggle 

beginning in 1865 was principally a function of political party affiliation.

Shortly after Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, political unity fractured in the capitol and dampened euphoric feelings of victory that should 

have carried the North through Reconstruction’s early days. Initial Republican support for Presidential Reconstruction under Andrew Johnson waned 

because of his perceived laissez-faire approach with the defeated South. Although Republicans in Congress expected the South to accept defeat, a 

beaten but defiant population emerged in 1865. Johnson did far less to impose the policies his congressional opponents thought appropriate, and certainly less than he had done as military governor of Tennessee. Indeed, 

Johnson favored the resurgence of the planter class’s political dominance in 
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

22

the wake of war to ensure his reelection in 1870, even at the expense of suffrage rights for former slaves.

With tacit presidential support, southerners interested in a return to the 

prewar political structure subjected those “who publically advocated any 

form of black voting” to “tremendous abuse.”2

 Ardent northern abolitionist 

and radical Republican congressman Thaddeus Stevens received a report 

that “the rebellious spirit [in Georgia] was greater than when the state seceded from the Union.”3

 Despite detractors, Johnson remained convinced 

that the Constitution afforded the federal government only a limited role in 

state affairs.4

 Johnson’s loose application of Lincoln’s 10 percent clause and 

lax enforcement of the ban prohibiting political participation by high-ranking 

Confederate leaders enabled southern voters to defy central authority by 

“choosing men to represent them at home and in Congress who had held 

leadership in rebellion.”5

 Consequently, all 10 southern state legislatures 

elected under Presidential Reconstruction voted against ratification of the 

Fourteenth Amendment by overwhelming majorities and “unionists [in the 

South] remained a beleaguered minority.”6

 In opposition to Johnson’s leniency, 

Republicans pursued a centrally directed reconstruction plan.

Most Republicans in Congress did not seek “a broad, permanent extension 

of national legislative power” but thought temporary federal authority was 

necessary to institute changes the South proved incapable of achieving internally.7

 In 1867 the new Republican Congress, with more than a two-thirds 

majority, wrested control of Reconstruction away from Johnson and the 

newly elected democratic state governments. After overriding a presidential 

veto, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act of 1867, dividing the South, 

except Tennessee, into the five military districts (fig. 2), empowering US 

Army personnel to protect life and property, declaring all elected southern 

governments provisional and open to modification by federal authorities, and 

instituting clear requirements for state reconciliation.8

 The installment of military supervision established state and local governments as an extension of 

federal authority, shifting Reconstruction’s political battles from Washington 

to the South. In essence, Union Army control returned to the South in 1867 

with Radical Reconstruction.

Factional division and corruption marred the successes of Radical Republican governance. In 1867 military governors arrived with near dictatorial 

authority, deposing elected governors in Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, and 

other states as “obstacle[s] to reconstruction.” Among larger towns and cities, 

where changes were most extensive, “the municipal administration . . . was 

remanned by military authority.”9

 In accordance with the Reconstruction Act, 
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

23

Figure 2. Radical Reconstruction military districts. (Reprinted from University of 

North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Military Reconstruction,” 2009, http://www.

learnnc.org/lp/media/uploads/2009/08/military_reconstruction.jpg. Copyright by 

Creative Commons license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/.)

military authorities held state conventions, inevitably dominated by northern 

carpetbaggers, southern scalawags, and freedmen. The conventions, with almost 

no Democratic or conservative representation, adopted constitutions consistent with Republican reconstruction aims, encouraging future agendas of 

broad spending and social conformity, but those goals had little indigenous 

southern support, exposing divisions within the southern Republican Party. 

In South Carolina, the Republican budget in 1873 was double that of Democrats in 1860.10 In particular, policies favorable toward railroad expansion 

ushered in rampant corruption among Republican officials during the Ulysses 

S. Grant presidency. White yeomanry, outraged over corrupt practices and 

government culpability in the Depression of 1873, shifted upcountry support 

to southern Democrats. The Yeomanry tide “convert[ed] a congressional delegation that was 90 percent white Republican in 1866 into one that was fourfifths white Democrat by 1874.”11 The southern shift was part of a sweeping 

national reversal that favored the 170-seat Democratic swing in the US House 

of Representatives, foreshadowing the end of Reconstruction with comprehensive Redemption across the South in 1876.12
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

24

As with Johnson’s initial ascent in the wake of Lincoln’s death, a short period 

of relative political harmony initiated the political process in Afghanistan. 

Beginning in November 2001, while Northern Alliance and coalition forces 

were battling Taliban fighters across Afghanistan, the United Nations (UN) 

convened a gathering of Afghan political factions in Bonn, Germany, to select 

a provisional national authority. All principle Afghan factions attended 

except those supporting the Taliban, leaving southern Pashtun tribes with a 

disproportionately small voice in the proceedings. The diminished position, 

however, did not degrade the Pashtuns’ role in the new government, as the 

hierarchical Durrani line once again proved more politically adept than its 

egalitarian Ghilzai counterpart.13 The soon-to-be victorious Northern Alliance factions backed a Pashtun nominee from the southern Durrani tribes 

that had opposed Taliban rule as the interim head of state in exchange for 

most key ministerial positions.14 The disparate factions achieved consensus 

on 3 December, far earlier than international observers anticipated. Optimism 

over Afghanistan’s future and a long-awaited peace permeated negotiations, but 

the international community insisted Karzai’s government acquire popular approval to ensure long-term legitimacy.

The emergency jirga in June 2002 confirmed Karzai, leader of the Popalzai 

tribe and descendant of Ahmad Shah Durrani, as the interim Afghan president, restoring apparent political balance to the Afghan state. Durrani Pashtuns 

presided over Afghanistan from 1747 to 1978, but the more warlike and 

quicker-to-act Ghilzai tribes overshadowed the Durrani during the civil wars 

after 1978. Northern Alliance factions, not possessing the proper lineage or 

majority position to preside over Pashtun tribes without instigating further 

war, supported Karzai. The factions favored traditional Durrani acceptance of 

ethnic differences and regional nuisance in exchange for political stability, 

rather than the egalitarian and less tolerant Ghilzai authority.15

However, constitutional ambiguity and unchecked executive authority 

transformed an initially cooperative governing coalition into a heated power 

struggle between independent branches of government in Kabul.16

Three causes hastened Afghanistan’s decade-long power struggle: the jirga 

process, the constitution, and a prohibition of political parties. The jirga requires consensus to reach decision, but consensus dictates ambiguous language to satisfy all factional interests. To reach agreement, the new Afghan 

constitution assumed the basic structure of its 1964 predecessor, drafted 

under King Zahir Shah’s rule, including the weak system of checks and balances intentionally installed by the monarch.17

A weak constitution paired with a general Afghan abhorrence for political 

parties after communist rule granted Karzai broad and unchecked authority 
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

25

akin to the monarchical reigns of prior Durrani leaders. Perhaps most telling, 

Karzai’s opposition to legalized political parties symbolized the tension 

between peripheral tribes and centralized authority. Durrani Pashtuns, led by 

Karzai, supported a strong monarchical structure; non-Pashtuns generally 

desired a weak monarchical structure that offered general security and stability 

but allowed for peripheral preference. Ghilzai Pashtun tribes preferred a 

return to an egalitarian state.

Competing interests characterized the 2005 and 2010 parliamentary elections. The 2005 parliamentary election threatened Karzai’s political position, 

but the 2010 election nearly ruined the nation. Unchecked voter fraud sparked 

open feuds similar to those between Republicans and Democrats over reconciliation policy in 1866 and 1867. Karzai, less than one year after a decisive 

victory in the 2004 presidential election, viewed widespread voter turnout in 

2005 with concern despite overwhelming international enthusiasm. In short, 

increased popular legitimacy of the Parliament threatened Karzai’s extensive 

constitutional authority.18 In October 2010, however, the success of 2005 

seemed a distant memory to outside observers. Rampant corruption and 

irregularities caused the Independent Election Commission (IEC) to invalidate 1.3 million votes, 25 percent of total ballots cast.19 The decision disqualified 62 candidates; many were Pashtun, causing Karzai to intimidate IEC 

members out of fear that his Pashtun majority in the Wolesi Jirga might be 

lost. Physical confrontations ensued in Parliament as non-Pashtun members 

discussed impeachment proceedings.20 Perhaps conceding his actions were 

too aggressive, Karzai encouraged a compromise, but the underlying questions regarding the bounds of presidential authority remained unresolved. 

Widespread corruption accompanied intragovernmental squabbling. 

Fraudulent voter registrations, tacitly endorsed by the Karzai regime, produced a duplicitous voter registry that precipitated intragovernmental mayhem 

and undercut popular legitimacy. Of the 17 million voter cards issued by 

2009, seven million were surplus, but presidential support for a validated 

voter registry waned amidst concern that the registry might contest the longheld assumption of Pashtun numerical dominance.21 Karzai’s support, however, remained strong for those under his employ. 

The president’s family members and close associates littered national and 

provincial positions, a common practice in Afghan politics. In a gross example 

of corruption, a 2012 audit of the Kabul Bank implicated Mahmoud Karzai, 

the president’s brother, in a money-laundering scheme that dispersed 92 percent 

of the Kabul Bank’s $861 million to 19 Afghan elites through fictitious companies and foreign banks—the president’s brother received $30 million.22 Furthermore, Karzai refused to fire corrupt provincial governors and cabinet members, 
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

26

preferring to move them to another location or less visible office. In short, 

Karzai “turned out to be another . . . Pashtun Khan,” using “his powers and 

international support to fill important governmental positions on the basis of 

family, tribal, ethnic and factional connections, and to engage in building 

patronage networks.”23 As with the white yeomanry of the South during the 

1870s, the Afghan people grew resentful of the government’s entrenched 

“abuse of power, impunity and lack of justice.”24

In both cases, opportunity derived from battlefield victory disintegrated 

into political power struggles in the halls of government. In the South, the 

national contest between Democrats and Republicans continued among 

federally sanctioned reconstruction governments. Republican agendas and 

corruption fractured the political party and its tenuous hold on power. In 

Afghanistan, open confrontation between the president and the jirga was coincident with similar forms of corruption and patronage politics and created 

a path for Taliban resurgence. In both cases, open hostility and dishonest 

practices denigrated popular faith in government and blunted momentum for 

social change. 

Societal Mosaic: Measured Social Change

Societal change during reconstruction of the South and Afghanistan was 

superficial; in the case of the South, it proved temporary, and in Afghanistan, 

it promises to be ephemeral. Improvements in political participation and 

education for disenfranchised minorities show commonality between the 

South and Afghanistan. In the South, social achievements “failed to live up to 

the lofty goals with which [Republican] Reconstruction began.”25 Redeemer 

Democrats returned with the rising yeomanry tide, ending Reconstruction 

and federal oversight with the election of 1876. Social changes instituted in 

Afghanistan during the constitutional jirga process appear equally tenuous. 

In 1865 the newly emancipated freedman population organized across the 

urban South in eager pursuit of their newfound freedom.26 Local churches—

where religious leaders reinforced republicanism—along with state conventions, served as the principal host for political organization during Presidential 

Reconstruction. Increasingly, southern blacks “proclaimed their identification with the nation’s history, destiny and political system.”27 Self-organization 

proved critical during Presidential Reconstruction due to Johnson’s “handsoff ” policy concerning freedmen’s political participation.28 Constrained to 

urban areas until 1866, the movement extended to the plantation belt with 

Radical Reconstruction in 1867. Internal efforts by former slaves during 

Presidential Reconstruction gained congressional endorsement under Radical 
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

27

Reconstruction, but lacked effective state and local government support during the same period.

The Republican Party became as central an institution in the black community as churches or schools during Radical Reconstruction.29 In 1867 a 

sense of autonomy gripped the freedman population and “politics emerged as 

the principal . . . aspiration.”30 Coincident with the rising Republican tide, the 

black community achieved tremendous political success across the South. 

From 1867 to 1875, more than 600 southern blacks, the majority of whom 

were former slaves, served as state legislators,31 In Mississippi, the Republican 

Party assumed control of state governance in 1869 with the popular support 

of 90,000 blacks and only 20,000 whites. Despite an overwhelming majority of 

voters, the 1870 Mississippi legislature included only 31 black legislators 

among its 107 members as native white and carpetbagger Republicans maintained control of key party leadership positions.32 By 1874, blacks comprised 

a majority in the South Carolina state senate and owned nearly every seat in 

the lower house.33 Political success also extended to municipalities and cities, 

but there social change ran headlong into Old South opposition. Perceived 

efforts to elevate the status of former slaves above the white yeomanry proved 

too dramatic, fracturing Republican Party loyalty along primarily racial lines.

By 1870 opponents of social modernization gained traction at the local 

level, where hundreds of blacks served as police officers and rural constables. 

Under Radical Reconstruction, Tallahassee and Little Rock hired black police 

chiefs while New Orleans and Vicksburg employed black police captains. In 

every case, former slaves were empowered to give orders to white officers.34 In 

Vicksburg and elsewhere across Mississippi, the employment of former slaves 

in law enforcement roles proved too dramatic for southern Democrats. Opposition in Meridian led to an 1871 riot and provided the “central theme of 

attack on the Republican [state] government in Jackson.”35 Localized backlashes in Mississippi and elsewhere spread across the South through 1874, 

culminating in Democratic Redemption in 1876 and the eventual imposition 

of poll taxes and other constraining mechanisms that limited voting eligibility 

of southern black males. 

The growth and decline of political participation among the southern black 

population mirrored the realities of public education. A general thirst for 

education consumed the freedman population after emancipation. Every 

southern state, except Tennessee, outlawed education of slaves before the 

Civil War.36 After 1865, however, southern blacks pooled resources in countless communities across the South to buy land, build schoolhouses, and pay 

teachers, collectively spending over $1 million by 1870.37 Eventually, costs 

were too burdensome; community leaders turned to the Freedman’s Bureau 
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

28

and benevolent northern charities for financial support. After 1868 the 

Freedman’s Bureau funded over 3,000 schools and 150,000 pupils across the 

South.38 With readmittance to the Union, state governments assumed financial responsibility for public education, and Republican legislatures instituted 

robust public education programs across the South. As with political participation though, the dramatic gains were short-lived.

To ensure continued white support at the local and state levels, white 

Republican leaders did not insist upon integrated schooling. According to 

Eric Foner, regardless of political affiliation, “white parents proved unwilling 

to have their children sit alongside blacks in the classroom,” a feeling shared 

throughout many parts of the North.39 The issue of integration divided the 

Republican Party, with native white Republicans opposing freedman and 

northern carpetbagger populations. The fracture was part a larger social 

divide, coincident with the aforementioned split over law enforcement responsibilities. Only Louisiana attempted integration, but state legislators 

merely required admittance to any black student who requested registration 

at a white or mixed-race school.40 In short, integration was voluntary, not 

forced. Literacy among southern blacks improved from a tragic 10 percent in 

1860, but 70 percent remained illiterate in 1880.41 Even the Louisiana state 

legislature reversed course, legalizing segregation by 1878 and mandating it 

by 1898. The relationship between lofty goals and modest gains in the South 

resembled those in Afghanistan.

The interim Afghan government returned from Bonn amidst a “powerful 

feeling of optimism on Kabul’s streets.”42 At the 2002 loya jirga, Karzai described two priorities of the Afghan people: peace and education.43 Peace required a political process that provided adequate representation to counter 

warlord influence throughout the nation, returning the appropriate blend of 

central and tribal authority. Optimism concerning both rested upon gradually 

righting the drastic gender imbalance imposed by the Taliban without falling 

victim to the previous failings of rushed modernization measures. The 2002 

loya jirga marked a significant first step, similar to the Republican state conventions in 1867 and 1868.

The 2002 loya jirga that selected Karzai as interim president was more representative of Afghanistan’s diverse ethnic and religious groups than any 

previous jirga.

44 Women across the nation asserted themselves politically in 

much the same manner as the freedman population had done during the 

1868 election cycle. Despite a minimum 10 percent female inclusion requirement, women filled 200 of the 1,501 seats, slightly more than 13 percent. Of 

greater consequence, the jirga process elevated two women to positions of 

political prominence. Representatives chose Simar Samar as one of three deputy 
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

29

speakers while Masuda Jalal, a former medical professor at Kabul University, 

emerged as Karzai’s chief challenger for the position of interim president, 

though she finished a distant second.45 The political participation of Afghan 

women, however, did not end with the 2002 jirga.

Mirroring the freedman trend during Radical Reconstruction, female 

participation in Afghan politics increased with the presence of coalition 

forces, but the long-term viability of that trend remains questionable. Women 

accounted for one-quarter of the 500 constitutional jirga participants in 2003, 

nearly double the 2002 percentage.46 Female representation remained steady 

through the latest Wolesi Jirga elections in 2010; women currently hold 27 

percent, or 68 of 249 seats.47 Despite persistent female political representation, the Afghan constitution adopted in 2003 “steered clear of the historic 

minefield of women’s rights” while also requiring that all state laws be compatible with Islamic law. Although Afghanistan’s constitution was perhaps the 

most progressive in the Muslim world, it failed to assure a persistent place for 

women in governance. Similarly, the IEC cited “a general lack of solidarity 

and cohesion among women” as a significant challenge to permanently 

addressing the gender imbalance.48

Cautious progress has occurred in education as well, but short-term infrastructure and gender equality gains in education may be equally difficult to 

sustain. More than two decades of war destroyed over 80 percent of Afghanistan’s schools.49 Despite the lack of educational infrastructure, Afghans 

showed a thirst for education on par with the previously enslaved freedman 

population of the South. On the nation’s first day of school in 2002, the government expected 1.8 million students to attend, but 3 million enrolled.50 Remarkably, overall enrollment has increased sixfold since the end of Taliban 

rule. According to the Afghan government, education of girls—now 37 percent of the seven million students enrolled in 2012—experienced similar success. The government also touted training 170,000 teachers—30 percent 

female—and the construction of 4,500 schools after 2002.51 Beneath the 

numbers, though, lies the potential undoing of the Afghan education system: 

as with Republican-led education programs in the South, foreign aid and 

benefactor donations have exclusively financed education investments since 

2002.52 Although literacy rates have improved along with infrastructure, 70 

percent of the Afghan population remained illiterate as of 2012, in line with 

the freedman population in 1880.53

In the South and Afghanistan, diverse societal interests moderated apparent gains for previously marginalized populations. Rapid growth in political 

participation by southern blacks and Afghan women plateaued, and in the 

case of the South, progress evaporated under Democratic rule after the election 
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

30

of 1876. Education in the South and Afghanistan also exhibited similar infrastructure improvements and literacy rate gains for disenfranchised minorities and the population writ large. As with political participation, however, 

southern Democrat policies reversed education gains after 1876. The social 

changes that appeared so promising at the height of Radical Reconstruction 

for the freedman population proved elusive when confronted by societal 

forces unprepared to relinquish control and the overriding threat of economic 

insolvency after 1873. 

Autonomous Society: Carpetbaggers Then and Now?

In both cases, the end of civil war produced intellectual and economic 

voids, viewed as an opportunity by outsiders. In the South, an influx of northern 

entrepreneurs, and in Afghanistan, a return of the intellectual and business 

diaspora, quickly incited social conflict. Southern Democrats callously 

labeled arrivals from the North as “carpetbaggers,” the worst class of northerner, 

there to fatten their wallets on the misfortunes of the South and intent on 

upsetting the Democrats’ self-described racial harmony during Presidential 

Reconstruction.54

Welcomed in 1865 by pillars of the Old South for their financial means, by 

1867 carpetbaggers were the focus of conservative indictment. Despite biased 

accounts in the immediate aftermath of Reconstruction that characterized 

northerners as political miscreants, economic motives enticed most northerners 

to head south in 1865 and 1866 according to Lawrence Powell.55 Thousands of 

former soldiers flooded the South in search of a fresh beginning and economic opportunity once freed from wartime enlistments in the Union Army. 

They were joined by northern and western fortune seekers who viewed the 

South as the next financial boom region. In return, the “capital-starved” South 

sought their participation in “commission houses, banks, and planting partnerships.”56 Many arrived during the period of Presidential Reconstruction and 

renewed Democrat dominance, and some lost personal fortunes to the destitute economy.57 Consequently, many transplanted northerners returned home 

bankrupt, but those who stayed salvaged political fortune from social turmoil 

with the Reconstruction Act of 1867.

Political involvement by northerners during Radical Reconstruction 

assisted societal change and sowed the seeds of its demise. Internal organization from 1865 to 1866 by the freedman population created the opportunity 

for political success in 1867, but as a population, former slaves were uneducated and remained uneasy with their newfound freedom. By comparison, 

northerners were highly educated, experienced with republican democracy, 
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

31

and generally “supported measures aimed at democratizing and modernizing 

the South—civil rights legislation, aid to economic development, the establishment of public school systems.”58

Carpetbagger Republicans never held a majority within any southern state; 

they relied on support from the black and native white Republican, or scalawag, populations. Moderate forces within the party held the peculiar coalition intact until the 1872 election, when radical elements altered the party’s 

course and the fate of the South. Massive expansions in state spending for 

public programs, seen as disproportionately favoring former slaves, led to 

higher taxes on the white Republican base.59 Scalawags, principally white yeoman farmers, felt neglected and marginalized by their own political leaders. 

Many scalawag Republicans joined the swelling southern Democrat ranks in 

support of lower taxes, smaller budgets, and a return to the social order that 

promised a renewal of antebellum prosperity. Redemption took hold first 

locally, then regionally from 1874 to 1876, and became irreversible after the 

election of 1876.

The carpetbaggers’ role in southern Reconstruction foreshadowed the return of Afghanistan’s professional diaspora in 2002. Afghan society, much like 

the South, was largely void of capital, educated citizens, and democratic political experience after the sustained period of war. Consequently, the international community encouraged the return of Afghan refugees scattered 

across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States. The three million who 

did return were soon labeled by “resident Afghans and returning refugees 

from Pakistan and Iran [as] opportunistic carpetbaggers, using their familiarity 

with the West and foreign-language skills to benefit themselves.”60 The most 

prominent Afghan to return, Zalmay Khalilzad, did so with the resources of 

the US government at his disposal.

As with the early histories of northern carpetbaggers, some accounts of 

Khalilzad’s role as US envoy to Afghanistan generally assume an overly negative tone. A native Pashtun Afghan born in Mazar-e-Sharif, Khalilzad was the 

son of a civil servant during the reign of Zahir Shah. Khalizad was a foreignexchange high school student in the United States, studied at American 

University in Beirut, and earned a doctorate from the University of Chicago. 

He was a senior state department advisor to Pres. Ronald Reagan during the 

Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and finally served as Bush’s chief representative at the 2001 Bonn negotiations.61 At the 2001 gathering and again at the 

2002 loya jirga, Khalilzad reportedly “strong-armed” Zahir Shah to support 

Karzai’s bid for interim president. Although Khalilzad’s influence benefitted 

the US government, Karzai’s faction, and non-Pashtun interests, Pashtuns 

who enjoyed prominence under Zahir Shah’s rule, many of whom were open 
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

32

supporters of his reinstatement as king rather than Karzai’s ascent as president, were not appreciative.62

Khalilzad attained a powerful political stature in Afghanistan that proved 

internationally beneficial but domestically problematic. He served as US 

presidential envoy and later as US ambassador to Afghanistan until 2005. Importantly, and to his credit, Khalizad was the principle force behind increased 

US financial and military assistance after 2003. Ahmed Rashid described 

Khalilzad as “the most powerful man in Afghanistan [who] made no attempt 

to hide it.” Rashid insisted Khalilzad “was not in the least embarrassed when 

reporters described how Karzai did not make a move without first consulting 

him.”63 Though vital to securing dire international aid for Karzai’s government, Khalilzad’s prominent role undermined the traditional foundation of 

legitimate authority in Afghanistan—the leader’s appearance of freedom from 

external control.64

Khalilzad, and other Afghans who returned after 2001, brought modern 

perspectives that often clashed with the social views of rural tribes. As with 

the northern carpetbaggers, returning Afghans “seized both the opportunity and the responsibility out of a sense of duty,” but their image of the future 

was more modern than that of many native Afghans.65 In line with the more 

liberal urban elements of Afghan society, their worldly experience earned 

them Thomas Barfield’s characterization as “carpetbagger” and “resurrected 

the old division between Kabul-based modernists and the more conservative rural majority.”66

Although southern and Afghan societies initially welcomed the arrival of 

outsiders, contempt eventually clouded indigenous perceptions. In the South, 

northern entrepreneurs and aspiring farmers who remained after 1867 were 

branded profiteers. In Afghanistan, the three million returning diaspora, of 

which Khalilzad was the most prominent, allegedly profited from superior 

financial means, education not previously available to resident Afghans, and 

political connections—while the average Afghan received very little in direct 

financial assistance. In both cases, however, carpetbaggers represented a 

much needed influx of educated labor and financial means.

Conclusion

The contest between old and new societal images provides tremendous sociopolitical symmetry between reconstruction of the South and Afghanistan. In 

both cases, confrontation between rival factions and corrupt practices injured 

popular support for central governance. In the South, the political rivalry 

between Republicans and Democrats allowed for only measured societal 
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

33

progress during Reconstruction. In Afghanistan, the equally contentious relationship between the president and Wolesi Jirga proved problematic for coordinated and rapid political progress. Similarly, long-held societal paradigms 

and a dependence on unsustainable and external sources of revenue undermined long-term improvements in political participation and education for 

previously marginalized groups. Finally, despite good intentions the intervention of northern carpetbaggers and the Afghan diaspora reinvigorated 

dormant tensions associated with long-held societal beliefs and renewed traditional resentment of external involvement in internal affairs. Civil war created 

an opportunity for societal change in the South and Afghanistan, but at least 

in the South, opportunity did not produce long-term results.

Notes

1. Barfield, Afghanistan, 293.

2. Foner, Reconstruction, 191–92.

3. Scroggs, “Southern Reconstruction,” 406.

4. Cox and Cox, “Johnson and the Negro,” 65.

5. Ibid.

6. Foner, Reconstruction, 269.

7. Benedict, “Conservative Basis of Radical Reconstruction,” 322.

8. Foner, Reconstruction, 276.

9. Dunning, “Military Government in the South,” 393–94.

10. Foner, Reconstruction, 365.

11. Black and Black, Rise of Southern Republicans, 11. 

12. Foner, Reconstruction, 523.

13. Barfield, Afghanistan, 283.

14. Ibid., 284.

15. Ibid.

16. International Crisis Group, Afghanistan, 2.

17. Ibid.

18. Barfield, Afghanistan, 301.

19. Saikal, Modern Afghanistan, 252.

20. International Crisis Group, Afghanistan, 4.

21. Ibid., 15.

22. Matthew Rosenberg, “Audit Says Kabul Bank Began as Ponzi Scheme,” New York Times, 

28 November 2012, accessed 21 January 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/world/asia/

kabul-bank-audit-details-extent-of-fraud.html?pagewanted=1&hp&_r=0.

23. Saikal, Modern Afghanistan, 253.

24. House Armed Services Committee, “Afghan National Security Forces.”

25. Foner, Reconstruction, 365.

26. Foner, “Rights and the Constitution,” 872.

27. Ibid., 873 and 876.

28. Cox and Cox, “Johnson and the Negro,” 63.

29. Foner, “Rights and the Constitution,” 878.
ANALYSIS OF SOCIO-POLITICAL FACTORS

34

30. Ibid., 874.

31. Foner, Reconstruction, 355.

32. Wharton, “Negro and Politics,” 338 and 358.

33. Foner, Reconstruction, 354.

34. Ibid., 362.

35. Wharton, “Negro and Politics,” 352.

36. Foner, Reconstruction, 96. 

37. Ibid., 98.

38. Ibid., 144.

39. Ibid., 367.

40. Harlan, “Desegregation in New Orleans,” 327.

41. Foner, Reconstruction, 96 and 366.

42. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 130.

43. Ibid., 141.

44. Barfield, Afghanistan, 297.

45. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 141. Masuda Jalal received 171 votes, and Hamid Karzai 

won with 1,295 votes. The two accounted for all but 35 of the 1,501 total votes. 

46. Barfield, Afghanistan, 299.

47. Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan, Seat Allocations for Wolesi Jirga.

48. Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan, “Gender at the IEC.” 

49. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 63.

50. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 183. 

51. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 70–71.

52. The World Bank, Afghanistan in Transition, 16. US AID, from 2007 to 2009, trained 

65,000 teachers and constructed 690 schools. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 

70–71. 

53. Ministry of Education, Literacy and Adult Education in Afghanistan, 1. 

54. Foner, Reconstruction, 294.

55. Powell, “Carpetbaggers and the Problems,” 389.

56. Foner, Reconstruction, 137.

57. Current, “Carpetbaggers Reconsidered,” 406.

58. Foner, Reconstruction, 296.

59. Perman, “Politics of Reconstruction,” 332–33.

60. Barfield, Afghanistan, 281–82. The Central Intelligence Agency’s World Fact Book estimates Afghanistan’s 2001 population as 26.8 million. 

61. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 188.

62. Barfield, Afghanistan, 297.

63. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 188.

64. Byrd, Lessons from Afghanistan’s History, 3.

65. Powell, “Carpetbaggers and the Problems,” 389.

66. Barfield, Afghanistan, 282.
35

Chapter 4

Analysis of Security Factors

Gen Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox in April 1865 and the expulsion of Taliban forces in early 2002 ushered in similar periods of comparative 

peace until vanquished foes renewed hostilities through unconventional means 

in 1867 and 2005, respectively. According to Foner, “violence [in the South] 

raised in its starkest form the question of legitimacy that haunted the Reconstruction state.”1

 Foner’s diagnosis of the South applies equally to Afghanistan. 

A comparison of both security situations based on three common societal 

traits reveals important symmetries during respective reconstruction periods. 

Rural lawlessness progressed to insurgency across the South and Afghanistan, 

and both cycles of violence manifest the political struggles between old and new 

societal structures. Those forces supplemented an externally supplied security 

presence that proved insufficient in the South and equally ineffective in 

Afghanistan. As a result, the autonomous tendencies of both societies persevered.

Class Structure: Common Progression of Violence

In the South, the three stages of violence—lawlessness, insurgency, and 

reconciliation—coincided chronologically with Presidential Reconstruction, 

Radical Reconstruction, and Democratic Redemption. Lawlessness and 

racially driven violence reflected a breakdown of governance that accompanied 

defeat and a desire by some for a rapid renewal of antebellum society. Radical 

Reconstruction in 1867 unleashed a brutal insurgency as disenfranchised 

Democrats clamored for a return to home rule. By 1877 Democratic Redemption eliminated the political impetus for violence by restoring the prewar order, 

but not before the South endured a second war. 

The Confederate Army disbanded in April 1865, leaving soldiers with little 

prospect of meaningful employment and no governing structure to oversee 

their actions. Confederate stockpiles, private stores, and personal homes were 

all subject to confiscation by hungry soldiers and prowling gangs. A general 

state of lawlessness ensued as armed looters exploited “opportunities afforded 

by a society in which there were no sheriffs, no laws, and no courts.”2

 In the 

Carolinas, vast stretches of road were unsafe to travel for many months following the South’s surrender. In one instance, two bands of Confederate 

deserters stopped a federal military officer, robbed him of everything, including 

his horse and boots, and forced him to return in shame to his garrison.3

 In 
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

36

Mississippi, desperation encouraged the recently defeated Confederate units 

and occupying Union forces to cooperate tacitly “in suppressing [the] irregular outlaw bands.”4

 Socially, the state of lawlessness meant a brief return 

to the Old South order along the Deep South’s Plantation Belt.

Many prior slaveholders forcefully reasserted their will over former slaves 

in an attempt to reinstitute the social order that perpetuated their prewar 

power and prosperity. Former slaves “were assaulted and murdered for 

attempting to leave plantations, disputing contract settlements, [and] not laboring in the manner desired by their employers.”5

 The subjugation of freedmen 

received political endorsement with the return of democratic rule in late 

1865. According to Mark Bradley, state legislatures passed Black Codes to 

keep former slaves “in a condition as close to slavery as lawmakers dared.”6

 In 

an extreme case of racial violence, 2,000 former slaves perished at the hands 

of antebellum slaveholders in the areas surrounding Shreveport, Louisiana, 

during 1865.7

The general state of lawlessness following the war’s end preceded widespread insurgency during Radical Reconstruction; marginalized southern 

Democrats resorted to violent means of resistance. Insurgent groups, like the 

Ku Klux Klan (KKK), appeared across the South in response to the Reconstruction Act of 1867. The KKK, originally a fraternal gathering of six exConfederates from Pulaski, Tennessee, spread from Virginia to Texas by 

1868.8

 Each informally connected group reflected a unique local identity. In 

some areas, the KKK remained a fraternal society and in others became a 

menacing “paramilitary organization” working on behalf of the Democratic 

Party.9

 Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Klan’s first Grand Wizard, claimed during 

an 1868 newspaper interview that the Klan’s membership across the South 

exceeded 550,000 men.10 In the state elections of 1870, KKK violence was the 

deciding factor that returned Democrats to power in Georgia, Alabama, and 

Florida.11 In many states, this “reign of terror was so extensive that [Republican] 

state governments were powerless to control it.”12

To regain control, Congress passed the Ku Klux Klan Act in April 1871, 

throwing the weight of federal jurisdiction against insurgent groups. In South 

Carolina, Grant suspended the writ of habeas corpus and deployed federal 

troops. Law enforcement officials arrested hundreds and forced 2,000 Klansmen to flee the state.13 Elsewhere, lesser known but equally dangerous groups, 

including the Knights of the Rising Sun and the Knights of the White Camellia, 

committed violent acts on par with the Klan.14 Grant’s federal intervention 

brought peace for a period, but without substantive political reconciliation, 

the gains did not endure. 
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

37

A second wave of violence “tore through the South” ahead of the 1874 elections, but overall insurgent violence waned as Democrats returned to political 

office and the population grew weary of insurgent atrocities.15 Historians generally agree Reconstruction writ large ended with the election of Hayes in 

1876, but locally, redemption began earlier in many southern states. Although 

Democrats restored home rule to North Carolina in 1872, the same did not 

occur until 1874 in Louisiana and 1876 in Mississippi. By instigating race 

riots and open fighting with Republican militias, insurgent organizations 

freely intimidated Republican voters and politicians on Election Day to guarantee a Democratic majority at the polls and a return of antebellum-era 

governance.16 Consequently, newly elected Democratic legislatures and governors 

no longer sanctioned insurgent attacks after returning to office and violence 

quickly faded. 

The same politically motivated progression from lawlessness to insurgency—

but not yet redemption necessarily—emerged in Afghanistan after the expulsion of Taliban forces in early 2002. The Bonn Agreement limited the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to security duties in and around 

Kabul, while feuding and criminal activity of newly victorious warlords fed a 

condition of lawlessness throughout the periphery. Anarchy reigned as 90,000 

preexisting Afghan police and one million armed militiamen served warlord 

interests rather than the nation.17 In Mazar-e-Sharif, a power struggle 

between former Northern Alliance generals Mohammed Atta and Rashid 

Dostum cost 2,000 Afghan lives in the 18 months immediately following the 

Taliban’s expulsion.18 

Initially, the United States supported various warlords as a means of tracking 

al-Qaeda and Taliban forces without committing to a large-scale land operation. By 2003, however, the lack of peripheral security crippled popular support for the Karzai government. This forced international participants to 

adjust strategy and support Karzai’s plan to disarm the warlord militias and 

increase funding for a more robust Afghan National Army (ANA). Consequently, in 2005 the United States invested more than $1.7 billion in the ANA, 

a fourfold increase over 2003.19 The delay afforded Taliban leaders an opportunity to regroup and regain a foothold in the Pashtun-dominated south and 

along the border with Pakistan.

By early 2002 the Northern Alliance and coalition onslaught reduced the 

Taliban to “a roving band of mullahs trying to regroup and launch an insurgency,” but the lack of peripheral control afforded Mullah Omar ample time 

to recover and formulate a new strategy.20 Refitted by the Pakistani madrassa 

network and independent Arab financiers, and facing no government opposition, the Taliban returned to Afghan villages in 2004. By 2005 entire 
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

38

provinces were under their direct influence.21 Omar, convinced his forces 

could not defeat the US military in open combat, resurrected his 1994 call for 

stability and challenged Karzai’s legitimacy through a combination of shadow 

governance and unconventional violence. By 2010 the Taliban shadow government extended to 33 provinces and 180 districts in every region of Afghanistan.22 Taliban governors mediated disputes and judges issued shura-based 

legal decisions to establish political legitimacy for the aggressive guerilla tactics 

that punctuated their return across Afghanistan.

The violent Taliban resurgence in 2004 and 2005 reached its apex in 2009. 

Insurgent attacks increased 900 percent from 2004 to 2009; suicide bombings 

increased 40-fold and the use of improvised explosive devices jumped from 

300 to 4,000.23 In a gruesome 2008 episode, Taliban militants stopped a civilian 

bus and beheaded 30 of its 50 passengers.24 During 2009, hostilities claimed 

the lives of 5,978 Afghan civilians, triple the total in 2008.25 Violent attacks 

also spiked during the 2009 Afghan presidential and 2010 parliamentary election cycles. In 2010 insurgents assassinated 11 candidates, and the IEC closed 

23 percent of national polling stations due to a lack of security.26

After the 2010 parliamentary elections, insurgent violence dropped for the 

first time since 2005, prompting questions about a possible reconciliation 

opportunity.27 Though total deaths and overall violence decreased in 2011 

and 2012, the beheading of two children, ages 6 and 12, in August 2012 raised 

questions concerning prospects for a true reconciliation, though trace optimism remained.28 A 2012 interview of four Taliban interlocutors by the 

Britain’s Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) suggested reconciliation was 

possible. Their findings indicated that an agreement would have to rely on a 

power-sharing arrangement that excluded Karzai, whom the Taliban viewed 

as corrupt and weak.29

In the South and Afghanistan, each phase of violence reflected the underlying political competition between old and new societal structures. Lawlessness reflected the absence of rural governance in the immediate aftermath of 

war. Insurgency in both cases, characterized by socially targeted violence and 

intimidation of politicians and voters, served the interests of the disenfranchised political faction. Finally, reconciliation for the South, induced by insurgent violence and encouraged by waning northern interest in southern 

affairs, came via the ballot box and not military victory. Southern insurgents 

faded from relevance with the achievement of their leaders’ political objective, the expulsion of southern Republicans from power. 
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

39

Societal Mosaic: Role of Indigenous Security Forces

The role of indigenous security forces grew as the pressures of open insurgency mounted in both societies. In the South, community-organized security 

measures emerged in 1865 and government-sanctioned state militias followed in 1868 to assist local and federal forces against the growing threat of 

insurgent groups. In Afghanistan, the period of warlord dominance gave way 

to centrally administered security. The permanent state-sponsored security 

apparatus required the temporary assistance of locally based groups to offset 

the unanticipated pace of Taliban resurgence after 2005.

Freedmen political gatherings in 1865 and 1866 provided a communityorganized defense of former slave populations. The death rate among organizers of the freedmen political movement was alarmingly high.30 Faced with 

rampant violence in the immediate aftermath of war, “blacks were not satisfied 

to stand by idly and wait for government to come to their aid.”31 Community 

“defense organizations sprang up around [political gatherings],” like the 

Union League, where members “drill[ed] with weapons, sometimes under 

men with self-appointed [military rank].”32 The rapidly dwindling federal 

military presence across the South forced local communities to take up arms 

when threatened and fight back where possible, but their efforts could not 

stem the rising tide of insurgency.

In Alamance County, North Carolina, the six county magistrates were unable 

to maintain order by March 1869. Across the county, the ranks of the White 

Brotherhood, part of the KKK insurgent network, swelled to more than 700 

members, accounting for “slightly more than one-half of the county’s white 

voters. The membership included the county sheriff and 11 deputies.”33 The 

local Republican mayor attempted to counter the growing threat with a biracial 

night watch program. In response, “80 members of the White Brotherhood 

paraded en regalia through the streets of Graham, the county seat, and fired 

into homes of several blacks. The [insurgents] then formed a line in front of a 

prominent Republican’s house and warned him they would be out for blood 

on their next visit.”34 The episode impelled the county magistrates to request 

state militia assistance, but by December 1869, the county “tottered on the 

brink of anarchy.”35

To defend against the KKK and other insurgent groups, southern states 

received federal permission to raise militias, a right lost under the provisions 

of the Reconstruction Act of 1867.36 After receiving congressional approval, 

the South Carolina legislature approved the formation of a state militia in 

1869, less than one year after reinstatement, but “when white men refused to 

serve with freedmen, the militia effectively became black.” By the 1870 election 
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

40

day, the South Carolina militia swelled to 90,000 members.37 The militia’s 

rapid expansion created an “escalating arms race” as insurgent organizations 

expanded to keep pace, threatening “a race war on the back roads of South 

Carolina” between 1869 and 1871.38 Across the South, “the sight of armed 

black men intensified white southerners’ reaction to Republican rule.”39 The 

upcountry war concluded, for a time, with passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act in 

April 1871 and Grant’s decision to intervene with federal troops. 

The reprieve from violence was short-lived. Renewed clashes between 

Republican state militias and Democrat-supported insurgent groups dominated southern politics from 1872 to 1876 where the Republican Party 

retained political authority. In Louisiana, where “every election between 1868 

and 1876 was marked by rampant violence and pervasive fraud,” John McEnery, 

the defeated gubernatorial candidate and southern Democrat, raised his own 

militia in March 1873 and unsuccessfully attempted to seize control of New 

Orleans police stations in response to the “much-disputed 1872 election.”40 By 

1874 “many [locally Redeemed] white parishes [in Louisiana] refused to pay 

taxes or otherwise recognize the authority of the [Republican] state government.”41 During the 1874 and 1876 elections, insurgents instigated “calculated 

insurrection” and race riots “in time to keep Republicans from the polls but 

too late for Washington to send regulars to police the voting.”42 Throughout 

the 1870s, Republican state militias proved incapable of providing adequate 

security without a robust federal military presence.

In Afghanistan, indigenous security took a different path but arrived at a 

similar end. The US decision to support local warlords as a less expensive 

means to maintain security perpetuated violence. Rural tribal leaders, local 

farmers, and law enforcement remained subordinate to warlord will, bound 

by financial debt, honor, or ethnic loyalty. The UN militia disarmament program in 2003 and concurrent efforts to include local strongmen in the nation’s 

jirga process achieved some degree of marginal political success, but warlords 

retained their localized authority. With US financial backing squarely behind 

ready-made rural militias, initial attempts to build a national army and retrain the existing national police force proved inadequate to face the Taliban 

insurgency that emerged in 2005. 

The ANA and Afghan National Police (ANP) were the focal point of coalitionsponsored indigenous security efforts. As with southern militias after 1868, 

ISAF coalition nations trained a national military and police force to provide 

order and stability, with the United States and Germany directing ANA and 

ANP development, respectively. Under the Bonn II Agreement in December 

2002, the Afghan government and ISAF coalition agreed to an ethnically 

balanced, all volunteer ANA of no more than 70,000 soldiers.43 However, a 
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

41

series of problems crippled ANA development: ethnic imbalance favored an 

overwhelming Tajik presence at the expense of Pashtun participation; early 

recruiting difficulties meant only 10,000 Afghans joined in 2003; corruption 

and drug abuse were rampant; and trainee desertion reached 22 percent in 

2003.44 Furthermore, the ANA ethnic imbalance negated its legitimacy in 

southern and eastern Pashtun-dominant regions, similar to the effect of allblack state militias among the southern Democrat population. Due to cascading 

setbacks, the initial estimate of 70,000 proved drastically insufficient without 

the assistance of a competent ANP force.45

In addition to many of the same woes that beset the ANA, warlord influence and a lack of commitment by international donors plagued the fledgling 

ANP. The warlords’ interference principally concerned their financial stake in 

the Afghan drug trade. Coveted ANP “positions such as police chiefs in 

poppy-producing districts were auctioned off to the highest bidder [with a] 

going rate of $100,000 for a six-month appointment.”46 With a paltry investment of $12 million per year, European ISAF members attempted to retrain 

the preexisting 70,000 ANP personnel who maintained firm loyalties to local 

warlords rather than the Afghan state.47 By 2005 initial efforts proved to be an 

abject failure; only 41 officers and 2,583 noncommissioned officers graduated 

from Kabul’s police academy.48 Consequently, the United States assumed sole 

oversight for ANP and ANA development after 2005 as Taliban insurgents 

gained clear footholds across the periphery. By 2006 Afghan and coalition 

governments hatched a community-based security scheme to counter slow 

ANA and ANP progress. 

Two initiatives attempted to recapture the success of Zahir Shah’s arbakai

program, the first in 2006 and the second in 2010.49 In 2006 the Afghan 

National Auxiliary Police (ANAP) program sought the same security benefits 

achieved by Union League militias during Presidential Reconstruction. 

Governors from 21 provinces in eastern and southern Afghanistan recruited 

over 11,000 men with one-year contracts, but the program failed and in some 

cases exacerbated problems. The Afghan government terminated the ANAP 

program in 2008, but by mid-August 2010, the ANAP was reborn as the 

Afghan Local Police (ALP) initiative. The revived program armed 13,000 

Afghan militiamen in areas not patrolled by the ANP, with a goal of 30,000 by 

2014.50 As with its ANAP predecessor, and southern initiatives like the Graham, 

North Carolina, night watch program, the ALP has offered little real security value. 

In both the South and Afghanistan, community-based security measures 

were widely employed and likely induced more societal instability than they 

resolved. Locally initiated security measures, like the Union League militias, 

frightened unaffiliated whites and induced added chaos into a fractured 
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

42

South. The infamous Nathan Bedford Forrest cited the growth of Union 

League militias as his impetus for joining the KKK.51 Similarly, the ANAP and 

ALP initiatives rearmed suppressed warlord militias, marginalized central 

government authority in rural areas, and revived old tribal and ethnic conflicts rather than improving security. In each case, indigenous security forces 

were not sufficient to prevent insurgent violence. Both southern militias and 

the ANA were arguably less capable than their battle-hardened adversary and 

consequently poorly suited to fill the void created by withdrawing foreign 

security forces. Additionally, both entities were largely ethnically homogenous 

to the exclusion of the ethnic majority, southern whites, and Pashtuns. Finally, 

in both instances, the growth of inadequate indigenous security forces provided justification for the drawdown of external security personnel.

Autonomous Society: Support of Outside Security Assistance

In 1865 and 2002 the US government sought a minimalist role for its military, but in each case, military responsibilities encompassed far more than the 

population’s physical security. Although the specific chronology regarding 

force size differs between cases, symmetry exists concerning initial indigenous support, role diversity, and the transition of security responsibilities to 

local security personnel. 

An exhausted South hoped for peace in the immediate aftermath of war, 

but the period of goodwill was short-lived. Opting for peace over anarchy, 

southern whites ignored Jefferson Davis’s plea for a continued guerilla war 

after April 1865.52 Exhaustion quickly yielded to shock as emancipation, economic ruin, and the death of 20 percent of the southern white male population recast southern social structure overnight. Former slaveholders lashed 

out against freedmen and Freedman’s Bureau personnel alike. With no federal 

legal protection, “southerners frequently insulted and sometimes assaulted 

soldiers, and filed scores of damage suits in state courts against federal military personnel.”53 Similarly, the once imposing federal military force of one 

million troops evaporated to 38,000 by the fall of 1866 and a mere 8,038 by 

1871, as wartime volunteer enlistments expired and northern military interests 

shifted west.54 As federal troop levels declined, remaining forces garrisoned in 

urban centers, entrusting peripheral security to indigenous means. Consequently, southern Democrat and ex-Confederate resistance gradually overwhelmed support from southern unionists, carpetbaggers, and freedmen after 

1867. The federal troops remaining in the South by 1868 were simply no 

match for Forrest’s Klansmen, even if they numbered considerably less than 

the 550,000 he claimed.55
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

43

Despite the precipitous decline, Congress asked Army personnel to perform increasingly varied and conflicting tasks during Radical Reconstruction. 

To fulfill their initial charge to oversee all “economic, legal and political affairs 

of former slaves,” the Freedman’s Bureau worked with state and local law enforcement to maintain order.56 Subsequent congressional passage of the 1867 

Reconstruction Act instituted martial law and subjugated state and local governance to military authority. Consequently, the Army assumed responsibility 

for more than its conventional security role.57 Military governors and Freedman’s Bureau officials balanced two conflicting priorities: protecting the 

rights of freedmen and resuscitating the destitute southern economy. Convinced that restoration of the agrarian economy was the only way to avert 

mass starvation, Freedman’s Bureau officials sided with southern planters’ 

demands and forced freedmen to return to antebellum plantations under 

one-year labor contracts.58 Additionally, Congress expected military leaders 

to implement federal policy and maintain the peace while reconciling with 

ex-Confederates.59 In modern lexicon, the occupation Army engaged in a 

nation-building program it was ill equipped to perform.

States officially assumed responsibility for governance and security after 

rejoining the Union, but federal troops continued to project federal influence 

until the return of Redeemer Democrats and the resulting decline of insurgent activity. In states such as North Carolina, the transition occurred in the 

early 1870s, and by the middle of the decade, federal officers were welcomed 

back into “polite society” and “federal troops were marching beside Confederate veterans in memorial rituals.”60 Conversely, federal troops continued to 

suppress race riots and voter intimidation efforts across Mississippi through 

1876. In Louisiana and South Carolina, where Redeemer movements lagged 

at the state level, federal troops surrounded both statehouses to protect Republican governors until Reconstruction’s bitter conclusion, only withdrawing under direct order from Hayes. The postwar occupation of federal troops, 

expected to end in 1865, continued for 12 indecisive years. In hindsight, 

Democrats complained that federal troops were too involved, and Republicans 

thought they could have done more. Similar political contrasts cast a shadow 

over the role of coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The Union’s desire to withdraw federal troops by the end of 1865 matched 

the United States’ reluctance to commit substantial ground forces in Afghanistan until 2006, despite broad Afghan support for a robust presence in the 

aftermath of war. ISAF personnel were immensely popular in Kabul during 

2002. Their presence brought security; they “built goodwill with foot patrols, 

helping local communities and befriending citizens in a way unheard of by 

Kabul police.”61 The coalition did not capitalize on this fortune, holding firm 
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

44

to its initial commitment of 8,000 ground troops for security in and around 

Kabul and Kandahar.62

Operation Anaconda, the signature engagement of early 2002, employed 

slightly more than 1,000 US Soldiers and an equal number of Afghan militiamen to oust Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters from the Shahi Kot valley in the 

high mountains near Gardez.63 By summer 2002, coalition nations addressed 

the rural security void by financing 45,000 warlord militiamen to maintain 

order and assist with locating al-Qaeda operatives, rather than commit to a 

larger presence on the ground.64

The coalition’s “light footprint” strategy supported a governance structure 

and diverse military role that bore a strong resemblance to the South during 

Radical Reconstruction. In 2004 coalition nations divided Afghanistan into 

geographic regions. The international coalition assumed responsibility for 

security in the northern region in the fall of 2004 and within two years oversaw security nationwide, but did so without sizable combat forces.65 Within 

each region, the military commander maintained control over all security 

forces and provisional reconstruction teams (PRT). Originated by the United 

States in 2004, PRTs combined civilian and military personnel within selfsufficient groups designed to promote security and reconstruction, improve 

local governance, and assist nongovernmental organizations in rural areas.66

PRTs attempted to extend stability without appearing as an occupation force. 

By comparison, PRTs were a more formalized means of achieving what was 

attempted by the disjointed efforts of Freedman’s Bureau and garrison soldiers 

and northern philanthropists and social activists who flooded the South in 

1865 and 1866 to teach freedmen and support their political awakening.

Failure of the “light footprint” strategy to quell the Taliban insurgency was 

a catalyst for two troop increases in 2008 and again in 2009 and 2010. In 2008 

a revised US and coalition commitment to Afghanistan included a troop-level 

increase to roughly 38,000 US and 30,000 coalition forces. An additional increase in 2009 and the more famous 2010 surge elevated the US commitment 

to more than 100,000 troops, including 1,050 US government civilians, while 

coalition nations contributed in excess of 41,000.67 Although the sheer numbers 

belie a direct comparison, the intent and success of the cumulative troop increase by presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama mirrored Grant’s 

1871 decision to intervene directly against the KKK insurgency in South 

Carolina with federal troops and indirectly in North Carolina and elsewhere 

with federally supplied arms and material. Finally, the new strategy incorporated substantial monetary commitments from the international community and a political timeline for transition and withdrawal of US and 

coalition forces.
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

45

Political negotiations set a December 2014 deadline for transfer of ISAF 

security responsibilities to the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) and 

official withdrawal of all US and coalition combat forces. As of August 2012, 

Afghans remained “deeply skeptical” that the ANSF would be able to fill the 

post-2014 security void, as ANA and ANP progression continued to lag projections.68 Despite concerns, the revitalized US-led training mission increased 

and improved ANSF security training and grew the combined Afghan force 

to 352,000 members by October 2012. Consequently, the ANSF assumed 

security responsibilities for 87 percent of the Afghan population by the start 

of 2013, though the remaining 13 percent represented the most highly contested eastern and southern provinces.69

As with the South, the security transition in Afghanistan occurred piecemeal when and where the political situation permitted. Similarly, popular 

support for reconstruction decreased over time in both cases, as cultural 

desires for autonomy and dislike of foreign intervention outpaced fears of 

insecurity. In the South, an early decision to avoid anarchy and accept the 

presence of federal troops gave way to the cold realization and associated fear 

that the society risked irrevocable change. In Afghanistan, cumulative civilian 

deaths, totaling nearly 12,000 from 2007 to 2011, and recent incidents, including the incidental burning of Korans at Bagram AB in February 2012 and 

the alleged Kandahar massacre one month later, substantially damaged the 

relationship between coalition forces and the civilian populace they protected.70 Diplomatic relations between the US and Afghan governments were 

stressed further in March 2013 after Karzai accused US officials of conspiring 

with Taliban leaders in advance of the planned withdrawal. Finally, military 

forces performed a variety of tasks during both reconstruction periods without sufficient resources. The increased international commitment in 2009 

improved the security in the same way that Grant’s 1871 surge uprooted insurgency in South Carolina and elsewhere. 

Conclusion

Tremendous symmetry existed between the security situations during reconstruction of the South and Afghanistan. Each case followed an analogous 

path of lawlessness and insurgency, with the South eventually achieving 

political reconciliation. The lack of reliable security across the rural South and 

the Afghan periphery permitted the rise of an insurgency that gripped each 

population in years of bloody guerilla warfare. In both cases, militias not beholden to state leadership were the primary source of peripheral security during 

the state of lawlessness while externally sourced military units were con-
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

46

centrated in urban centers. Additionally, locally based security apparatuses 

offset the inadequate presence of permanent security forces during the insurgency period. The renewed financial and force commitments of 2006 and 

2009 were not matched in the South, but in both cases, military forces performed expansive nation building functions, providing security in addition to 

assisting with governance and the rule of law. Furthermore, the erosion of 

support among the southern and Afghan populations for foreign involvement 

coincided with an equally faded interest among northerners and the international community. In the South, the significance of federal troops waned as 

security improved with political stability and the return of Democrats to political office. In Afghanistan, the ISAF’s security role decreased as bettertrained Afghan forces gradually accepted responsibility for localities and 

regions where the situation was most permissible. 

The most germane symmetry, however, was the level of security itself. 

Despite the ongoing insurgency and widespread popular discontent with 

governance during Radical Reconstruction and the post-2005 Karzai regime, 

the sizable presence of indigenous and foreign security forces lent an artificial 

legitimacy to relatively dysfunctional governance. In the case of the South, 

state legislatures failed to capitalize politically on the opportunity afforded by 

the security apparatus. Instead, political corruption and failed economic 

policies legitimized Democratic opposition and ushered in the end of Reconstruction. In Afghanistan, similar corruption and insufficient economic 

progress eroded popular support for a weak regime in Kabul, encouraging the 

spread of Taliban shadow governments throughout the periphery. 

Notes

1. Foner, Reconstruction, 443.

2. Carter, When the War Was Over, 20.

3. Ibid., 21.

4. Ibid., 15.

5. Foner, Reconstruction, 121.

6. Bradley, Bluecoats & Tar Heels, 3. 

7. Foner, Reconstruction, 119.

8. Martinez, Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan, 7.

9. Ibid., 3.

10. Ibid., 21.

11. Foner, Reconstruction, 442.

12. Millet and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 260.

13. Foner, Reconstruction, 454–58.

14. Millet and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 260.

15. Richardson, Death of Reconstruction, 142.
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

47

16. Millet and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 261.

17. Kelly, Bensahel, and Oliker, Security Force Assistance, 18 and 27.

18. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 199.

19. Kelly, Bensahel, and Oliker, Security Force Assistance, 34–35. The book references a US 

Government Accountability Office report, GAO-08-661, “Afghanistan Security: Further Congressional Action May Be Needed to Ensure Completion of a Detailed Plan to Develop and 

Sustain Capable Afghan National Security Forces.” The United States spent $362.7 million in 

2003, $732.7 million in 2004, and $1.736 billion in 2005 to train the ANA.

20. Giustozzi, “Hearts, Minds, and the Barrel of a Gun,” 74. 

21. Kelly, Bensahel, and Oliker, Security Force Assistance, 39. Joseph Collins supports this assertion in Understanding War in Afghanistan, 72. Gulbuddin Hekmetyar’s Hezb-e Islami and Jalauddin Haqqani’s Haqqani Network comprise the rest of the insurgency. Often, Taliban incorrectly refers to all three groups.

22. Giustozzi, “Hearts, Minds, and the Barrel of a Gun,” 72.

23. Collins, Understanding War in Afghanistan, 72.

24. Ibid., 74.

25. Kelly, Bensahel, and Oliker, Security Force Assistance, 55. 

26. International Crisis Group, Afghanistan, 16 and 19.

27. Department of Defense, Report on Progress, 1.

28. Harooni, “Two Afghan Children Beheaded in Separate Incidents,” Reuters, 31 August 

2012, accessed 25 January 2013, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/31/us-afghanistan-beheading-child-idUSBRE87U0J420120831.

29. Semple, Farrell, Lieven, and Chaudhuri, Taliban Perspectives, 5. 

30. Wharton, “Negro and Politics,” 349.

31. Martinez, Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan, 113.

32. Foner, Reconstruction, 283–84.

33. Bradley, Bluecoats & Tar Heels, 208.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid., 212.

36. Millet and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 260–61.

37. Richardson, Death of Reconstruction, 90.

38. Martinez, Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan, 114.

39. Millet and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 260.

40. Foner, Reconstruction, 550.

41. Ibid.

42. Millet and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 261.

43. Kelly, Bensahel, and Oliker, Security Force Assistance, 24. 

44. Ibid., 24–25. Tajik warlord and Northern Alliance general Mohammed Fahim became 

the first Afghan Defense Minister to guarantee his loyalty to the Karzai government. Fahim 

appointed Tajiks to 33 of 36 division chief positions, alienating the Pashtun population.

45. According to NATO, the ANA contains 178,501 members as of December 2012—a 

250 percent increase over the 2002 coalition estimate. http://www.nato.int/nato_static/assets/

pdf/pdf_2012_12/20121205-ansf-backgrounder-en.pdf.

46. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 328.

47. Kelly, Bensahel, and Oliker, Security Force Assistance, 31. 

48. Ibid., 29–30. 

49. Hulsander and Spivey, “Village Stability Operations,” 127.
ANALYSIS OF SECURITY FACTORS

48

50. House Armed Services Committee, Afghan National Security Forces. 

51. Martinez, Carpetbaggers, Cavalry, and the Ku Klux Klan, 20.

52. Carter, When the War Was Over, 23.

53. Millet and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 258.

54. Foner, Reconstruction, 148.

55. Millet and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 260.

56. Ibid., 257.

57. Dunning, “Military Government in the South,” 386.

58. Foner, Reconstruction, 153-4.

59. Bradley, Bluecoats & Tar Heels, 5.

60. Ibid.

61. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 135.

62. Collins, Understanding War in Afghanistan, 50.

63. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 101.

64. Ibid., 136.

65. Collins, Understanding War in Afghanistan, 64.

66. Ibid., 64–65.

67. Ibid., 84.

68. House Armed Services Committee, Afghan National Security Forces, 1–2.

69. Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), Statement by Secretary Panetta.

70. Chesser, Afghanistan Casualties, 3.
49

Chapter 5

Analysis of Economic Factors

Southern and Afghan societies emerged from civil war in bankruptcy. The 

Confederate states were $700 million in debt when the southern government 

collapsed in April 1865.1

 By comparison, when Karzai’s interim administration assumed control in late December 2001, the government treasury included a paltry $9 million in cash, provided by the UN start-up fund.2

 The 

physical destruction and psychological exhaustion of war proved far more 

devastating for both societies than anticipated by external observers. 

As we saw when we analyzed sociopolitical and security factors, examining 

the three societal traits common to the South and Afghanistan reveals tremendous economic symmetry during respective reconstruction periods. In 

both the South and Afghanistan, the opportunity to recast society proved 

overly optimistic as traditional class structures and engrained power relationships prevailed. Planter and merchant landowners in the South and warlords 

in Afghanistan retained a clear degree of autonomy and influence throughout 

reconstruction. Additionally, due to political instability and physical insecurity, both societies struggled to attract external private investors to their capitalstarved economies. Moreover, endemic government corruption squandered 

popular support and fed insurgency in each case. Measured, though uneven, 

economic progress across the South and Afghanistan eventually accompanied perceived improvements in political stability and security, despite 

these disadvantages. 

Class Structure: Powerbrokers Reemerge

The South and Afghanistan entered reconstruction in tatters, but destruction wrought by war did little to alter traditional relationships among classes 

in either society. Local power brokers, consisting of southern landowners and 

Afghan warlords, maintained authority over their poorer counterparts 

throughout the periphery. Additionally, in both circumstances, widespread 

corruption accompanied perceived financial progress. Corruption spurred 

popular discontent with dishonest officials and provided cause for sustained 

political opposition and insurgency.

The South emerged from the war bankrupt and physically devastated. Defeat 

and debt rendered Confederate bonds valueless and wiped out personal savings 

across the South. Consequently, bartering became the principle form of 
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

50

commerce.3 In Alabama, total property value that reached $432 million in 

1860 plummeted to $128 million by 1865.4

 Emancipation accounted for $200 

million of Alabama’s decline, based on the 435,000 slaves that comprised 45 

percent of its pre-Civil War population.5

 Alabama’s economic fate repeated 

itself across the South, though emancipation affected the Deep South substantially more than other regions. Despite plummeting property values, 

those with land and the ability to produce staple crops and foodstuffs held 

what power remained during the transition from war to reconstruction. Consequently, the New South’s 300,000 prior slaveholders and 3.5 million former 

slaves remained dependent on each other for survival in an agrarian-dominant 

society despite emancipation.6

 Civil war and emancipation “destroyed the old 

economic system but created nothing to replace it.”7

 Instead, national lawmakers supported the emergence of a free labor market, similar to the one 

used by the North. Antebellum landowners predominantly retained ownership of their prewar land holdings with the exception of the South Carolina, 

Georgia, and Florida coasts. Union general William Sherman confiscated and 

redistributed those states’ abandoned plantation lands to 40,000 freedmen.8

Thus, southern society entered into a free labor system that opposed 250 years 

of southern social identity without altering preexisting power relationships. 

Under the free labor system, plantation lords became the employers and 

freedmen their employees, but neither wished to cede control to the other. 

Landowners sought working conditions and social arrangements that resembled those of antebellum plantations. Comparatively, newly freed slaves desired 

fair compensation and viewed themselves as partners rather than subordinates in the agricultural enterprise. As a result, defeat thrust a free labor system 

upon a socially unprepared and unsupportive society.9

Although the financial devastation of war and subsequent economic crash 

crippled the antebellum planter class, wealthy landowners managed to retain 

a relative position of power over freedmen laborers and white yeoman farmers. 

As landowners, planters controlled the sources of production and the only 

viable means of economic recovery. Furthermore, a severe cash shortage and 

lack of centralized credit left no means for landowners to pay laborers, leading 

to agricultural share systems across the South.10 Under such arrangements, 

which were a precursor to sharecropping, laborers received compensation 

only after the season’s harvest. Labor contracts initially based on a flat-fee 

structure eventually gave way to agreements that tied wages to profits while 

crop prices plummeted. During poor growing seasons, planters, to avoid 

bankruptcy, routinely dismissed freedman laborers on trumped up criminal 

charges before collecting harvest profits. As Reconstruction progressed, freedmen temporarily increased their economic and political position in society, but 
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

51

the underlying pattern of sharecropping survived the Radical and Redeemer 

political transitions.

Redeemer Democrats rose to power in 1874 and 1876 following widespread government corruption during Radical Reconstruction and the depression it precipitated in 1873. Although both political parties had an equal 

part in corrupt behavior, as the majority political party, Republicans received 

the bulk of popular scorn after 1873.11 A widespread “get rich quick” mentality 

consumed many elected officials at every level of governance who “saw nothing 

wrong with taking a piece of the expanded economic pie.”12 Republican corruption associated with “railroad corporations formed a major part of the 

indictment brought against [Radical Reconstruction] legislatures.”13 The 

opportunities for bribery were numerous with the “expansion of public responsibilities and the rapid growth of capitalist enterprise.” Many legislators 

were directors of or held stock in the railroad companies receiving public monies.14

Railroad growth spurred the postwar economy, but its financial status 

relied on speculative credit and popular misperception. Despite extensive 

southern government spending, the railroad gap between the North and 

South worsened during Radical Reconstruction, and by 1876 more than 50 

percent of railroads were bankrupt.15 The iron industry met an identical fate; 

even the famed Richmond Tredegar Iron Works, one of few such industrial 

sites to survive the war, declared bankruptcy.16 As general unemployment 

rose, already low staple crop and land values tumbled. The 65 months that 

followed the September 1873 crash still marks the longest period of economic 

contraction in US history. Until the 1930s, the American public referred to 

the depression of 1873 as the Great Depression.17

As with the South, Afghanistan emerged from civil war bankrupt and 

physically devastated. Two decades of war cost Afghanistan an estimated 

$240 billion in destroyed infrastructure and lost developmental opportunities.18

Infrastructure that endured the Soviet occupation succumbed to either the 

Taliban or the five years of drought in the late 1990s. In the twilight of Taliban 

rule, every manmade structure from buildings to roads and power lines 

“looked like burned-out shells or upturned carcasses.”19 Previously lush agriculture tracts were awash with landmines; tens of millions of mines blanketed 

Afghanistan.20 Karzai’s $9 million treasury paled in comparison to the $200 

million required to fund modest salaries and keep the government afloat for 

the first six months.21 As in the South after Reconstruction, no banking 

system existed. In addition to bartering, three different currencies circulated 

across Afghanistan. The most widely used, Afghani, was virtually worthless, 

valued at 48,000 to one against the US dollar in 2001.
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

52

Regional warlords, with loyal indigenous militias and a steady supply of 

foreign monies provided to pursue al-Qaeda militants, monopolized power 

in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2003. The warlords also imposed local tariffs and 

manipulated illicit drug trafficking. Despite outwardly supporting the process 

that appointed Karzai’s interim cabinet, finite US political goals in Afghanistan 

translated to moderated financial support and a preference for local warlords 

over central governance.

US aid to Afghanistan totaled $908 million in 2002 and $970 million in 

2003.22 By comparison, US financial support to Pakistan during the same 

two-year period equaled $2 billion and $1.8 billion respectively.23 Instead, the 

United States utilized regional warlords in an effort to topple the al-Qaeda 

network still operating on the periphery without incurring a long-term and 

costly commitment to rebuild Afghanistan.24

After 2003, economic stagnation and continued peripheral violence convinced international donors, including the United States, to increase support 

for Karzai’s government with substantial military and financial investments. 

The resurgent central government, backed by a UN effort to disarm warlord 

militias, restored a more traditional urban-rural balance but was incapable of 

denuding rural warlord influence. Warlords continued to exploit tribal loyalties 

and poor rural economic conditions at the expense of central governance and 

Karzai’s legitimacy.

The opium trade, valued at 35 percent of Afghanistan’s gross national product 

by 2006, endured the transition from war to reconstruction.25 War-induced 

devastation, persistent drought, and the high economic return encouraged 

farmer involvement in poppy production.26 Beginning in the 1990s “farmers 

could mortgage their crop to dealers for a cash loan while dealers provided 

protection” and assisted with harvesting responsibilities.27 The opium trade 

funded soldiers, weapons, and food for most civil war participants, including 

some Northern Alliance factions.

By 2005 more than two million Afghan farmers grew poppy as their 

primary staple crop.28 The Taliban, who retained substantial influence in 

poppy-rich regions, relied on opium revenue as their primary funding source 

throughout the post-2001 insurgency, earning $300 million annually.29 By the 

2007 production peak, Afghanistan’s 477,000 acres of poppy supplied 92 percent 

of the world’s illegal opium, from which the Taliban derived 80 percent of the 

generated revenue while farmers received comparatively little.30 Consequently, 

the revenue sharing arrangement between Taliban leaders and poor Afghan 

farmers, one that drug traffickers and warlords similarly exploited in dealings 

with poor farmers, resembled the sharecropping agreements of the South.
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

53

As with the South, political officials aggressively exploited opportunities to 

profit personally while in power. The governor of Helmund Province, Sher 

Mohammed Akhunzada, was one of many accused of profiting from the 

opium trade. According to one account, British officials claimed Akhunzada 

set aside “prime real estate parcels and commanded hundreds of well-paid 

gunmen” to protect the poppy industry, gunning down local activists opposed 

to his efforts.31 In neighboring Kandahar, Gov. Yousof Pashtun complained 

that “corruption was rampant in the local administration” and local commanders, militias, and police committed 80 percent of the crime.32

Drug money also played a significant role in the 2005 parliamentary elections, where 17 known traffickers won electoral victory and another 24 elected 

members of parliament were associated with drug gangs.33 A January 2010 

survey conducted by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime “claimed that 59 percent of Afghan citizens indicated corruption as the most prominent problem” 

facing their nation. The same survey reported that 50 percent of Afghan 

citizens paid kickbacks to political officials. Nationally, bribes totaled $2.5 billion 

or one-quarter of the nation’s 2009 gross domestic product (GDP).34

The increased flow of foreign aid after 2003 also encouraged corruption. 

Despite international efforts to stem the flow of opium and tighten controls 

on foreign aid, as of 2012 Afghanistan ranked last in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, tied with North Korea and Somalia.35

Furthermore, extensive money laundering activities occurred at Kabul International Airport, where numerous Afghan power brokers and government 

officials shipped pallets of money in advance of the planned 2014 United States 

withdrawal.36 Following the course charted by southern Republicans, endemic 

government corruption fueled popular Afghan discontent with elected officials 

and served as the Taliban’s chief justification for continued insurgency.

Both societies emerged from civil war in economic ruin, but in both cases, 

traditional power relationships prevailed. Southern landowners and Afghan 

warlords maintained localized authority over poorer rural populations by 

retaining control over the primary means of autonomy. Additionally, the 

speculative credit that encouraged rapid railroad expansion in the South provided an artificial economic stimulus akin to foreign aid and illicit poppy production in Afghanistan. Finally, widespread government corruption that 

accompanied financial progress in both societies squandered public support 

and provided cause for continued insurgency. 
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

54

Societal Mosaic: Economic Stagnation

Predominantly homogenous agricultural economies proved highly volatile 

and provided little opportunity for poorer populations to elevate their economic status in the South and Afghanistan. The majority of both populations 

resided in rural areas, creating a dependence on agriculture and little growth 

in industrial capacity. Consequently, poverty persisted among traditionally 

poor groups. In the South, poverty following the economic depression of 

1873 bridged the racial divide, affecting both former slaves and white yeoman farmers. 

Agriculture dominated the southern economy despite industrial growth 

during Reconstruction. Entering the war, the South collectively possessed less 

industrial capacity than Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, or New York, and only 

42 percent more capacity than Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania.37 By 1869 

industrial measures across the South exceeded prewar levels, but over the 

course of Reconstruction, the South “lost ground dramatically in every major 

category of industrial vitality when compared to the United States as a 

whole.”38 Although some historians claim postwar planters intentionally delayed industrialization for their benefit, such notions ignore the South’s prewar 

industrial capacity and truly dire economic reality faced by state reconstruction governments.39

The South was in a far worse economic condition than most anticipated in 

April 1865. Many carpetbaggers who ventured south searching for profit or a 

new beginning returned home bankrupt by late 1866. Compounding the 

pressures of financial debt and physical devastation that confronted state 

legislatures, historically bad harvests in 1865 and 1866 crippled small yeoman farmers trying to rebuild and pay off wartime loans.40 In Louisiana, 1867 

marked the worst sugar harvest in 30 years.41 Aggregate southern property 

values declined 30 percent and average farms lost 50 percent valuation from 

1860 to 1870.42 Positive trends in agricultural production and property values 

between 1870 and 1872, along with railroad construction linking upcountry 

farms to commercial centers and the proliferation of better fertilizers, provided needed relief and hope, but these trends were short-lived.43 Economic 

depression in 1873 reversed economic gains and ended any hope for a great 

leap in southern industrial modernization during Reconstruction.44

The economic fate of former slaves, as with that of independent farmers, 

depended on agricultural profit. Although doubtful that southern planters 

intentionally delayed industrialization, traditional southern powerbrokers 

did promote a “road to economic modernization that would perpetuate their 

class hegemony,” thereby restricting the upward mobility of freedmen.45 Black 
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

55

codes enacted during Presidential Reconstruction limited “economic opportunities of former slaves to agricultural labor on farms and plantations owned 

by whites” while significant taxes were imposed on any freedman “engaged in 

skilled occupations.”46 Coincidentally, limited industrialization and prevalent 

“discriminatory hiring practices in mills and factories, meant that former 

slaves had relatively few nonfarm job opportunities.”47

Hoping for a rapid economic recovery, the decision by Freedman’s Bureau 

leaders to support landowner demands forced former slaves to return to previous places of servitude under one-year contracts and gang labor arrangements. In an extreme case, bureau officers arrested several hundred blacks in 

Richmond, Virginia, and sent them back to plantations under contract.48

Eventually, to the initial consternation of southern landowners, gang labor 

arrangements gave way to tenant labor agreements and measured autonomy 

for black farmers. 

The steady decline of land and staple crop prices forced black and white 

tenant farmers to borrow money from southern-born merchants. To pay off 

loans, merchants compelled tenant and independent farmers to grow cotton 

rather than more stable foodstuffs. Unfortunately, worldwide demand for cotton, 

which grew 5 percent annually from 1820 to 1860, increased by an average of 

only 1.3 percent annually between 1866 and 1895. Reduced demand led to 

increased stockpiles and lower prices during Reconstruction. Lower cotton 

prices in the wake of war meant that by 1867 less than 10 percent of southern 

black farmers earned enough to support their family.49

A similar progression from desired economic independence to servitude 

befell white yeoman farmers. Wartime and early Reconstruction–era loans 

included crop liens that merchants used to direct crop selection if payments 

were overdue. Therefore, widespread default forced many white farmers into 

the same tenant arrangements as former slaves. As cotton values continued to 

plummet, white farmers tumbled into an “economic status on par with freedmen.”50 Following economic collapse in 1873, the price of cotton bottomed 

out in 1877 at 50 percent of its 1872 peak.51 Rather than pursuing upward 

mobility, tenant farmers of both races remained trapped in a cycle of debt and 

servitude after 1873.

In Afghanistan, a disjointed economy was all that remained after two decades 

of civil war destroyed all modern transportation infrastructure and means of 

commerce. Consequently, by 2002 more than one million Afghans were starving.52 Although 80 percent of Afghan society derived its living from agriculture, 

just 12 percent of Afghan lands were arable, with irrigation infrastructure 

available to only 30 percent of the population.53 As a result, agricultural output 

dictated or limited Afghanistan’s economic progress, as measured by GDP. 
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

56

Since 2003, agricultural growth and decline have followed a sinusoidal path of 

positive and negative returns, alternating year to year. GDP, though remaining positive in an absolute sense, has followed an identical path of year-to-year 

relative growth and decay. At its trough, aggregate GDP growth of 1.1 percent 

from 2004 to 2005 coincided with a decline in agricultural output of more than 

20 percent. At its peak, a year-to-year national GDP increase of 21 percent from 

2009 to 2010 resulted from an agricultural output in excess of 40 percent.54

As with the South, Afghanistan’s persistent reliance on agriculture was not 

due to a lack of available industrial wealth, but was a result of poor confidence. Initial popular euphoria in 2002, supported by three million returning 

from the Afghan diaspora, gave way to political uncertainty by 2005. Worldwide confidence in Afghanistan’s business potential plummeted due to “insecurity, corruption, [and] poor governance.”55 Initial success resulted from 

the international shift from poppy eradication to agricultural alternatives in 

2009, targeting the 98 percent of Afghan poppy farmers who preferred growing legal staple crops.56 However, modest reductions in poppy production by 

2010 reversed in 2011 and 2012 when the number of poppy-producing provinces 

and overall production rates increased.57

In addition to serving as a principle source of corruption and financial support 

for insurgency, the tenant arrangement made farmers subservient to insurgents, 

drug traffickers, warlords, and government officials. The cumulative weight of 

$102.7 billion in foreign aid produced only tenuous economic progress between 

2010 and 2012, akin to the temporary southern gains from 1870 to 1872.58 As 

in the South, poverty became the natural condition for Afghan farmers.59

Even raising the average rural farmer’s standard of living to match “prewar 

conditions would still leave [Afghanistan] at the bottom of any development 

index.”60 Despite a nearly 300 percent growth in per capita GDP from $180 to 

$530 between 2002 and 2011, largely due to foreign aid, Afghanistan still 

ranked among the world’s 10 lowest according to the World Bank.61 As of 

2011, more than one third of the population lived below the poverty line and 

another 50 percent were at a high risk of falling into poverty.62

As with the South, poor governance exacerbated the effects of poverty. 

Similar to the Freedman’s Bureau’s decision to support planter demands for 

labor subordination to avert mass starvation, the US strategy based on financing local warlords in 2002 and 2003 as a means of defeating al-Qaeda propagated the subservience of the rural poor. Coincidently, the decision by most 

nongovernmental organizations to operate independently, rather than in 

coordination with Afghan government ministries, omitted the benefits associated with pooling resources to tackle an economic disaster too large for any 

single entity to resolve.63
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

57

As with Johnson’s laissez-faire approach to southern state support from 

1865 to 1866, the international community and provisional Afghan government missed an opportunity to improve broad economic conditions while 

security and public support were conducive. According to a joint Ministry of 

Finance and World Bank report in 2011, distributed aid “accrued disproportionately to provinces with less poverty and higher household incomes.”64 The 

majority of international aid that did reach poorer populations targeted “conflictaffected provinces” and, consequently, areas least able to translate financial 

assistance into sustainable economic growth.65

The South and Afghanistan emerged from civil war devoid of industrial 

capacity and dependent on homogeneous economies that rose and fell with 

agricultural production. Decisions made by outside agencies, the Freedmen’s 

Bureau and US policy makers in the South and Afghanistan respectively, tacitly 

perpetuated existing power relationships despite intentions to the contrary. 

Additionally, tenant farmer arrangements, better known as sharecropping, in 

the Reconstruction South bear a close resemblance to the financial relationships between poppy farmers and those who benefited more prominently 

from the poppy trade in Afghanistan. In both circumstances, poverty persisted 

through reconstruction. In the South, the effects of economic depression persevered for two decades. As of February 2013, foreign donor contributions that 

account for 95 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP were a crutch that appeared to 

stave off a similar economic collapse, one repeated throughout Afghanistan’s 

rentier-state history.66

Autonomous Society: Powerbrokers and External Investment

Economically, the autonomous traditions of both societies were manifested by the persistent strength of rural powerbrokers relative to centralized 

authority and perpetuated by shared difficulties with securing private economic investment. The comparable influence of southern planters and merchants on the one hand and Afghan warlords on the other stemmed from 

similar population distributions. Ninety percent and 80 percent of southern 

and Afghan societies, respectively, resided in rural areas, beyond the direct 

influence of central governance.67

Southern planters transitioned from “laborlords” under the antebellum 

slave labor system to “landlords” with Reconstruction-era free labor arrangements.68 From a callous planter’s perspective, the principal difference was that 

under the former, slaves were financial collateral, but with the latter, freedmen 

no longer held intrinsic financial value. Instead, freedmen, as with any free 

market employee, were valued for their level of production relative to the cost 
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

58

of their labor. The initial 33 percent drop in available labor after April 1865, 

when women and children withdrew from the labor force, gave tremendous 

collective power to male freedmen laborers who saw themselves as partners 

in production rather than subordinates.69 Their negotiating advantage, however, was short-lived.

The lack of employment alternatives available to former slaves, the Freedmen’s Bureau intervention on behalf of planters, and the inability of planters 

to pay consistent wages produced the southern sharecropping system. Sharecropping arrangements broke from the one-year gang labor contracts that 

required the same hours and working conditions imposed under slavery.70

Freedmen preferred the new arrangement because it offered greater familial 

autonomy, allowing the family unit to serve as the core element on production. Conversely, the system ensured that landowners retained authority over 

all means of production, including land and equipment. Without ownership 

and with no centralized source of federally supplied credit, the economic fate 

of sharecropping families rested squarely with the landowner. Although 

sharecropping was a natural economic evolution given the constraints in capital 

and employment alternatives, it perpetuated class disparity and empowered 

localized land aristocrats along the South’s former plantation belt.71

Southern-born merchants joined traditional land-owning planters in gaining 

immense local influence. Merchants flocked to towns across the South, creating 

regional economic monopolies by providing loans to destitute black and 

white farmers at exorbitant interest rates.72 With no formal banking and credit 

system, merchants gained extensive influence when state governments decided 

not to pass laws absolving wartime debts out of fear that such debtor-relief 

legislation might scare off prospective outside investors. Merchants purchased 

vast tracts of farmland to parse out to black and white sharecropping families 

in rural districts at bargain prices while land values were in sharp decline.73

Collectively, rural planters and merchants consolidated the South’s agricultural base. The lack of northern investment and the persistence of peripheral 

agrarian dominance ensured that power in the South remained in traditional 

southern hands.

Few northern capitalists desired to “place their money in a war-torn, unsettled” South.74 During Presidential Reconstruction, southern property owners 

and merchants offered investment opportunities to northern capitalists, but 

few were enticed. Although southern Democrats later reviled northern carpetbaggers during Radical Reconstruction, they recognized in the immediate 

aftermath of war that northern capital, “[raised] land prices and [rescued] 

many former slaveholders from debt.”75 One Boston cotton merchant, Edward 

S. Tobey, testified before the Boston Board of Trade in 1865 that the South’s 
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

59

capital deficiency was so severe that southern planters made frequent requests 

of “Northern capitalists to invest in cotton lands at low prices.”76 Yet, despite 

carpetbagger contributions, private capital failed to arrive in the amount 

needed to spark economic recovery.77

In spite of the obvious need for capital and the potential for high returns on 

investment, both planters and capitalists recognized that southern petitions 

were futile so long as the political climate remained unsettled. During Presidential Reconstruction, the delayed readmission of states into the Union and 

the imposition of “semimilitary rule” were problematic. The South Carolina 

legislature exempted “manufacturers from all state and local taxation, but 

failed to attract northern capital partly because of the uncertainties of Reconstruction.”78 Subsequently, Radical Reconstruction brought political upheaval, 

insurgency, and severe security concerns.

Ironically, the depression of 1873 finally induced northern capitalists to 

invest in the South with the return of traditional southern Democrat governments, the localized end of insurgency, retrenched economic policies of lower 

taxation, and restrained spending. Among the many investors, northern industrialists, such as Collis P. Huntington, purchased and consolidated all 

southern railroads that fell into receivership.79 As perceived political stability 

returned with Redeemer Democrats, “northerners invested huge sums in 

southern factories, mines, railroads, and real estate,” but those investments 

were neither sufficiently early nor substantive enough to alleviate the effects 

of depression.80

As with southern planters and merchants, Afghan warlords exerted dominant influence over a predominantly rural society during reconstruction. In 

2002 money and power resided with the principal group of warlords who 

repelled Soviet forces in the 1980s and battled the Taliban through the late 

1990s rather than the newly appointed and unproven central government in 

Kabul. Two decades of war eroded the influence of transient Kabul governments, shifting the power balance squarely in favor of peripheral autonomy. 

During the lengthy warring period, warlords gradually earned the loyalty and 

often indebtedness of tribal elders who depended on them for protection and 

economic survival.

In the wake of war, warlords perpetuated wartime economic fiefdoms, taxing 

local populations under their protection and erecting checkpoints along trade 

routes to impose customs tariffs on commerce. In 2002 interstate trade produced an estimated $500 million in customs revenue across Afghanistan, but 

only $80 million reached the national treasury in Kabul.81 Ismail Khan, Herat’s 

principal warlord, earned $160,000 daily from Iranian and Turkmen commercial traffic, while northern warlords profited from the extraction and sale 
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

60

of minerals to Central Asian buyers.82 In poppy-rich regions, warlords either 

protected or participated directly in the opium industry, despite centralized 

efforts to curb production.

Warlords extended localized influence to national institutions over the 

course of Karzai’s administration. With the added financial backing of the 

international community in 2002 and 2003, many warlords tried to intimidate constitutional jirga candidates and even sought lucrative political appointments within the national government. In exchange for prestigious government positions, Karzai’s 2009 reelection campaign “recruited so many of 

Afghanistan’s old warlords to his banner that one might have thought the 

election was being held in 2002.”83 From their newly acquired national and 

provincial political positions, peripheral warlords positioned themselves to 

benefit personally from more than $102 billion in cumulative foreign financial 

aid and growing private commercial interests. An early 2012 agreement with 

the China National Petroleum Company to develop oil fields in the Amu 

Darya basin, valued at $3 billion, also included a local Afghan partner firm 

owned by relatives of Karzai.84

Despite the apparent flood of foreign aid, Afghanistan struggled early to 

entice private investors.85 Well-documented political uncertainty, corruption, 

and poor security mirrored the issues faced across the Reconstruction South. 

To attract foreign investment, Afghan officials, including Karzai, routinely 

attended international donor conferences. The officials also included language in the 2005 national constitution that prohibited discrimination against 

foreign-owned business interests.86 Afghanistan’s first significant private 

investor, Coca Cola, constructed a $25 million Kabul bottling factory in 2006, 

where Afghan security and infrastructure were the most reliable.87

In 2007 the Afghan government signed its most lucrative agreement to 

date, a $3 billion contract with the China Metallurgical Group to develop and 

mine the Mes Aynak Copper Field.88 Unfortunately, by 2012 the venture had 

not begun in earnest due to an active Taliban insurgency in the region.89 As 

with the Chinese copper venture, the slow pace of infrastructure development 

dictated that commercial interests in Afghanistan’s mineral, natural gas, or 

petroleum wealth be accompanied by a substantive private investment in railroads, roads, and power generation facilities.90

As security improved, third parties such as the Asian Development Bank 

(ADB) took a greater interest in Afghanistan’s potential role as a regional contributor and bridge between the Central and Southeast Asian economies. 

Through the Central Asia Regional Economic Development Program, in late 

2011 the ADB announced its plan to fund the Turkmenistan-AfghanistanPakistan-India petroleum and natural gas pipeline project, derailed in 1998 
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

61

by the Taliban’s egregious human rights violations.91 The ADB also provided 

$165 million to complete Afghanistan’s first railroad line, a 45-mile stretch 

connecting Mazar-e-Sharif with Uzbekistan and the Soviet-built Central Asia 

railway network.92 Despite the apparent progress in attracting foreign investors, 

Afghanistan still ranked 160 out of 183 according to the World Bank’s 2012 

Doing Business scale, in part because “working-level government officials 

have exhibited anti-competitive and protectionist bias in some sectors in 

which state-owned enterprises are active.”93

Finally, in a twist of historical symmetry, both the South and Afghanistan 

searched for economic recovery in the midst of broader economic decline. 

The depression of 1873 further curtailed the flow of federal funds and the 

general availability of investment capital eight years after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, Virginia. Similarly, the global recession of 2008 confounded international efforts to resurrect Afghanistan’s economy seven years 

after Northern Alliance forces expelled the Taliban from Kabul. In both cases, 

economic hardships endured by those providing external support resulted in 

a devaluation of social changes deemed important at the beginning of reconstruction and a general decline in international enthusiasm.

In the South and Afghanistan, local powerbrokers exercised significant 

economic influence over predominantly rural populations throughout reconstruction while retaining a sizable degree of economic autonomy relative to 

limited central government authority. Similarly, physical security and political 

stability were necessary precursors to private economic investments in infrastructure and industrial capacity during both reconstruction periods. Without stable political governance and reliable security, private sector investors 

were largely unwilling to assume risk in the immediate aftermath of either 

civil war. Potential investors were similarly leery following the emergence of 

active insurgencies in both cases. Consequently, economic development did 

not occur swiftly or uniformly across either downtrodden society and in 

many instances was more apparent than real. 

Conclusion

Southern and Afghan societies were economically devastated from civil 

war, underpinning a symmetric economic progression during reconstruction. Despite an apparent opportunity to recast traditional class structures, 

circumstances in the South and Afghanistan merely reinforced preexisting 

distinctions and power disparities. Southern planters and merchants as well 

as Afghan warlords retained possession of the principle means of peripheral 

autonomy. Consequently, each group negotiated postwar power arrangements, 
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

62

with the tacit assistance of external influence, from relative positions of 

strength. In the South, poverty persisted among freedmen and engulfed many 

white yeoman farmers due to sharecropping arrangements with planters and 

merchants. In Afghanistan, the rural poor’s reliance on warlords for employment and protection during war translated to dependence during reconstruction in much the same manner. In both cases, recovery and diversification of 

predominantly homogenous, agricultural economies accompanied the first 

tentative steps toward political stability and security, though neither economy 

escaped its dependence on agriculture. Preexisting infrastructure, devastated 

by civil war, remained woefully underdeveloped throughout both reconstruction periods, making private investment and industrial growth exceedingly 

difficult. As a result, progress was neither swift nor uniform in either the 

South or Afghanistan.

Notes

1. Carter, When the War Was Over, 70.

2. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 178.

3. Foner, Reconstruction, 125.

4. Bond, “Social and Economic Forces,” 378. 

5. Department of the Interior, Population of the United States, 8.

6. McKenzie, “Southern Labor and Reconstruction,” 368.

7. Woodman, “Reconstruction of the Cotton Plantation,” 367.

8. Foner, Reconstruction, 159.

9. Woodman, “Reconstruction of the Cotton Plantation,” 367.

10. McKenzie, “Southern Labor and Reconstruction,” 375.

11. Foner, Reconstruction, 387.

12. Ibid., 384–85.

13. Dunning, “Military Government in the South,” 393–94.

14. Foner, Reconstruction, 385.

15. Goodrich, “Public Aid to Railroads,” 438.

16. Foner, Reconstruction, 535.

17. Ibid., 512–13.

18. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 63.

19. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 171–72.

20. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 34.

21. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 178.

22. Katzman, Afghanistan, 69.

23. Epstein and Kronstadt, Pakistan, 19.

24. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 177.

25. Glaze, Opium and Afghanistan, 5.

26. Ibid., 3.

27. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 318. 

28. Ibid.
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

63

29. Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, “Warlord, Inc.,” 39.

30. Glaze, Opium and Afghanistan, v; and Alissa J. Rubin and Matthew Rosenberg, “U.S. 

Efforts Fail to Curtail Trade in Afghan Opium,” New York Times, 26 May 2012, accessed 14 

February 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/asia/drug-traffic-remains-as-usnears-afghanistan-exit.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&.

31. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 322.

32. Ibid., 323.

33. Ibid., 329.

34. Saikal, Modern Afghanistan, 257.

35. Transparency International, “2012 Corruption Perception Index.”

36. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 76.

37. Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society, 7.

38. Ibid., 10.

39. Coclanis and Marler, “Economics of Reconstruction,” 352.

40. McKenzie, “Southern Labor and Reconstruction,” 370.

41. Foner, Reconstruction, 131.

42. Ibid., 25.

43. Ibid., 393.

44. Ibid., 535.

45. McKenzie, “Southern Labor and Reconstruction,” 377.

46. Ibid., 368.

47. Ibid., 369.

48. Foner, Reconstruction, 154.

49. Ibid., 141.

50. McKenzie, “Southern Labor and Reconstruction,” 381.

51. Foner, Reconstruction, 535.

52. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 178.

53. Ibid., 174.

54. World Bank, Afghanistan in Transition, 4.

55. Ibid., 6.

56. Glaze, Opium and Afghanistan, 10.

57. Katzman, Afghanistan, 18. Poppy-producing provinces increased from 14 to 17 between 2011 and 2012. The average poppy producing regions also grew to 18 percent of arable 

acreage from 2011 to 2012.

58. Ibid., 61 and 75.

59. Collins, Understanding the War in Afghanistan, 12.

60. Barfield, Afghanistan, 315.

61. Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Towards a Self-Sustaining Afghanistan, 5.

62. World Bank, Afghanistan in Transition, 1.

63. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 181.

64. Briefing, “Transition in Afghanistan,” Slide 22. 

65. World Bank, Afghanistan in Transition, 17.

66. Katzman, Afghanistan, 60.

67. Ibid., 69; and McKenzie, “Southern Labor and Reconstruction,” 370.

68. Coclanis and Marler, “Economics of Reconstruction,” 353. 
ANALYSIS OF ECONOMIC FACTORS

64

69. Foner, Reconstruction, 139.

70. Ibid., 135.

71. Coclanis and Marler, “Economics of Reconstruction,” 352.

72. McKenzie, “Southern Labor and Reconstruction,” 373.

73. Hahn, “Class and State,” 453.

74. Coben, “Northeastern Business and Radical Reconstruction,” 100.

75. Foner, Reconstruction, 137.

76. Coben, “Northeastern Business and Radical Reconstruction,” 102.

77. Foner, Reconstruction, 391.

78. Coben, “Northeastern Business and Radical Reconstruction,” 101.

79. Foner, Reconstruction, 535–36.

80. Coben, “Northeastern Business and Radical Reconstruction,” 100–01.

81. Rashid, Descent into Chaos, 186.

82. Ibid., 187.

83. Barfield, Afghanistan, 331.

84. Katzman, Afghanistan, 71.

85. Ministry of Finance, Donor Financial Review, 4. Although the apparent flood of foreign government aid to Afghanistan appears problematic for an economic comparison between cases, a per annum comparison in 2002 dollars proves otherwise. An evaluation of 

postwar per capita US government expenditures relative to combined per capita foreign donor support for Afghanistan shows reconstruction progressed at a relative deficit in the immediate aftermath of war. The per capita investment average of $57 in 2002 and 2003 was far 

below the normalized US government per capita budget of $165 and $119 in 1866 and 1867, 

respectively. Studenski and Edward, Financial History of the United States, 162–63. Per capita 

spending in Afghanistan surpassed federal support for the South after the international community committed to an extensive nation-building program in 2003. By 2007 combined per 

capita aid increased to $292, according to Afghanistan’s Ministry of Finance, while per capita 

spending from 1867 to 1876 remained consistent with spending in 1866. 

86. Department of State, “2012 Investment Climate State—Afghanistan.” 

87. Katzman, Afghanistan, 65.

88. Ibid., 70–71.

89. Aryaman Bhatnagar, “Foreign Investment in Afghanistan Faces Obstacles,” Atlantic 

Sentinel, 12 July 2012, accessed 17 February 2013, http://atlanticsentinel.com/2012/07/foreign-investment-in-afghanistan-faces-obstacles/.

90. Ibid., 2. Between 2002 and 2012, US contributions through the Economic Support 

and Development Assistance Funds totaled just $15.9 billion compared to $51 billion in support of ANSF development and $557 billion for combat operations. Katzman, Afghanistan, 

87. 

91. Ibid., 72.

92. Asian Development Bank, “Afghanistan Connects through CAREC Road.”

93. Department of State, “2012 Investment Climate State—Afghanistan,” 1 and 4.
65

Chapter 6

Synthesis and Prediction

Symmetry exists between reconstruction of the South and Afghanistan 

despite the separation of time and geography. Both societies shared three 

common traits that withstood the trials of war and external impulses for 

change: highly differentiated class structures, ethnically and economically 

diverse societal mosaics, and a nearly universal belief in peripheral and societal 

autonomy. The legitimacy afforded by external and indigenous security 

forces enabled reconstruction governments in both cases to subdue these 

three traits artificially. Yet the South’s suppression did not yield permanent 

social change. Instead, a New South resembling its former antebellum image 

emerged with Redemption and the election of 1876. For Afghanistan, 2014 

will serve as a political inflection point, comparable to the 1876 election. The 

Afghan society will choose, as the South did, whether war or peace will follow reconstruction, and whether lasting change will accompany the nation’s 

next chapter. 

New South: Old Made New

“Status quo antebellum or things as they were before Lincoln, slavery excepted: such is the tendency everywhere,” an anonymous man wrote in 1877.1

The quarter century that followed Reconstruction proved this statement prophetic. After 1877 southern Democrats utilized home rule to reverse social 

changes instituted by Radical Republican governments and transform the 

New South into its quasi-old form. State governments across the South instituted a social order that closely resembled its antebellum predecessor with 

“systems of political, class, and race relations.”2

 With Redemption, “blacks in 

the Redeemers’ New South found themselves enmeshed in a seamless web of 

oppression, whose interwoven economic, political, and social strands all reinforced one another.”3

 Although the “new social order did not come into being 

immediately, nor could the achievements of Reconstruction be entirely undone,” the changes imposed endured for nearly seven decades.4

Southern Democrats threatened renewed civil war in late 1876. The presidential election, ripe with insurgent violence, voter intimidation, and ballot 

box corruption, provided neither candidate with an electoral majority. 

Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden won a clear majority of the popular 

vote in every southern state, but “Republican election boards in Florida, 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

66

South Carolina, and Louisiana invalidated enough returns from counties rife 

with violence to declare” Republican candidate Rutherford B. Hayes victorious.5

 Democratic newspapers in the South called for “Tilden or war,” while 

former slaves were convinced that a Tilden victory meant a renewal of slavery. 

In opposition to Democrats’ threats of an armed “march on Washington,” Republicans insisted Hayes would have won easily in an honest election and 

vowed to resist Tilden’s attempt to seize the presidency through violence and 

fraud. 6 The election crisis of 1876, therefore, served as the political pivot that 

pointed the South either back to open revolt or political reconciliation and 

enduring stability in exchange for aborted social change (fig. 3). 

Figure 3. Reconciliation rather than bloodshed, 17 February 1877. (Reprinted 

from HarpWeek, “A Truce, Not a Compromise,” http://elections.harpweek.com/1876/

cartoon-1876-Medium.asp?UniqueID=40&Year=1876.)

Reconstruction irrevocably transitioned to Redemption on 26 February 

1877, when “four Southern Democrats met with five Ohio Republicans at 

Washington’s Wormley House” to resolve the presidential election crisis of 

1876. The bargain of 1877 installed Republican Hayes as president of the 

United States on 4 March 1877 in exchange for southern home rule.7 Although 

the president did not direct a comprehensive withdrawal of soldiers from the 

South, within two months of inauguration, Hayes ordered “federal troops surrounding the South Carolina and Louisiana statehouses, where [Republicans] 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

67

claimed the office of governor, to return to their barracks.”8 Without federal 

support, violence and fraud-induced gubernatorial election results stood, 

forcing the lone remaining southern Republican governors to yield peacefully 

to their Democratic foes.

The “final triumph of Redemption” meant that the “very men who held 

[blacks] as slaves” in the Old South would guide the New South after Reconstruction, according to a Louisiana freedman.9

 Although the New South aristocracy resembled its Old South predecessor in ideology, it differed slightly in 

composition. Planters “became businessmen, as did a growing merchant class 

that acquired large landholdings” during and after Reconstruction.10 Planters 

and, to a slightly lesser degree, land-owning merchants formed a businessoriented aristocracy that united the New South’s political future with its economic fortune amidst the industrial pressures of the Gilded Age. Atop the 

social and political structure, industrialists succeeded at the behest of planters. Southern planters supported modest industrialization because “[it supported] a system of caste” and the continued dominance of the agrarian society.11

As with the antebellum South, the broader Redeemer movement offered 

political endorsement to the economic and social interests of planters and 

land-owning merchants who comprised a very small percentage of southern 

society. Southern Redeemers “included secessionist Democrats and Union 

Whigs, veterans of the Confederacy and rising young leaders, traditional 

planters and advocates of a modernized New South.”12 Together, Redeemers 

shared “a commitment to dismantling the Reconstruction state, to reducing 

the political power of blacks, and reshaping the South’s legal system in the 

interests of labor control and racial subordination,” according to Foner.13

State-sanctioned racial distinctions returned with Democratic legislation 

to marginalize the Fourteenth Amendment, and in the aftermath of Reconstruction, “the labor question” provided the mechanism by which wealthy 

landowners asserted control over former slaves and poor whites. Emancipation introduced four million unskilled and uneducated laborers into a new, 

seemingly foreign free labor system. The proliferation of southern sharecropping arrangements led former slaves and antebellum white yeoman farmers 

to common tenancy. Among southern white farmers, “fear of slipping into 

tenancy intensified their frustrations with high interest rates, tight credit, and 

local banking and mercantile monopolies, and helped to spur them into 

political revolt in the 1880s and 90s.”14

Cooperatives and advocacy groups such as the Farmers’ Alliance united 

agrarian laborers against landowners. Farmers, excluding merchants and 

bankers from Alliance membership, drove a wedge between sharecroppers 

and wealthy landowners that “drew small-town merchant [and] professional 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

68

classes even closer to the planters by using them as scapegoats in order to 

[unite poor] farmers.”15 For southern Democrats, however, the “greatest threat 

posed by [labor] movements was the appeal to black voters, an appeal that 

opponents warned would surely divide whites and quickly undermine their 

overall supremacy.”16 As a result, by the turn of the century the racial divisions 

that defined the South’s antebellum social order returned with familiar consequences. The social status of blacks declined after Reconstruction, when labor 

relation fears, supported by traditional racial divisions, translated to political 

action. Southern Democrats “rewrote the statute books so as to reinforce 

planters’ control over their labor force.” State legislatures imposed vagrancy 

laws allowing the arrest of any person without employment, repealed laws 

enacted to suppress KKK violence, and expanded convict lease systems. In 

South Carolina and Florida “railroads, mining and lumber companies, and 

planters vied for access to [convicts],” the “majority of whom were blacks imprisoned as petty criminals” due to newly imposed vagrancy statutes.17 Coincidently, state governors and legislatures consolidated authority by “restoring 

the oligarchic antebellum system of local government” in Black Belt counties 

by assuming authorities previously reserved for county commissioners and 

justices of the peace.18

The imposition of new bond measures by state legislatures and physical 

intimidation forced many local Republican officials from elected office.19

Across the South, Redeemer-dominated state legislatures “gerrymandered to 

reduce Republican voting strength” and overturned suffrage reforms with 

new state constitutions that marginalized the Fourteenth Amendment.20

Despite the extensive efforts of southern Democrats, black politicians endured in isolated cases. In 1901 the lone remaining southern black member of 

Congress, George H. White of North Carolina, concluded his term of office; 

southern black representatives did not return to Congress for seven decades.21

In Alabama, the Constitution of 1901 required voters to pay a poll tax, possess 

vaguely defined “good character,” and have steady employment. By 1903 state 

voter rolls that had included 180,000 black men before ratification dwindled 

to less than 3,000.22 With black voters effectively removed from the southern 

political system, the southern delegation settled down to near universal white 

Democratic domination.

Uncontested Democratic policies perpetuated the antebellum wealth disparity that reemerged during Reconstruction, encouraging southern blacks to 

uproot and look west for opportunity. Legislatures imposed crop lien laws 

that “redefined in the interest of the planter the terms of credit and the right 

to own property.” Such statutes ensured that the property owner’s claim in any 

sharecropping arrangement took precedence over the laborers, “shifting 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

69

much of the risk of farming from employer to employee.”23 North Carolina’s 

Landlord and Tenant Act of 1877 gave full power to property owners, granting complete control of the crop until the tenant paid his rent in full. The act 

also assigned the property owner as the final authority of when the tenant had 

met his obligation, thereby making the landowner “the court, sheriff and 

jury” in agricultural affairs.24

By 1879 southern blacks fled “conditions that threatened their lives and 

property, and were setting out to improve their fortunes as farmers in the 

West.” Between 1879 and 1880, more than 21,000 blacks departed from Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, bound for the plains of Kansas.25 The exodus 

threatened the southern agricultural economy, which was dependent on 

cheap labor for profitability.

As with agriculture, the “industries that grew most rapidly in the postReconstruction decades were typical of an underdeveloped economy in that 

they utilized cheap labor and abundant raw materials.”26 The South attracted 

northern industrial interests looking to operate “free from the restraints of 

labor militancy and the threat of increased government regulation” present in 

the North. In essence, industrialists and planters were mutually interested in 

“maintaining social and political stability, low taxes, inexpensive labor, and 

minimal, conservative government.”27

During the two decades following Reconstruction, the number of operating 

factories in Alabama increased from 2,000 to 5,500, eventually employing 

33,000 laborers.28 Birmingham led Alabama’s industrial growth, with the aid of 

railroad expansion that situated the city as the southern crossroads for the coal, 

iron, and limestone industries. Birmingham’s property values increased 500-

fold between 1871 and 1900, earning the city its nickname, the “Magic City.”29

Across Alabama, iron production increased from 203,000 tons in 1885 to 

915,000 tons in 1892.30 Yet, despite industrial expansion, by 1900 “only 6 percent of the Southern labor force worked in manufacturing.”31 By comparison, 

the agricultural sector employed 82 percent of southern laborers in 1900.32 The 

New South, like the old, was an agrarian-dominated society, supportive of an 

antebellum political establishment’s pursuit of traditional social policies.

In most southern states, Redeemer legislatures “called conventions to rewrite the Reconstruction constitutions of 1868.”33 State governments slashed 

budgets, “prohibited the use of state aid for internal improvements, and repudiated most of the debts incurred by the Republican [legislatures].”34 To support smaller budgets, states dismantled public education systems instituted 

under Radical Reconstruction. Texas instituted a fee system for attending 

school, Alabama and Mississippi “abolished statewide school taxes,” and 

“Louisiana spent so little on education that it became the only state in the 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

70

Union in which the percentage of native whites unable to read or write actually rose between 1880 and 1890.”35 Without state financial support, disparities between public schooling available to black and white students widened 

during Redemption. In Louisiana, as with other states, the constitution “was 

rewritten in 1879 to permit separate schools and in 1898 to require them.”36

The “separate but equal” mentality also affected militias. Reconstructionera black militias outlasted other social reforms, though with the help of federal 

legislation, southern Democrats expunged these militias as well. Black militias survived Redemption in eight out of the 11 former Confederate states, 

composing 20 to 40 percent of each state’s militia force. In total, more than 

4,000 black soldiers retained arms and ranks earned under Republican governance.37 On a rare occasion, state legislatures employed black militias to 

restore order among predominantly black communities, but mainly they 

drilled and participated in ceremonies and parades along with, though typically behind, their white counterparts. The National Guard movement that 

concluded with the Dick Act of 1903 encouraged southern state legislatures to 

abandon black militia programs. State legislators, utilizing informal home 

rule authority gained from the presidential bargain of 1877 to prioritize newly 

instituted segregation statutes, opted to recast existing white militias under 

the National Guard structure rather than forming interracial units.38

During the presidential election crisis of 1876, state home rule outweighed 

all other points of negotiation for southern Democrats.39 Redeemers cared 

little for who ruled in Washington, only that they would have “a free hand in 

managing the region’s domestic affairs.”40 Democratic legislation reversing 

Reconstruction reforms to education, suffrage, judicial representation, and 

societal protection created a South distinct from the larger nation. Redeemer 

policies, therefore, reestablished the antebellum status quo and ensured “the 

South remained a one-party region under the control of a reactionary ruling 

elite who used the same violence and fraud that had helped defeat Reconstruction to stifle internal dissent” until the 1960s.41

Disinterest and misperception among northern Republicans facilitated 

southern Democratic pursuits. As Reconstruction succumbed to Redemption, issues involving the South “played a steadily diminishing part in Northern 

Republican politics and support for the idea of federal intervention to enforce 

the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments continued to wane.”42 Initially, 

northerners did not view the southern black exodus in 1879 as a response to 

the debasing conditions they faced, especially in the Deep South, but as the 

population rightfully exercising its prerogative under the free labor system.43

Eventually northern activists and lawmakers viewed the exodus for what it 

truly was. As with the Reconstruction efforts in aggregate, their objections 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

71

were inconsequential from the perspective of traditional southerners determined to return the region to its antebellum order and wealth.

Well before 1900, the New South closely resembled its antebellum self. 

Wealthy landowners exploited free-labor sharecropping arrangements to 

retain their dominant economic and social status in southern society. Additionally, Democrat-dominated state legislatures revived antebellum racial 

divisions despite constitutional amendments prohibiting such legislation. 

Gradually southern governments subordinated blacks politically, socially, and 

economically, producing a social state resembling enslavement. In essence, 

Southern Redemption and home rule produced an antebellum homecoming.

Painful Lessons: Southern Homecoming

The South teaches numerous lessons, painful for those who pursued social 

reforms from afar with their personal faith in the natural equality of man. By 

any reasonable measure, Reconstruction was a failure as judged by the Radical 

Republican agenda and a disaster for former slaves. However, to suggest that 

the Old South reemerged during Redemption would be an oversimplification; 

no society can experience the devastation of civil war and the second war of 

Reconstruction and avoid alteration.

Principally, the South’s experience suggests that the potential for deeply 

engrained societal reform is minimal when the impetus for change originates 

from an external source. In its 4 July 1868 edition, the Raleigh Sentinel quoted 

a North Carolina Democrat: “When the bayonets shall depart . . . then look 

out for the reaction. Then the bottom rail will descend from the top of the 

fence.”44 As Redeemer Democrats returned to elected office between 1872 and 

1876, they arrested the aggressive social modernizations imposed by Republicans from 1868 to 1872. Subsequently, in 1877 when Hayes decided not to 

intervene militarily in South Carolina and Louisiana, the bayonet departed 

and took with it the hopes of the southern black community.

The presence of federal troops and Freedman’s Bureau officials and the formation of armed black militias provided artificial legitimacy to Republican 

state governments during Radical Reconstruction. However, elected officials 

failed to earn the support of the white population, particularly southern 

planters who retained ownership of the states’ primary source of economic 

recovery. As violence and fraud at the ballot box skewed the popular vote in 

favor of southern Democrats, the popular support the Democratic Party enjoyed from the alienated native white Republican base made Redemption and 

its effects a fait accompli.
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

72

Beyond the principal lesson, the South’s history offers a series of secondary, 

though still valuable, points of instruction. First, the Freedman’s Bureau decision not to reapportion agricultural tracts to former slaves in the wake of war, 

thereby not separating former powerbrokers from their traditional means of 

control and influence, likely decided the South’s fate a decade before Reconstruction’s end. This assertion does not imply that a plethora of additional 

complications, principally a broader insurgency and the potential for mass 

starvation, would not have ensued had the reapportionment plan been implemented. But the decision not to reapportion did perpetuate, however unintentionally, preexisting power relationships.

Second, insurgency was not an end unto itself, but the physical manifestation of southern Democrats’ political disenfranchisement. Consequently, 

localized insurgent movements disappeared as Redemption movements 

gradually regained political authority between 1872 and 1876. In particular, 

the KKK remained dormant until 1915 when the movement reemerged in 

response to the political and employment threat posed to native white laborers 

by the 6.3 million European and Asian immigrants that arrived between 1877 

and 1900.45 At its 1926 peak, the new KKK included 2.5 million members 

from the South, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest.46

Third, although the 1871 physical response by Grant in South Carolina did 

not provide a permanent solution to insurgency, it created a finite opportunity to affect a political solution. Although Grant’s actions were successful in 

the short term, the political failure to exploit the temporary state of relative 

calm ensured that insurgent violence would return.

Fourth, political, economic, and security successes and failures were selfreinforcing. Political and physical instability discouraged support from northern 

capitalists. Similarly, the failed economic policies and political corruption 

that produced the depression caused a popular loss of confidence in Radical 

Republican governance.

Fifth, external populations have a limited attention span concerning social 

agendas beyond their immediate purview, particularly when those changes 

have no direct effect on their personal safety. The effects of economic depression, the battle between labor and capital, and calls for national government 

reform that consumed northern reformers after 1873 displaced racial equality 

as their principal focus. Consequently, in 1883 “the Supreme Court declared 

the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional,” citing that the black community should not be “a special favorite” of the law.47

Finally, despite the emergence of a New South that closely resembled the 

Old South, the society’s experience with the Civil War and Reconstruction 

ensured that the South after Redemption was not an exact replica of its pre-
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

73

decessor. First, emancipation and the Thirteenth Amendment meant the irrevocable end of chattel slavery. Despite concerted efforts to instill a free labor 

system tangential to slavery, no form of free labor could fully replicate the controls of enslavement. Second, despite the adherence of planters to an agrarian 

society, gradual movement toward industrialization was inevitable. The explosion of cotton mills throughout cotton-rich regions offered planters and landowning merchants another means to increase their wealth and control over the 

agrarian economy. Third, though a collective failure, the period of Radical Reconstruction afforded former slaves the opportunity to participate politically 

and pursue an education that would have been impossible in the Old South. 

Although segregation returned, even Frederick Douglas acknowledged that 

separate schools in the New South were “infinitely superior” to the absence of 

schools in the Old South.48 Finally, along with political participation and education, emancipation afforded former slaves the freedom to uproot and depart the 

South in search of economic and political fortune elsewhere.

The South offers harsh lessons for those who wish to impose internal change 

from a distance. The lessons derived were broader than the contextual specifics 

of time and circumstance that confronted blacks and whites in late-nineteenthcentury America. In short, traditionally held beliefs and cultural practices require time and, typically, physical confrontation to change. Equality eventually 

came to southern blacks, as did economic diversification, but seven decades 

and an internally led movement were required to achieve what 12 years and 

external pressure could not during Reconstruction. These lessons provide a 

glimpse at the future that could await 30 million Afghan citizens.

New Afghanistan: Anticipating the Future

The South’s history suggests that Afghanistan’s future is tied to its past, a 

result that many Americans, like their nineteenth-century northern predecessors, 

may find unsettling. On 11 September 2012, Abdul Wahid Wahid, a deputy 

for the municipality of Kabul, echoed the comments of Allan Millett’s anonymous 1877 southerner: “The arrival of the foreigners is like waves rocking a 

ship. When the waves are gone, the ship resumes its course.”49 Should Wahid’s 

statement prove as prophetic as that of Millett’s anonymous southerner, 

Afghanistan’s future will resemble a former image, without marginal regard 

for the bloodshed and treasure lost during 13 years of foreign intervention.

As with the planter and merchant classes of the Reconstruction and Redemption South, Durrani Pashtuns and local warlords likely will retain power 

within future Afghan governance structures. The deference showed by Northern 

Alliance leaders at the Bonn conference in November 2001 provided tremendous 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

74

insight into the reverence all Afghans, Pashtun and non-Pashtun, share for 

Ahmed Shah. Karzai recycled the compromise reached in 2001 with electoral 

success in 2004 and 2009. Although the constitution prohibits the president 

from seeking reelection in 2014, Karzai has positioned his brother and personal advisor Qayum as his successor.50 Qayum Karzai is the government’s 

chief representative for potential reconciliation negotiations with the Taliban. 

Coincidently, the absence of political parties—and the large field of presidential candidates it perpetuates—creates a significant barrier for any non-Pashtun 

candidate seeking to overcome the Pashtuns’ numerical superiority—each 

ethnicity typically fields and supports a candidate. Afghanistan’s history also 

tells us that if a Pashtun wins the 2014 presidential election, he is likely to hail 

from a hierarchical Durrani tribe rather than the egalitarian Ghilzai alternative. Mullah Omar’s isolationist tendencies during the 1990s reinforced the 

existing stereotype about the Ghilzai’s traditional distaste for political life.

In contrast to the Ghilzai, Durranis are renowned for political shrewdness. 

Karzai’s decision in 2009 to embrace local warlords for political expediency 

ensured that those warlords who might challenge his authority, regardless of 

ethnicity, would have a personal stake in perpetuating the present arrangement. For the warlords, provincial governorships and state ministerial positions offered broad political recognition without sacrificing their local influence, as demonstrated by a November 2012 call to arms by Ismail Khan. 

Khan, the Karzai-appointed state minister of energy and water and former 

Northern Alliance warlord, “rallied thousands of his supporters in the desert 

outside Herat, the cultured western provincial capital and the center of his 

power base, urging them to coordinate and reactivate their networks” to defend against a potential Taliban resurgence after 2014.51

Khan’s call reiterated a similar assertion by Afghan vice president and 

former Tajik warlord Qasim Fahim in a September 2012 speech. Fahim 

called for a reformation of the Northern Alliance if the ANA proved incapable of defending the Afghan people.52 Ironically, according to Ahmed 

Rashid, as Karzai’s first defense minister Fahim was responsible for the 

ANA failures in 2003.

As with southern planters and merchants, government officials and former 

warlords maintain local influence through economic advantage relative to 

their poorer brethren. In the Old and New South, land perpetuated wealth 

and consequent power disparities. In Afghanistan, although corruption and 

the illegal seizure of trade tariffs established economic influence during war 

and early reconstruction, the government’s role in dispensing foreign aid 

monies and awarding private industrial contracts offers government officials 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

75

at all levels, especially warlords appointed to office by Karzai, lucrative opportunities from which they benefit personally.

Afghanistan’s constitution prohibits discrimination against foreign corporations, but it similarly prevents foreign corporations from owning land in 

Afghanistan.53 Therefore, Afghan laws encourage foreign corporations to 

work with Afghan-owned businesses to access untapped natural resources. 

As with the $3 billion deal that linked the China National Petroleum Company with an Afghan firm owned by Karzai’s relatives, foreign firms benefit 

from collaborating with Afghan business interests connected to powerful 

government officials. The patronage network, common even among more 

established governments, will perpetuate the gaping wealth disparities that 

have traditionally characterized class distinctions. This is similar to the South 

and the United States writ large during the Gilded Age when industrial expansion depended on the availability of cheap labor and abundant raw materials.

A more difficult question concerns the future of gender equality in Afghanistan. A comparison to racial equality in the South after 1877 suggests 

that gender equality will likely erode with time and the emergence of other 

global crises that divert foreign attention. Although the 2003 Afghan constitution was the most progressive in the Muslim world, it failed to prescribe 

special protections for women, placing females in a precarious status akin to 

southern blacks after the Supreme Court overturned the Civil Rights Act of 

1868.54 The lack of universal support among rural Afghans for gender equality, 

a traditional tribal response to centrally directed modernization, further 

complicates the future of gender equality. Ironically, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, 

the leader of Hezb-i-Islami, “condemned the [Taliban’s] blocking of girls’ 

schooling,” offering a potential middle ground for reconciliation. Hekmatyar 

still opposes educating males and females together, but supports the basic 

need for educating Afghan girls as prescribed under the constitution.55 Similarly, leaders of the Afghan Taliban softened rhetoric in 2012 concerning the 

education of girls in advance of potential reconciliation talks, despite the 

hardline stand of their Pakistani brethren.56

The emergence of negotiating room with insurgent groups indicates gender 

equality is likely to persist in some form, at least through 2025. Extensive 

female representation in the Wolesi jirga—and the consensus-based procedures by which it operates—also supports the continued involvement of 

women. Karzai’s request for sustained international assistance through 2025 

provides the most optimistic sign for the immediate continuance of gender 

equality initiatives. The international community has pledged future financial 

assistance, but those funds should be tied to the preservation of Western 

social ideals. The rights of Afghan women will assuredly top that list.
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

76

The history of the South, however, shows that external influence, like 

financial dependence, is nothing more than a delaying mechanism without a 

formal political solution. Social reversals in the South were not instantaneous, 

so rapid regression in Afghanistan may not be either, but regression in the 

South did eventually occur. Finally, Afghanistan’s history with social reform 

in the 1920s and 1970s shows that the future of gender equality will rest with 

the 80 percent of Afghans residing in rural areas, many of whom are far more 

traditional than the urban population.

Afghanistan’s economic future similarly rests with the rural populace. As 

with the New South, agrarian production will continue to drive Afghanistan’s 

economic fate for the immediate and foreseeable future. In Afghanistan’s case 

though, political leaders are more supportive of industrialization and exploitation of natural resources rather than a continued dependence on agriculture. Globalization also offers Afghanistan more industrial suitors than were 

available to the South. Afghanistan possesses an estimated $1 trillion in mineral 

resources, 3.6 billion barrels in oil reserves, and 36.5 trillion cubic feet of natural 

gas reserves.57 Industrial development will progress in a manner that supports 

the political objectives of those directing society and will remain conditional 

on political and physical stability. Consequently, industrialization will continue to favor economic growth in Kabul and the northern and western 

provinces, home to Afghanistan’s minority populations, where security has 

been more reliable. In contrast, industrialization will lag in the South and East 

where insurgency foments instability, possibly preventing the Pashtun majority 

from sharing in the benefits of economic growth.

National control of natural resources located throughout Afghanistan’s 

periphery could complicate the traditional urban-rural balance. Similar to the 

South’s pursuit of home rule and commensurate with Afghan traditions, peripheral tribes will demand significant autonomy despite Karzai’s efforts to 

maximize executive authority. Calls for greater autonomy will be encouraged by 

an improved security situation, as tribal elders may no longer be indebted to 

government forces for protection. Ismail Khan’s 2012 comments concerning 

rearmament reflected the persistence of this traditional Afghan perception.

Infrastructure deficiencies will continue to delay economic growth and restrict centralized authority among the periphery. As of February 2013 Afghanistan’s principal method of motorized travel—the Ring Road, connecting 

its five principal urban centers—remained 150 miles shy of completion despite 12 years of foreign-assisted construction. The Asian Development Bank’s 

2012 pledge of $350 million to complete the remaining distance will assist 

with commercial growth but will do little to increase government influence 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

77

throughout the mountainous and isolated regions that remain unconnected 

by passable roads.58

Traditional Afghan autonomy will also influence its political relationship 

with the international community, similar to the regional autonomy achieved 

by the Solid South congressional Democrats after Redemption. The government in Kabul will act with increasing autonomy in its dealings with the international community following the withdrawal of foreign military forces. Persistent insurgency fostered a dependency on foreign military assistance to 

assure political survival in the absence of an adequate internal security apparatus. As of February 2013, however, the ANA provided security for 87 percent of the Afghan population, with the remaining 13 percent scheduled to 

come under its purview by 2014. Furthermore, Karzai’s aggressive rhetoric 

following the incineration of Korans at Bagram AB in January 2012 matched 

that of traditional Afghan national leaders and foreshadowed future bold 

assertions of independence. Afghan leaders have traditionally used open defiance to appear strong and build internal legitimacy, despite unyielding financial dependence. For Karzai, bold political defiance of the international community offers a tangible way to recast current public perception of him as a 

weak leader. The removal of foreign military presence will afford Afghan 

leaders a freer hand in dealing with the international community, while coincidentally increasing credibility among the Afghan population despite the 

anticipated presence of 6,000 to 20,000 US forces beyond 2014.59

Increased rhetoric from Kabul will not reduce Afghanistan’s status as a 

rentier state prior to 2025, though Afghanistan’s history suggests dependence 

will last beyond Karzai’s designated threshold. In 2012 the World Bank predicted a budgetary gap equal to 40 percent of the projected Afghan GDP in 

2014 and 2015, followed by a gradual “decline when expected mining revenues materialize, reaching around 25 percent of GDP in 2021/22.” The gap 

equates to approximately $7.8 billion annually, as measured in 2011 dollars.60

Karzai used the independent World Bank assessment at the 2012 Bonn Conference and the Tokyo Donors Conference to request international pledges 

totaling $10 billion annually through 2025. As the World Bank indicated, the 

2025 threshold is contingent on increased industrial output. Subsequently, 

the development of mining and other industrial infrastructure will rely on 

sustained security and political stability.

Abdul Wahid Wahid, the Kabul deputy, suggested that Afghanistan’s future 

would resemble its past; the rebirth of antebellum practices in the New South 

supports that claim. Government officials, dominated by Durrani Pashtuns 

and multiethnic warlords, will retain a tight grip on authority and act without 

regard for existing wealth and power disparities. Gains in gender equality will 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

78

persist in the short term, but with time, more traditional peripheral populations will likely scrutinize gender equality and other modernization efforts 

enacted in Kabul. Afghanistan’s status as a rentier state and agrarian society 

will also persist. Although lucrative industrial contracts benefitting government officials will entice exploitation of Afghanistan’s vast natural resources, 

an uneducated labor force and poor infrastructure will restrict the pace of 

development. Finally, the Taliban insurgency will continue until a political 

solution is found, stressing the uneasy relationship between political stability, 

economic development, and physical security. In short, Afghanistan’s future 

will resemble its tenuous past.

Conclusion: Prediction and Policy Recommendations

Historical analogies are by necessity contrived intellectual constructs, but 

the comparisons established between Southern Reconstruction from 1865 to 

1876 and Afghan Reconstruction from 2002 to 2014 suggest remarkable symmetry and predictive power. Therefore, as 1876 was for the South, 2014 will be 

a point of political inflection for Afghanistan. Insurgent reconciliation and its 

relation to both the 2014 presidential election and planned US troop withdrawal will either usher in a period analogous to Southern Redemption or a 

period of prolonged instability and fighting without external military assistance to provide artificial legitimacy for Karzai’s successor. In the South, federal troop disengagement from the political process occurred after southern 

Democrats reconciled through popular, though corrupt, elections. In Afghanistan, US forces will “shift from a combat to a support mission in 

mid-2013” and withdrawal en masse during 2014.61 However, the issue of 

Taliban reconciliation remained unresolved as of early 2013, though thirdparty reports and softened rhetoric suggest reconciliation between the two 

sides is possible, especially once Karzai departs.

Despite the critical importance and inherent uncertainty that lies beyond 

the summer of 2013, Afghanistan’s future will resemble one of two past 

images. First, Afghanistan could tumble into renewed civil war that reverses 

the gains made since 2002. Second, and most likely according to the lessons 

of the South, Afghanistan could assume the multiethnic, rentier state status 

that achieved five decades of stability under Zahir Shah with prospects for 

eventual economic independence.

Afghanistan’s first potential future, the one most widely discussed by pundits and policy makers, is renewed civil war. Such an end could result from 

three potential catalysts. First, a continued Taliban insurgency could further 

injure popular faith in the central government; war would then engulf the 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

79

entire nation. The ANA remains largely untested, as the most contested regions 

will be the last areas transferred to their care. Similarly, local tribal leaders and 

warlords still hold tremendous influence over ANP and ALP units. As highlighted by Ahmed Rashid, district police chiefs remain among the most 

corrupt and lucrative of all government appointments. The 2012 statements 

of Khan and Fahim offer a stark reminder of the loyalty still commanded by 

Afghanistan’s regional warlords.

A second potential catalyst for renewed civil war is a precipitous loss of 

foreign financial assistance. The South dodged economic recession and 

potential physical violence because of domestic trade that provided markets 

for agricultural production and reliable federal spending per capita after 1866. 

Instead, slow economic progress in the South, relative to the North and West, 

resulted from its own retrenched agrarian policies. Traditionally, Afghanistan 

has not benefited from consistent economic support from domestic institutions. The British experience during the First Afghan War and Najibullah’s fall 

after the abrupt end of Soviet support are reminders that without foreign 

assistance, reliable central governance has been unsustainable. As of 2011, the 

$15.7 billion in international aid “was about the same as” Afghanistan’s nominal 

GDP.62 Furthermore, the $120 billion requested by Karzai through 2025 is 

nearly 20 percent more than cumulative international support from 2002 to 

2012. Without the requested aid, the World Bank predicts a degradation of 

basic services and infrastructure development across the state. Development 

programs for education, health care, rural and transportation infrastructure, 

and energy all rely principally on donor aid.63 The only other available option 

would be to curtail the $5 billion spent annually to sustain the ANA and ANP, 

which the United States almost exclusively funds.64 Both options would have 

a destabilizing effect, especially in rural regions, where confidence in centralized governance remains fractured.

A civil war could also result from the 2014 presidential election, a catalyst 

that nearly led the South back to open revolt in 1876. Rampant corruption 

and voter fraud in the 2009 presidential and 2010 parliamentary elections 

sparked physical confrontations among jirga members. The elections also 

caused many Afghan citizens to question the legitimacy of their elected government and provided a convenient rallying cry for Taliban support. A recurrence of corruption and a result that elects Karzai’s brother could prove disastrous, similar to the broader call for renewed civil war across the South during 

the election crisis of 1876. As with southern home rule gained from the presidential bargain of 1877, sufficient compensation for non-Pashtun powerbrokers 

would be required to prevent a relapse of violence, likely a renewal or expansion 

of lucrative political appointments. Conversely, the election of a non-Pashtun 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

80

would challenge more than 250 years of Pashtun rule in Afghanistan. Such a 

result, though unlikely if the Pashtun population unites behind a single candidate, could drive an ethnic wedge along the Pamir Mountains and afford the 

Taliban an opportunity to galvanize Pashtuns against non-Pashtun rule.

Despite the many reasons to believe that a post-2014 Afghanistan will 

relapse into civil war, the lessons of the South offer another path forward. 

Afghanistan’s alternate and most probable future is the opportunity for stable 

and sustained governance, as occurred in the South after the presidential 

bargain of 1877. As with the South, political reconciliation will be the key to 

ending insurgency in Afghanistan. KKK violence in the South delegitimized 

the authority of Republican governance, supporting the political aspirations 

of disenfranchised southern Democrats. In Afghanistan, Taliban violence 

targets popular confidence in Karzai’s government. Consequently, insurgent 

violence will only subside with reconciliation that incorporates Taliban political aspirations into the current governance structure.

A September 2012 RUSI report, based on interviews with four Taliban 

associates, suggested that the Taliban would welcome reconciliation and a 

general ceasefire under conditions that appeared unlikely to the international 

community during the height of insurgency. According to the RUSI study, the 

Taliban “deeply regret their past affiliation with al-Qaeda,” are prepared to 

delink themselves from the terrorist group, and “assure al-Qaeda is no longer 

able to operate on Afghan soil.” The Taliban also acknowledge that their 

“policies of the 1990s need to be reconfigured in the face of rapidly changing 

social forces within current-day Afghanistan.” Furthermore, the presence of 

US military bases would not prevent a settlement “as long as they do not constrain Afghan independence and Islamic jurisprudence.” Unfortunately, the 

Taliban do not appear willing to negotiate with a Karzai-led government they 

view as weak and corrupt. Finally, the report cites a potential for “a ceasefire 

as part of a general settlement” to include negotiated changes to the current 

constitution and steps that address “the distribution of political power.”65 As 

with southern Democrats, political disenfranchisement offers the Taliban no 

alternative to insurgency. Finally, a March 2013 “first-of-its-kind uprising 

against insurgents” that forced Taliban militants to flee the town near Kandahar 

where the movement began, suggests that a general state of war weariness 

has begun to erode the Taliban’s political position among even its most 

staunch supporters.”66 Therefore, collective exhaustion among Afghan Taliban 

fighters and the population from whom they depend upon for legitimacy and 

support, provides the Taliban with incentive to seek a political settlement.

Pashtun and non-Pashtun officials within the current government stand to 

profit financially and socially from stability, thus giving equal cause to negotiate 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

81

a political agreement regardless of the effects such an agreement might have 

on less powerful social classes. As with the southern militias, the withdrawal 

of US forces from Afghanistan places increased pressure on an untested ANA 

to provide security in the face of a battle-hardened and ideologically driven 

adversary. Similarly, persistent insecurity and poor economic growth stand to 

further delegitimize the government in Kabul and stress the tenuous centralperipheral balance without a negotiated settlement.

Indeed, after 35 continuous years of war, a political agreement benefits both 

parties but neither should expect 100 percent satisfaction with an arrangement. In the South, Frederick Douglas’s comments on educational opportunities for former slaves during Redemption and the 1879 exodus reflected this 

harsh reality for southern blacks. Even southern planters had to adapt to the 

free labor system, ceding some amount of control to the emancipated labor 

force that retained the opportunity to emigrate and negotiate, albeit within 

strictly enforced legal bounds. The bargain that awaits Afghanistan will not 

satisfy either party entirely, but most agreements that would enable broader 

education, economic growth, higher living standards, and political stability 

would be preferable to war for all Afghan citizens.

Ultimately, the South’s history instructs that Afghans, and not the international community, will determine Afghanistan’s fate. International financial 

assistance and the presence of US military forces will assist with any political 

settlement reached or provide added security should political negotiations 

breakdown. Both measures are merely delay mechanisms that afford the 

Afghan population and their elected officials time to pursue a peaceful political 

settlement. To cast the effort of the United States, the international community, and Afghan people as either a categorical success or failure is too simple. 

Although the South reverted to a form that resembled its old self, change did 

eventually occur in the 1960s. Similarly, the legitimacy afforded the Afghan 

government by the presence of US and coalition security forces—measured 

progress in education, political participation, and economic development—

and the connections made between public and private Afghan society and the 

international community represent incremental steps toward a better future. 

Unfortunately, the true value of measured progress in Afghanistan since 2002 

will not be seen for many decades, may never be truly quantifiable, and could 

still prove illusory.

As with the South, Afghanistan’s future rests upon an uneasy balance of 

political stability, physical security, and economic progress. Relative change in 

one area will necessarily affect the other two. The New South’s resemblance to 

its old form, complete with home rule and segregation, likely caused many 

Americans at the time, in both the North and South, to question the value of 
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

82

Civil War and Reconstruction. Will Afghanistan’s future produce a similar 

response among Americans after 13 years of war and reconstruction, 2,100 

US military deaths, and $700 billion?

Notes

1. Millett and Maslowski, For the Common Defense, 262.

2. Foner, Reconstruction, 587.

3. Ibid., 598.

4. Ibid., 587–88.

5. Ibid., 575–76.

6. Ibid., 576.

7. Ibid., 580–81.

8. Ibid., 582.

9. Ibid.

10. Woodman, “Reconstruction of the Cotton Plantation,” 373.

11. Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society, 15.

12. Foner, Reconstruction, 588.

13. Ibid.

14. Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society, 23.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid.

17. Foner, Reconstruction, 593–94.

18. Ibid., 591. 

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid., 590.

21. Black and Black, Rise of Southern Republicans, 12.

22. Encyclopedia of Alabama, New South Era.

23. Foner, Reconstruction, 594.

24. Ibid.

25. Richardson, Death of Reconstruction, 160–61.

26. Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society, 17.

27. Ibid., 16–17.

28. Encyclopedia of Alabama, s.v. “New South Era.”

29. Ibid.

30. Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society, 19.

31. Foner, Reconstruction, 597.

32. Cobb, Industrialization and Southern Society, 24–25.

33. Perman, “Reconstruction under Attack,” 398.

34. Ibid.

35. Foner, Reconstruction, 589.

36. Harlan, “Desegregation in New Orleans,” 333.

37. Barr, “Black Militia of the New South,” 209.

38. Ibid., 214–15.

39. Foner, Reconstruction, 581.

40. Ibid., 587.
SYNTHESIS AND PREDICTION

83

41. Ibid., 604.

42. Ibid, 586–87.

43. Richardson, “Reconstruction and the Nation,” 161–62.

44. Foner, Reconstruction, 588.

45. Richardson, Death of Reconstruction, 162–63.

46. Encyclopedia of Alabama, s.v. “New South Era.”

47. Foner, Reconstruction, 587.

48. Ibid., 367.

49. Carmen Gentile, “As Troops Move Out, Economy Slows in Kabul,” USA Today, 11 September 2012, accessed 22 February 2013, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/afghanistan/story/2012-09-06/kabul-afghanistan-economy/57738224/1.

50. International Crisis Group, Afghanistan, 5.

51. Graham Bowley, “Afghan Warlord’s Call to Arms Rattles Officials,” New York Times, 

12 November 2012, accessed 22 February 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/world/

asia/ismail-khan-powerful-afghan-stokes-concern-in-kabul.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 .

52. Graham Bowley, “Bomber Strikes near NATO Office in Afghanistan,” New York 

Times, 8 September 2012, accessed 22 February 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/

world/asia/in-kabul-suicide-bomber-strikes-near-nato-headquarters.html.

53. Department of State, “2012 Investment Climate State—Afghanistan.”

54. Barfield, Afghanistan, 299.

55. “Girls Education Issue: Gulbuddin Hekmatyar Condemns TTP’s Stance,” Tribune Express with the International Herald Tribune, 3 January 2013, accessed 22 February 2013, http://

tribune.com.pk/story/488343/girls-education-issue-gulbuddin-hekmatyar-condemns-ttpsstance/.

56. F. Brinley Bruton, “Report: Paper Reveals Taliban Softening Stance on Girls’ Education,” 

World News, 12 August 2012, accessed 22 February 2013, http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_

news/2012/08/12/13241448-report-paper-reveals-taliban-softening-stance-on-girlseducation?lite.

57. Katzman, Afghanistan, 70–71.

58. Ibid., 66.

59. Elisabeth Buhmiller and Eric Schmitt, “Afghan War Commander Gives Options for 

After ‘14,” New York Times, 2 January 2013, accessed 22 February 2013, http://www.nytimes.

com/2013/01/03/world/middleeast/afghan-war-commander-gives-options-for-after-2014.

html?_r=0.

60. Katzman, Afghanistan, 9.

61. Carol E. Lee and Adam Entous, “Obama to Speed Troop Exit,” Wall Street Journal, 11 

January 2013, accessed 23 February 2013, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732

4581504578235893292795864.html.

62. World Bank, Afghanistan in Transition, 1.

63. Ibid., 15.

64. Ibid., 17.

65. Semple, Farrell, Lieven, and Chaudhuri, Taliban Perspectives on Reconciliation, 3–4. 

66. Robert Burns, “Commander Encouraged by Anti-Taliban Uprising,” Associated Press, 

13 March 2013, accessed 3 April 2013, http://bigstory.ap.org/article/commander-encouraged

-anti-taliban-uprising.

85

Abbreviations

ADB Asian Development Bank

ALP Afghan Local Police

ANA Afghan National Army

ANAP Afghan National Auxiliary Police

ANP Afghan National Police

ANSF Afghan National Security Force

GDP gross domestic product

IEC Independent Election Commission

ISAF International Security Assistance Force

KKK Ku Klux Klan

PRT provisional reconstruction team

RUSI Royal United Services Institute

SAASS School of Advanced Air and Space Studies

UN United Nations

87

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ISSN: 1941-3785

AFRI

Air Force Research Institute