Nearly five years after Taliban insurgents toppled the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, international calls persist for a restoration of the rule of law. United Nations officials have argued that Taliban governance directly precipitated the collapse of judicial independence in the country, while Amnesty International continues to urge the group to reinstate a formal constitutional and legal framework. However, the narrative that Afghanistan only lost its rule of law in 2021 is a fantasy; the international community and the United States abandoned these principles long before the Taliban returned to power.
The U.S.-backed regime defeated by the Taliban was widely recognized as one of the most corrupt states globally, with its police and courts consistently ranked as the most compromised institutions. A significant 2018 survey highlighted that corruption within the local security and justice sectors remained a primary driver of national insecurity. By tolerating and often perpetuating this environment of lawlessness, the United States inadvertently facilitated the success of the Taliban insurgency.
Official rhetoric often suggested that progress in justice was steady and would have continued, yet scholarly research, such as recent work in Law & Social Inquiry, contradicts this optimistic view. Initial U.S. efforts to establish the rule of law were outsourced to Italy with minimal impact. Furthermore, the decision to back a strong, centralized presidency alongside an unrepresentative parliamentary system created a fragile foundation for the state. As the insurgency intensified in the mid-2000s, the Afghan government's judicial system became increasingly predatory, expensive, and unprofessional. While ordinary citizens bore the brunt of this failure, the powerful enjoyed near-total impunity, prompting then-U.S. President George W. Bush to pledge to replace the rule of the Taliban with the rule of law.
Early American initiatives focused on legislative reform and capacity building, but these programs failed to address the root causes of injustice, mistakenly prioritizing knowledge and law-writing over the systemic governance issues. Later, during the 2010–2014 Afghan Surge, U.S. President Barack Obama attempted to rectify the situation by pouring vast resources into the country on a compressed timeline. This effort involved direct collaboration with powerful tribal authorities and the increased involvement of military units in rule of law aid. Ultimately, these measures yielded disappointing results. Without a genuine commitment to rule of law ideals, resources were ineffective, and non-state justice actors remained wary of partnering with the internationally backed regime, leaving the military unable to transform programming into functional reality.
