ABSTRACT
This book has looked at the fraught mix of factors that have driven the conflict in Afghanistan. Prolonged conflict fundamentally changed the make-up and dynamics of long-standing social facts and political relationships. For the first time new social groups entered into the Afghan political arena in the 1990s. This is vividly borne out in the changing conceptions of nation and ethnicity. This seminal shift was manifest in the recently concluded Presidential elections of 2014. While the elections in themselves were far from perfect, yet they were significant on two counts. First, they marked the country’s first ever peaceful transition of power through the ballot box. Second and perhaps more significantly elections are suggestive of the changed socio-political landscape of the country. Consider in this context the socially heterogeneous composition of political alliances that speaks of certain cardinal shifts on the ground. It is easy for sceptics from a distance to dismiss these alliances as purely opportunistic; cynical mobilization to capture the ultimate prize of political supremacy. Cynicism and opportunism is certainly in play but along with that we need to take note of the grave fact that leaders who fought pitched battles in the recent past against each other are attempting to work together within a common political framework. That indicates perhaps a crucial step towards a slow maturity of the political process. Even if one were to concede that these alliances are born entirely of political opportunism, one would still need to account for and explain the kind of support that some of these leaders command in their constituencies (Sharma, Afghan Presidential Elections).1
