Exit Strategy e democratizzazione : il dilemma dell’Afghanistan

In recent years, international intervention in Afghanistan has shown that the connection between democratisation and exit strategies is a problematic one that is also contradictory in terms of many aspects. Broadly speaking, the founda-tion of an autonomous democ-ratic regime is the goal at which international presence will no longer be necessary. However, in Afghanistan that very process of democratic state-building, combined with the campaign to counteract the insurrection of the Taleban, sets limits in the planning of an exit strategy. On the one hand, state-building is a long-lasting process with an unspecified time-span, and it is therefore not very consistent with the planning of rigorous exit strategies. And on the other hand, time is the resource that the Taleban are investing in, with the aim of not being de-feated “for as long as possible”. From this point of view, there is a risk that exit strategies and counteracting insurrection will be contradictory.