From Insurgents to (State) Rulers: (Re)Building a Fiscal State in Post-2021 Afghanistan

Periods of regime change and stabilization constitute critical junctures of state and bureaucratic reform, during which new regimes seek to consolidate their administrative capacity to rule, and particularly, to generate revenues. Post-civil war contexts marked by the capture of the state by an armed group offer a key site to examine the remaking of fiscal administrations, rules, and practices, and the redesign of a “fiscal contract” between the state and social as well as professional groups. While the sociology of civil wars has shown that insurgents develop administrative tools to govern (Arjona, Kasfir and Mampilly 2015) and tax (Hoffmann, Vlassenroot and Marchais 2016; Bandula-Irwin et al. 2024), the sociology of the state (O’Dwyer 2006; Grzymala-Busse 2007), bureaucracy (Derlien and Szablowski 1993; Peters 1995), and fiscality (Martin, Mehrotra and Prasad 2009) has largely neglected post-civil war transitions, especially in authoritarian contexts. How does an armed group (re)construct a capacity to generate revenues once in power? How do insurgents-turned-rulers renegotiate a “fiscal contract” and a moral economy of taxation to consolidate both revenues and legitimacy? How do they convert the administrative experience accumulated during warfare? This paper examines the (re)formation of a fiscal state after the Taliban’s seizure of the central Afghan state in 2021, in a both post-conflict and post-rentier configuration marked by the collapse of aid revenues. Since, the Taliban have sought to centralize, rationalize, and expand its taxation capacity across the territory and at the borders, leading to surging state revenues. Their narrative of the “return of the state” has also become a powerful source of legitimation. First, the paper will analyze the Taliban’s strategies regarding state reform and the management of the bureaucratic legacy, seeking to consolidate fiscal capacity while cementing bureaucratic control. It will particularly explore their visible effort to preserve bureaucratic structures, rules, and practices governing taxation and customs, as well as to maintain the former administrative staff, including senior bureaucrats, contrasting with the purges conducted by the first Taliban government (1996-2001). Second, I will analyze taxation as a site for the (re)negotiation of relations between the state and two groups critical for state legitimation : merchant elites, who had often supported the Taliban to protect their economic activities, yet now subject to expanding fiscality, notably on commercial flows ; clerical elites, some of whom denounce the non-Islamic character of fiscal instruments. The analysis draws on interviews conducted (1) with Afghan civil servants from the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Commerce, as well as Chambers of Commerce (in Kabul and in the provinces), who either served before 2021, navigated the post-2021 transition, or were appointed under Taliban rule ; (2) with Afghan traders and business representatives in Afghanistan, Pakistan, France and Britain ; and (3) with senior Pakistani officials (in customs, commerce, and provincial administration). Finally, I will rely on an analysis of the post-2021 Afghan, Pakistani, and Tajik media, as well as archives from the late 1990s, providing critical empirical material on state reforms and elite struggles regarding taxation and the regulation of trade.