Failed state institutions are byproducts of civil wars when governments undergo legitimacy crises and various dissident groups compete for power and legitimacy leading to absence of law and order in large swathes of territory and particularly the border areas flagrantly lacking governments’ writ are likely to be more infested with radical elements. Anarchy is further compounded by collapse of economy and failure of basic social services like education and health.
Great powers selectively intervene in cases of humanitarian crisis which is largely motivated by their respective geostrategic interests. Rwanda, an African state, was left to its fate for long despite cases of serious human rights violations while Kosovo in Europe quickly attracted the attention of the west. Similarly, it was the 9/11 that propelled the US to intervene in Afghanistan but for long the country was ripped apart by civil war and human rights violations by the fundamentalist Taliban regime.
The US considered the Taliban a stabilizing force to ensure its geostrategic interests by assisting in laying down the alternative Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan (TAP) pipeline bypassing Iran and Russia. It was when the Taliban moved away from the American orbit of influence that the US decided to intervene in Afghanistan.
Humanitarian concerns very often provided a veneer to real geostrategic interests driving humanitarian interventions. The intervening powers’ lack of interests in post-conflict state-building exercises and failure to address the roots of insurgency in societies divided along sectarian lines keep tensions boiling on which radical religious groups such as the Taliban germinated and spread their tentacles and the wars led by the intervening powers only transformed the rebellion without actually ending them.