Winning hearts and minds in state building: NATO in Afghanistan

State-building interventions are mostly carried out by western states. Intervening groups try to impose the western democratic institutions they know on societies they do not know. However, not every state accepts democratic government. There are also societies that are blindly attached to the understanding of management coming from history. Even in societies that have not been able to become a nation-state, there are situations where there is a need for state building. Some societies are governed independently of the authority of the state as regional, tribal or feudal structures. For this reason, it is important to apply a method that will meet the expectations of the whole society by determining the common expectations of the society in state-building studies. In short, reaching the community and winning their hearts and minds play a key role. The "hearts" referred to here state that it is in society's interest to oppose revolts against the intervention; "minds", on the other hand, explains that the forces involved aim to protect society. When these two facts are sufficiently accepted by the society, there is a tendency to give support instead of resistance to intervention. After the 9/11 attacks, NATO started to lead the way in the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, as well as supporting the newly established administration and establishing its authority in the whole country, establishing social reforms in the country, carrying out development activities and training Afghan security forces. However, despite all these efforts, after the NATO forces left the country, Afghanistan could not maintain the level reached from the state administration to education, from human rights to the economy, and it became a failed state again. One of the reasons for this situation was that the state-building activities that NATO took responsibility for in Afghanistan were not fully accepted by the Afghan society and the Taliban took advantage of this situation.