594 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 5 / 2015 for the movement. After all, the movement was reusing the old forms of tribal and clientelistic organisation. As its emergence was the result of extreme social regression, it had no plans or technical specialists to manage a modern society. Under such circumstances, it should come as no surprise that, other than achieving a certain level of pacification of the country albeit at the price of terrible repression, its general way of working was ineffective. The new regime installed by the foreign intervention in 2001 has broadly stood out for its desire to break with the regressive drift of the Mujahideen and the Taliban, and for returning to a strategy of moderate modernisation in line with the former monarchy. Indeed, it is led by a descendant of the Durrani aristocracy who has even accentuated the country’s traditional dependency on the outside world. His budget is fed by international agencies, his administration has been partly managed by foreigners and the same goes for his security forces that were built up by expeditionary troops that are now withdrawing, with no certainty that the Afghan police and army will be capable of keeping the situation under control. Recent events in Iraq only further fuel this suspicion. Without a doubt, some important progress has been made compared to the previous situation. A representative democracy has been formally installed. Elections are held and there are different political parties, plurality of newspapers and of associations. There has also been some economic development in certain areas and very tangible progress in schooling, health and women’s emancipation. However, the darker side is also fearsome. Above all, the mafia-like system born of the disintegration of the country in the 80s and 90s has continued to develop on a large scale. One of the main problems that Afghan modernisation traditionally came up against was the lack of exports that were sufficiently profitable to finance said modernisation. Curiously, the new Afghanistan is overcoming this former shortcoming in part through its immersion in an export economy of illegal products such as heroine and arms smuggling. This strange form of insertion into a global economy has important practical consequences. First off all, this illegal trafficking cannot be allowed to benefit the state. Authorities should combat it, or at least appear to be combating it. They cannot turn this trafficking into state monopolies, neither can they levy it with formal taxes. Secondly, due to its illegal nature, it involves an artificially low number of providers which makes the products more expensive and thus brings in strongly monopolised revenues. A minority composed mainly of the former leaders of the political-military factions are becoming spectacularly rich in this way. The revenues gained are mostly invested in prestigious goods, to be flaunted as symbols of power, and in recruiting new followers. The resulting clientelist coalitions infiltrate into state administration and are then able to use it as required. They also monopolise and divert international funds to their advantage and largely pervert the http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee
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