Afghanistan has never been a state in modern understanding of such a polity. Its society is prevented from embracing modernity and is kept in constant struggle for overcoming pre-modern challenges such as tribalism and patronage. The country has been kept hostage and prevented from taking the necessary steps needed to embrace modernity and evolve as modern state and society. Almost all of “Afghan” leaders have been client-kings who had attained power with the support of foreign patrons. They have not been political animals of the country on a mission to build Afghanistan and help its people and thus they have always faced local resistance. They have always come to power to serve the patron and a few “tribal” cronies. They have used pre-modern practices such as tribalism and patronage to fail modernity in the country. As a result, Afghanistan is going through a paradoxical process of “state-building” that produces no modern state or society but client-kingdoms with agitated or allegedly combatant society with eternal struggle for “freedom”.