The war which the "international alliance against terrorism" fought against the Afghanistan of the Taliban was widely legitimized by both politicians and the media as a mission to liberate Afghani women. Three years after the demise of the Taliban regime the situation of Afghani women appears inconsistent and contradictory. While the lifting of the compulsory measures imposed on them by the Taliban regime has been experienced by many women as a liberation, particularly in the cities, women are among the principal victims of the continuing war and the appalling security situation. The deeply patriarchal attitudes which predominate in Afghani society persist in the post-Taliban era. At the same time, structural gender-political contradictions from the past have found a new lease of life in the social and political conflicts over the "women's question" in the new Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Both historically and currently the women's question in Afghanistan functions not only as a medium and instrument for state-building efforts and different forms of anti-state resistance, but also as a preferred juncture for international efforts and opposition based on identity politics. In the history of modern Afghanistan the combination of gender, state-building processes, and international politics has achieved constitutive structural significance in three different periods, marked by distinctive state ideologies. Under (i) the Western-oriented modernizer Amanullah (1919-29), (ii) the Soviet-Communist inspired Amin/Taraki regime (1978/79), and (iii) the Taliban regime (1996-2001), which attached itself to a specific form of radical Islamic ideology, the state attempted to use gender policy to intervene directly in the social structures of primary communities and to impose central state control and hegemony over society. None of these attempts led to successful and sustainable state-building. The gender-policy measures of the central power time and again called forth opposing societal forces which vehemently defended their autonomy from the state and control over "their women." The structural causes of the failure of all state-building projects hitherto lie, in addition to state deficits as regards legitimation and enforcement of policies, above all in the continuing strong segmentation of Afghani society, its distinct regional, local, and social heterogeneity which has often been deepened by external attempts to exert influence. The structural contradictions of the past also affect, in modified form, relations in the "new Afghanistan," including gender politics. A weak, extremely externally dependent and internally fragmented state, with little legitimation and implementation capacities, sees itself confronted by strong social and political forces which will not allow their autonomy to be restricted by central government. The strategies by means of which Afghani women are striving for more empowerment are essentially determined, historically and currently, by their social affiliation and urban or rural setting. For a minority of women from the modern urban middle classes the Karzai regime, which must heed the considerable legitimatory significance of the women's question for the Western agenda for Afghanistan, offers increased scope of action. However, without better and more equal living conditions, even in the "new Afghanistan" centrally decreed gender-political reforms will be confined within narrow margins, at least as long as a majority of the men and women concerned experience the changes as non-functional or even as counterproductive in their specific social life world.