Larry Goodson is associate professor of international Studies at Bentley College, Waltham, Massachusetts. He the author of the book, Afghanistan Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban (University of Washington press). Goodson writes that Afghanistan has become the archetype of a failed state and a perfect example of how nonstate actors move into the vacuum created when a state fails. He also writes about the divisions in the Afghan population: ethnic, linguistic, regional, sectarian, racial, and tribal.