The current approach to peacebuilding is to focus on the specifi c building blocks of the process. However, such attention and building blocks are to date largely isolated from each other in their planning, analysis, implementation and measures for success with regard to contributing to overall peace. While two of these, land rights and road infrastructure, are regarded separately as crucial to post-war recovery, their interaction has not yet been examined. This article looks at these two priorities for Afghanistan, and fi nds in their interaction a large and acute problem of land seizures which the government and the international community in-country are unable to manage. This land grabbing is a direct result of a context of pervasive corruption, ongoing confl ict, a mistaken understanding of the nature of the benefi ts of road reconstruction, large-scale dislocation and widespread use of explosive devices. Such a pervasive problem sets back recovery, detracts from durable peace and fuels the insurgency.

This chapter describes the role of land rights and tenure security in war-affected scenarios. Because armed conflict and tenure security both operate in the domain of spatial relationships between people, the connection between them is acutely intimate. War-torn land tenure scenarios are unique in their combination of a weakened and chaotic formal (statutory) system, vigorous but very fluid informal tenure activity, along with the presence of political demands regarding land, and international actors that have a large interest and influence in the direction of recovery. While this combination carries risks, it also represents real opportunity for practical and policy reform in support of tenure security and sustainability. Subsequent to a review of the land tenure security issues that emerge prior to, during, and after armed conflict, the chapter describes how certain forms of post-conflict land rights recovery can support tenure security and contribute to long-term sustainability. The chapter presents the case of Afghanistan to highlight the issues of conflict and tenure security.