Corruption in Afghanistan undermines the provision of basic services, enables the production and trafficking of narcotics and fuels instability. In the short term, official development assistance has prevented the collapse of the Afghan state’s core functions. However, donors’ highly fragmented, poorly executed stabilisation and democratisation measures have strengthened structures of neo-patrimonial governance and allowed parallel structures of service delivery to develop. Moreover, an unknown but significant amount of development assistance ends up funding various armed factions. The government has adopted an anti-corruption strategy and made reforms to Afghanistan’s legal code. Nonetheless, gaps remain in the institutional framework and lack of enforcement continues to be a barrier to state-building.