Afghanistan is not traditionally seen as a ‘decolonized’ state, given that it was never formally part of any empire. Yet Afghan state leaders embraced the language of anti-colonialism and self-determination to assert influence in the international community, and especially at the UN. This paper explores the interactions between Afghan elites and the UN, particularly the way that Afghanistan fought the growing global consensus that self-determination in the era of decolonization meant the establishment of an international states system. Afghan elites instead argued that self-determination was for peoples, not states. Afghanistan’s stance on self-determination, as an exception to territorial state centrism, provides a way of thinking about decolonization’s universalisms and particularities, as well as how it ultimately complicated Afghanistan’s own place in the international community. The article uses Afghanistan’s engagement with the UN General Assembly and its various subcommittees, from its membership in 1946 to the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, to reflect on the ways decolonization became a global yet fractured phenomenon that came to mean numerous practices and could be used by different historical actors to articulate multiple, potentially competing visions of political autonomy and rights. International institutions like the UN provided crucial arenas where postcolonial statehood became the norm yet was nevertheless contested and questioned. By providing an exception to the UN’s focus on territorial statehood, Afghanistan demonstrates the ongoing fluidity and complexity of decolonization’s meaning and consequences, as well as the ways in which nations continue to inform the global.

阿富汗传统上不被视为一个“非殖民化”国家，因为它从未正式成为任何帝国的一部分。然而，阿富汗国家领导人接受了反殖民主义和自决的语言，以在国际社会，特别是在联合国施加影响。本文探讨了阿富汗精英与联合国之间的互动，特别是阿富汗与日益增长的全球共识抗争的方式，即非殖民化时代的自决意味着建立国际国家体系。相反，阿富汗精英争辩说，自决权是为了人民，而不是国家。作为领土国家中心主义的一个例外，阿富汗对自决的立场提供了一种思考非殖民化的普遍性和特殊性的方式，以及它最终如何使阿富汗自己在国际社会中的地位复杂化。本文利用阿富汗与联合国大会及其各个小组委员会的接触，从 1946 年成为会员国到 1989 年苏联从阿富汗撤军，反思非殖民化如何成为一种全球性但分裂的现象，这意味着许多实践，可能被不同的历史行为者用来表达关于政治自治和权利的多重、可能相互竞争的愿景。像联合国这样的国际机构提供了重要的舞台，使后殖民国家成为常态，但仍然受到质疑和质疑。通过为联合国对领土国家地位的关注提供一个例外，