Col. Jones,

By "control" I generally mean the ability to enforce your governance (whatever it is) and prevent competitors. In your example it's not enough, in my view, to simply provide a justice system - even one that's perceived as superior to the Taliban's - one must also have the capacity to enforce adherence to that system's decisions as well as to credibly prevent competition ranging from vigilantism to a full-blown shadow government.

In other words, building a system of justice is not the same thing as actually providing justice. For the latter you need much more than judicial institutions. "If you build it, they will come" does not apply.

We can build courthouses, we can train people to operate a judicial system and teach them the concepts of law, etc. All that is wasted if the Taliban can come in, post a bunch of night letters and assassinate a few judges as examples. If you can't prevent the Taliban from doing that, then what credibility do you have with the populace? Why should they trust your justice system if you can't even do that?

So I'm skeptical that it's possible to focus on one discrete part of government (ie. Justice) and work only on that. I'm skeptical that one government good can be singled out and improved or implemented without improving the governance system more generally. Governance is probably more interrelated that it initially appears.