How do civil wars affect state-building decisions in the aftermath of conflict? Despite a wide literature has analyzed the impact of interstate conflict on state capacity (Tilly 1992), few studies have focused on how civil wars influence state-building measures. This paper argues that, in the post-conflict period, the state focuses its state capacity efforts to areas in which state power has eroded during wartime, with the goal of avoiding future insurgent threats. Using the Peruvian civil war (1980-1992) as the main case of study, I test whether districts that were either contested or controlled by Sendero Luminoso received higher levels of state bureaucrats and welfare expenditures than those controlled by incumbents. For this, I rely on spatial models estimators employing data for the period 1981-2007. Results support the expectations. Contested and insurgent controlled districts are targeted with the deployment of state bureaucrats and security forces after the end of the conflict, while only rebel held territories improve their level of public goods and services provision. Results are complemented with anecdotal qualitative evidence and remain robust across several robustness checks. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the inter-relation between state capacity and civil war dynamics, showing how the end of internal armed conflicts can bring improved levels of state capacity to wartime areas.