External Actors in the Afghan Problem
continues...

Afghanistan had become the playground of a new ‘great game’ among the regional powers. Iran, Pakistan and some of the Central Asian states had conflicting interests in the outcome of the civil war in the country. The root cause of interference of the regional powers is political polarisation among the Afghan groups and the civil war, which pushed them to seek external support to counterbalance their internal adversaries. Whether or not external interference is a cause of civil war is open to debate, and the question will evoke different answers. Rais makes two submissions.

First, all civil wars have a tendency to become internationalised. Foreign private groups and states in the neighbourhood take advantage of the local difficulties of weaker and more vulnerable states and support political rivals, including secessionist groups. Such support is aimed at achieving certain concrete political objectives.

Various groups in Afghanistan share ethnic and religious bonds with similar groups in the neighbouring states, which invites a natural interest in their well being. Besides, ethnic and religious factors, regional states have a clash of interests over their political and security agendas.

Second, there is the history and pattern of external intervention in Afghanistan, which started as a reaction to the Soviet military intervention.

This intervention, notably from Pakistan was welcome by most of the Afghans fighting the war of resistance as critical to their struggle for national liberation. Others joined the competition for influence after the Soviet military withdrawal.

To be continued....