Integrity Score 380
No Records Found
No Records Found
Chapter 2 continues…
Afghanistan’s political history shows that the advent of conflict in Afghanistan cannot be merely attributed to the Soviet intervention or to a particular year i.e. 1979. Conflict in various forms existed much before the Soviets set foot on the Afghan soil and conflict continued even after the Soviet soldiers left Afghanistan. Moreover the country has a multi- layered conflict-system at a community level where Afghans experience conflict on a daily basis rooted in their livelihoods and social relations, particularly for those in rural areas. It is erroneous, as most western analysts have often done, to pin point the Soviet intervention and its aftermath to be the start of war and conflict in the country, although it marked the beginning of a very high-intensity conflict.
Infact, Afghanistan has always found itself at the axis of imperial ambitions since the beginning of recorded history, as mentioned earlier from the world’s first transcontinental superpower, the Persian Empire, to its latest the United States. Regarded as the coveted prize of empires, Afghanistan had evolved through the modern era to the status of a buffer state, then a Cold War battlefield, and finally to a hideout of the so-called Islamic terrorist outfits. Hence, Afghanistan has borne witness to the armies of the Persians, Greeks, Mauryans, Huns, Mongols, Mughals, British, Soviets, and the Americans.
However, the Soviet armed intervention with its global dimensions did have a major adverse impact on the country’s already fragile state structure and caused immense damage to the country’s infrastructure. The involvement of international actors like the USA, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to combat the Soviet ‘threat’ created an arms network—that poses a challenge even to the present administration. With an economy that has been rightly been termed as “war economy” in which thrives a flourishing drug network and smuggling racket and left with no indegenous source of revenue, Afghanistan’s economy surely has a long way to go.
Moreover, the Soviet intervention and the subsequent conflict that followed, displaced people to a proportion of millions forcing them to live as refugees in neighbouring countries.
To be continued…