Nation Ethnicity And The Conflict In Afghanistan

Ethnic and tribal loyalties in Afghanistan provided the lethal cocktail for the violent conflict that engulfed the country following the collapse of the Soviet backed government in 1992. The ensuing fighting between mujahideen groups paved the way for the tectonic social and political shifts, which continue to shape events today. What accounts for the emergence of ethnicity, as the main cause of conflict in Afghanistan? What moved people to respond with such fervour and intensity to calls for ethnic solidarity? This book attempts to make sense of ethnicity’s decisive role in Afghanistan through a comprehensive exploration of its nature and perception. Based on new data, generated through interviews, field notes and participant observations, Sharma maps the increased role of ethnicity in Afghan national politics. Key social, political and historical processes that facilitated its emergence as the pre-dominant fault-line of conflict are explored, moving away from grand political and military narrative to instead engage with zones of conflict as social spaces. This book will be of interest to students and scholars working in politics, ethnic studies and security studies.

The book explores how legacies of internal strife and foreign invasions have altered the balance of social and political forces that provided some measure of stability to Afghanistan. The country faces structural constraints in the way of reviving itself owing to ethnic fragmentation, Taliban insurgency, and shallow social roots of political power. The central argument is that Afghanistan needs positive international engagement to find a new balance among its fractious social groups and build effective state and nationhood.

This research paper is devoted to studying the problems of state-building in Afghanistan in the context of the ethnopolitical fragmentation, as well as analyzing issues related to resolving the ―Afghan problem,‖ taking into account the interests of the mutually competing and mutually cooperating military-political forces of Afghanistan. The author also examines the shortcomings of the ethnic-policy of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and various possible ways of resolving the ―Afghan problem‖ at the present stage. Also, the author investigated the theoretical aspects of state-building in postconflict states (societies), the theoretical understanding of the roots of the ethnopolitical fragmentation of Afghanistan and the concept of a ―failed state,‖ classical approaches to the state formation under the ethnic conflict conditions, and considered the prospects of a multi-ethnic political system in Afghanistan through institutional mechanisms.

Understanding Ethnic Conflict provides all the key concepts needed to understand conflict among ethnic groups. Including approaches from both comparative politics and international relations, this text offers a model of ethnic conflict's internationalization by showing how domestic and international actors influence a country's ethnic and sectarian divisions. Illustrating this model in five original case studies, the unique combination of theory and application in Understanding Ethnic Conflict facilitates more critical analysis of contemporary ethnic conflicts and the world's response to them.

This report covers the ethnic complexity of Afghanistan, which reflects its position between Persian- and Turkish-speaking peoples to the north and west, and the various South Asian peoples of the east. The way in which the USSR invasion has further polarized the population is also examined.

This striking volume provides a comprehensive analysis of the prevention of violence and resolving conflict, elaborating on the role that key regional and international organizations (e.g. UN, OSCE, COE, OAU-AU and OSA) have or should have in the prevention of violence and terrorism, as well as in the protection of human and minority rights.