On Thursday, December 24, 2020, the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS) organized the launching ceremony for the book "Geopolitics and Afghanistan's Conflict: Local Regional and Global Perspectives” co-authored by Dr. Sardar Mohammad Rahimi and Abbas Arify. This event was accompanied by Dr. Sardar M. Rahimi, Deputy Minister of Education; Abbas Arify, journalist; Dr. Faramarz Tamanna, researcher in international relations, University of Afghanistan; Dr. Sebghatullah Ghaznavi, head of Tarzi Research Foundation, and Dr. Hossain Ramoz, senior adviser to the Attorney General, with moderation by Razia Danesh, university lecturer.
Dr. Rahimi said that Afghanistan has a lot of room for conflict and if it is not managed by the government, it will reach the countries of the region, one of which is the conflict between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Afghan conflict is mostly internal but not managed. Lack of management of these conflicts has caused other countries to pursue their interests inside Afghanistan so that they will not be challenged in the future. He added that Afghanistan needs to work more in the geopolitical sphere and use it for the benefit of the country and its people.
Arify said the book focuses on the components that cause conflict: Afghanistan has the majority of the components that cause conflict, and its lack of management has created problems for the country. He said that Afghanistan's landlocked nature could lead to the connection or separation of countries in the region and that this geographical location has provided Afghanistan with a series of opportunities, one of which could be easy relations with South Asia. Finally, he said, the book also deals with the issues of the Taliban and ISIS from a geopolitical perspective.
There are three accounts of the Afghan conflict, Dr. Tamana said. 1) The conflict in Afghanistan has internal factors. 2) The conflict in Afghanistan has foreign or transnational roots, and 3) the narrative is based on conspiracy theory, which is the dominant narrative or discourse in Afghanistan based on the third section. Regarding the book, Dr. Tamana said that the work is scientifically methodical, effective, and has the capacity to communicate with other disciplines such as international relations, but one of its shortcomings is the lack of dominant discourse in the book because it has been discussed more generally.
Dr. Ghaznavi said that the issue of geopolitics was more important to thinkers in the eighteenth century, and one of the important reasons was the rivalries of the great powers. He said Afghanistan's conflicts are more external because historically, Afghanistan's conflicts go back to other countries. He said that the author has written about religion in a very general way and can lead to an incorrect selection of readers because the issue is important in Afghanistan and should be addressed in depth.
Dr. Hossain Ramoz, the last speaker of the program, said that when we talk about the Afghan conflict, we must remember that since 1978, Afghanistan has had more than 3 million people killed, more than three million addicts, more than six million refugees, and one million disabled widows. According to Ramoz, in the context of global geopolitics, it is difficult to analyze the current war in Afghanistan.