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At the crossroads of Central and Southern Asia lie two Muslim neighbors i.e., Pakistan and Afghanistan. Similarities in religion, culture, ethnicity, race, and history were predicted to cement the harmonious bilateral connection between the two countries. There have been a lot of obstacles to the development of positive relations between the two republics ever since they were established. Afghanistan's alone neighbor and a key commercial partner, Pakistan and the two countries have a difficult history despite Afghanistan's reliance on Pakistan's seaports and international trade. Tense relations began with the conflicts over the Durand line and Pakhtunistan stunt supported by Afghan government and were exacerbated by subsequent events like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and the American involvement in the country after September 11, 2001. A large number of refugees fled to Pakistan as a result of these invasions, shaking up the country's politics and economy. India's involvement in Afghan politics has had a major effect on Pakistan's interests in the country and the surrounding region, especially after September 11th, when the United States attempted to offset Chinese influence in the area. India's engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan's support in the US invasion of Afghanistan are at the root of the current state of bilateral ties. Normalizing bilateral relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan may require the involvement of a third party or agreement on confidence-building measures to enhance the welfare of persons living on the other side of the Durand line and encourage amicable interactions between the two countries. Using a qualitative approach, this article investigates the causes and consequences of the current mistrust in bilateral ties, with a particular emphasis on economic and security problems in the wake of 9/11. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Soviet-Afghan War than the simple narrative of a Soviet invasion resisted by pious freedom-fighters. It mentions lofty goals was both ideological and pragmatic, owing to the inevitability of his state's isolationism should his revolutionary ambitions ever bear fruit. It also mentions PDPA first announced to Afghanistan and the world that it had wrested power from Khan in a relatively bloodless coup and ailing communist regime.

Pakistan's relationship with Afghanistan over the years can be termed as difficult at best. Several regional and global developments haue also had a significant impact on the bilateral discourse: the Cold War years leading up to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and subsequent collapse of the USSR; rise of the Taliban, 9/11 and the consequent US interuention spanning over two decades followed by the recent and abrupt withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan; and the second coming of the Taliban. Pakistan's policies concerning Afghanistan have received a lot of attention and have been interpreted from varying and, at times, opposing perspectives. The Taliban's takeouer of Kabul on 15 August 2021 and the chaotic exodus of all foreign troops has serious implications for Pakistan and has raised some probing questions. How has Pakistan's perception of its westerly neighbour been shaped by colonial legacies, security concerns, ideological foundations, regional developments and domestic exigencies? Is there a discernible pattern as to how Pakistan has dealt with Afghanistan? Employing a periodized overview of Pakistan-Afghanistan relations, this paper attempts to decipher Pakistan 's foreign policy objectiues and primary drivers of its policies uis-6-uis Afghanistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article locates the Government of India's refusal to grant refugee status to Afghans in Delhi in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 within the Cold War politics of the era. I trace this history through internal communications of the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India from 1979 to 1983. I argue that the Indian government's response to Afghan arrivals was shaped by geopolitical and diplomatic contingencies rather than humanitarian ones. I also examine the intertwined history of Afghan refugees and the establishment of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' office in Delhi, India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A systematic analysis of formerly classified Soviet Politburo documents challenges popular misconceptions about the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. The archival evidence indicates that, far from being a near-complete and chaotic failure, the withdrawal was based on a coherent exit strategy that initially achieved its limited objectives. Moscow's strategy enabled Soviet-trained Afghan forces to withstand the insurgent offensive and allowed the Afghan government to remain in power nearly three years after the Soviet combat forces departed. The Soviet-installed Afghan government ultimately collapsed not from military defeat or bankruptcy but from internal political strife and betrayals. Even though Soviet leaders failed to secure long-term gains as their strategy ran out of time, their experience provides relevant lessons for U.S. strategy formulation in Afghanistan following the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces and is an instructive case that can inform theories of great-power retraction from foreign intervention in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about Afghanistan conflict which start from the 1979 Afghan-Soviet war. Topics discussed include relation between in-utero conflict exposure and child health, NATO withdrawal of Afghanistan in 2012 and an illegal cultivation of opium poppy with its impact on gross domestic product (GDP)of the country.

Atiq Rahimi accepted the invitation to present his keynote Ecrire l'exile at the 2018 international workshop 'Refugees in Literature, Film, Art and Media: Perspective on the Past and Present' in Liverpool. His speech, closing the event, was accompanied by its translation, 'Writing Exile', prepared by the organiser, Lida Amiri. In his keynote, Rahimi artistically contemplates the perilous route of refuge, and the implications for writers of a life in exile. In his brief but poignant essay, Rahimi traces his personal experience walking from Afghanistan to Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After prolonged period of peace and stability, the war-torn Afghanistan fall victim to interstate conflicts that began in 1978. The two phases of conflict in Afghanistan, the first emerged after Soviet Invasion in 1979 and the second after US Invasion in 2001, were dealt separately. Different approaches were adopted and effective measures were taken to transform the conflicts. Peshawar Accord 1992 and Bonn Agreement 2001 were the charters for transformation of Soviet and US transpired conflicts respectively. Although both the conflicts were ultimately transformed into ethnic struggles but their transformation approaches differ widely. Peshawar Accord was advocating a more comprehensive and modern approach based on principles of good governance with primary focus on the Rule of Law. The US approach towards conflict transformation in Afghanistan was through democratic development and political participation. The rule of law was dealt as a by-product of democratization process. The policy of power sharing by different ethnic factions in Afghanistan was adopted to ensure political development. Although the democratization process has been developed and successful power transfer has been witnessed in the previous years, the overall situation of the country has been worsened even further and the overall US policy of power sharing has thus failed to secure stability in Afghanistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the possibility of the defeat of Afghan resistance forces by the joint forces of the Soviet Union and Afghanistan. The continued war in Afghanistan shows that the armed forces of the Soviet Union can defeat the resistance fighters of the country. The fighting has developed negative outcomes in the country by destroying its infrastructure, political set up and others. It also shows that the Afghan resistance and the Afghan government is divided between ethnic and political lines. The article also offers information on the prime objective of Soviet military strategy.

The purpose of this research paper is to investigate Khaled Hosseini's use of the analogy of women as nation in his novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. Afghanistan has witnessed political interference from 1970 to 2001 -- a ruler overthrown, coup d'état, soviet invasion, civil war, the Taliban and an invasion by America and NATO forces. Under such tumultuous circumstances, Afghanistan has been striving to form an identity of its own. The predicament of Afghan people finds voice in their literature. Hosseini, through his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns, tries to provide the physical and mental geography of his nation. The endurance of Afghanistan and its women can be traced out in Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. Hosseini interrogates the patriarchal hierarchies that encompass the identity of women. The endurance of women and the endurance of Afghanistan amid hostile and oppressive circumstances become equally imperative for Hosseini. Hosseini correlates the suffering of woman to the suffering of the nation. He employs the apparent symbol of woman as nation and links the two in a reciprocally describing metaphor which problematizes the relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which lasted between the years 1979 and 1989 sparked off the last principal armed conflict of the Cold War. The seperate and unorganized uprisings against the pro-Soviet government of the 1978 coup d'etat, namely "Saur Revolution", had transformed to be farreaching resistance with the help of third parties wherafter the Soviet invasion took place. The primary actors of the crisis were the Soviet Union, Marxist Afghan government and the per contra insurgents. While the resistance groups in Afghan territory were operating under the umbrella of religious political parties, stationed in Pakistan or Iran, they were also enjoying financial aid and arms supply, procured by the countries like the US, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Although these political parties were extremely making use of the islamic themes in their discourses they had actually been shaped on ethnic basis and background. In the general sense, part of Afghan people partook in the resistance groups under the auspices of a political party with affiliation motives and some other preferred to be on the side of pro-soviet government. The Turks, mostly resident in Northern Afghanistan followed the same course as is the case with the other ethnic groups and they either chose the option to support Kabul government or to resist the Soviet military forces. Taking into account the Soviet citizens of Turkic origin who participated in the military expedition in Afghanistan, it is deducible to say that Turks in this geography had to fight on different sides of the armed conflict. In this paper, the situation and activities of Turks in Afghanistan and the ones who partook in the armed conflict as soviet soldiers are examined during the Soviet invasion and soon after within the scope of prominent personalities of Turkic origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents case studies of the occurrence of Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia and of Afghanistan, and the collapse of the Soviet Union or the USSR in an effort to better assess modern Russia. The case of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan both show the need for analysts to work to understand the distinct construction of cost-benefit analyses of Russia. The Soviet collapse underlines the unique traits of Russian society which must be taken into account.

In preparation for withdrawing from Afghanistan, the Soviets targeted key guerrilla logistics trans-shipment depots located in remote, difficult-to-access regions. One of these was located on the Iranian border in the vicinity of Herat. The Soviet 40th Army and Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan launched a successful, hard-fought battle to take down this mountain fortress and destroyed large amounts of war stocks before withdrawing. It was a blow to guerrilla efforts, but was not decisive. Redundant guerrilla logistics networks were able to sustain the guerrilla effort following the battle. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How do warlords build their legitimacy and eventually exert authority? The case of Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Massoud demonstrates that warlords do not only build legitimacy through the internal provision of goods and services to the population under their control, but also build their legitimacy by projecting authority externally, through the development of their own form of diplomacy. In this article, I show that warlords develop complex and complementary legitimisation strategies that extend beyond their territorial realms to include consequential relationships with foreign actors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the role of propaganda and disinformation in 21st century intelligence focusing on the implications of cyberspace or global information environment, threat posed to national security, and impacts of information diffusion. Topics include development of information operations within the Soviet Union Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Gezopasnost, role of the Glavnoye Razvedyvatel'noe Upravleniye (GRU), and information vectors utilized by Soviet operatives in the Soviet-Afghan War.

Fictionalized accounts, particularly feature films, about the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s have played a significant role in shaping public opinion about the history of the region and issues related to Islamic militancy. Novels and films in the West have portrayed the Soviet army as brutal and genocidal and the mujahideen who resisted the invaders as 'freedom fighters.' Russian movies have also portrayed the soldiers in a somewhat negative light and the mujahideen as evil terrorists. No fictional treatment has provided enough background to the conflict to reveal that the Russians entered Afghanistan only to provide support to a communist regime that had gained power on its own, and none have revealed the extent of aid from the United States, the United Kingdom, Iran, Pakistan, and China to the mujahideen. The CIA sponsored Charlie Wilson's War, the movie that comes closest to capturing the larger context of the war, but even in that case, crucial elements were removed from early drafts of the script that presented a more complex and accurate picture of the war. In particular, movies have failed to explore the possible links between U.S. support for mujahideen in the 1980s and violent attacks by Islamic extremists since 2001. The one exception is Charlie Wilson's War, where changes to the script had the result of downplaying and trivializing those links. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Khaled Hosseini's the Kite Runner, we as readers witness many stages of the Afghan history. Many socio-political events such as the fall of Afghan monarchy, the Soviet invasion, the Taliban's regime in Afghan history are given through the life story of Amir and Hassan, two Afghan boys. In the novel, the struggle for power (in politics and in daily life) and avarice of human beings (in every field of life) begin to destroy Amir and Hassan's lives as well as the environment. Eventually, everything begins to fall apart in Afghanistan. What is significant in the novel is that at the hands of the Afghan writer Khaled Hosseini, every single natural element (such as a tree, a flower or a drop of rain) may become a tool to reflect the psychology of the characters in the Kite Runner. Thus, the destruction of the nature with bombs or wars destroys not only the environment, but also the human nature/human psyche, which results in the loss of moral values as well. On the other hand, an awakening in the nature may also lead to a psychological awakening or to a realisation in the human beings. Therefore, in this paper, the relationship between nature and human psyche will be studied and will be illustrated with examples from Khaled Hosseini's novel, the Kite Runner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Pakistan's foreign policy toward Afghanistan in the wake of the Operation Freedom Sentinel since January 01, 2015. As this work is based in Pakistan-Afghanistan regional security complex and its interplay with other territorial and non-territorial sub-systems, in this article the complex nature of relationship between Pakistan and Afghanistan has been emphasized. Since 1970s Pakistan had adopted rather strong policy towards its neighbour Afghanistan during Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's premiership. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan provided basis to Pakistani leadership for active involvement in Afghanistan which lately caused serious repercussions for Pakistan. Pakistan's foreign policy has gone through various ups and downs during the 1990s, and then the War on Terror changed the course of action with Afghanistan. Afghanistan had been important in Pakistan's foreign policy as 'strategic depth' due to which Pakistan could never be indifferent from Afghanistan's precarious situation of peace, security, and stability in which Pakistan had been playing its role. Even in the post-War on Terror era, Pakistan is trying to broker peace between the stakeholders, Taliban, other militant groups, the government of Afghanistan, and the US. In the absence of peace in Pakistan- Afghanistan security complex, it will not be possible for Pakistan to pursue effective foreign policy in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to articles in this issue of "Journal of Cold War Studies" is presented, with topics including transformation of Indochina after World War II by Vietnamese Communists, withdrawal of the Soviet Army from Afghanistan in 1988-1989 and impact of Radio Free Europe on Soviet-bloc nations.

The article presents the comment of the author on the response of the U.S. to the occupation of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union. This action of the Soviet leadership indicates that the hard-line elements, who are not concerned about world opinion, have advanced to influential decision making position in the Soviet government. According to the author, the response of the U.S. administration to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan reveals the naiveness of American officials.

A content analysis of war-specific frames used by Soviet mainstream newspapers Izvestia and Komsomolskaya Pravda during the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan revealed that the national political system and foreign policy heavily influenced war reporting in the pre-Gorbachev era. In a censored environment, a highly polarized approach framed the West as the enemy and the USSR as the supporter of the Afghan people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the aftermath of the Arab uprisings Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs) have emerged as a significant security challenge. Since the 1980s and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan the notion of a ‘foreign fighter’ has been closely linked, if not synonymous, with those ideologically or religiously motivated individuals who have travelled to join conflicts in Islamic lands. This article will explore the contemporary FTF movement, offering a comparison of Afghanistan in the 1980s and Syria in the contemporary period. It will explore the international community’s expansive responses to the challenge of FTFs, with special focus on the role of the United Nations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Decades of scholarship have warned against using historical analogies for policymaking. But the Taliban insurgency appears, on the surface, to confirm the usefulness of historical analogies to the British and Soviet wars in Afghanistan. I review the use of analogies for the war in Afghanistan and argue the analogies were historically unsound and strategically unhelpful. In fact, their effect on policy helped create the conditions for the very insurgency policymakers most hoped to avoid. The Taliban insurgency did not occur because of the presence of too many foreign troops and aid workers, but because there were too few. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyzes the reaction of the West German press to the powerful peace movement that gripped the Federal Republic of Germany between 1979 and 1984. Following NATO's double track decision and Russia's invasion of Afghanistan, thousands of pacifist and peace activists participated in rallies, meetings, and sit-ins to protest above all the politics of NATO. Unnerved by the amassing of nuclear, protesters expressed their fears and anxieties highly visible on placards and in pamphlets. This public display of 'fear of atom' led to an intensive media debate about the validity and possible dangers of the protesters' emotionality. The press's coverage of the peace movement and the question of how protesters expressed their fears turned into a discussion over legitimate political participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]