Afghanistan Regional Forum No. 4, January 2013
By Emil Dzhuraev
Thomas Barfield, one of the more informed scholars of Afghanistan, remarked in an article that if the country “has any hope of regaining stability it must break from the isolation it has endured for more than 120 years.” Such isolation has “also meant that none of its neighbors had any vested economic interests there”. As the ominous year of 2014 inexorably closes in, the implication of this observation for the neighbors of Afghanistan also needs to be pointed out and addressed.
