Reasons of Failure and Shortcomings in Afghan Political Settlements

Abstract

From the emergence until the collapse of the Marxist government, the war-torn Afghan nation from one side was gradually stepping away from the development track, and from the other side, anarchy was dominating the nation timely with a fickle difference in degree. After abolishing, the absence of a 'state' in Afghanistan and the country's abandonment as a derelict brought the novel era of civil war among conquerors (political parties), which intensified the mentioned multidimensional predicaments. To restore the earlier flourishment, former political parties deemed signing a political settlement—failure to adapt unified policy and point of view toward achieving the objectives by parties devastated peace and stability progress even after signing multiple agreements. By uprooting the economic oriented 'bargaining for power' theory, politically developing it in addition, and applying it in the Afghan case of political settlements, this thesis describes the four political settlements achieved between 1992 to 2014 to find the linkage between the variable of ‘political settlements’ to its independent variable of ‘durability’. Furthermore, this thesis analyzes reasons for shortcomings and flaws, meticulously reviewing the available literature, conducted interviews with the Afghan government's former minister, Discourse analysis of attended political ceremonies regarding balloting for ministers in the parliament, and personal meetings with an influential businessman and a government official. This study extracted the following internal (A-F) and external (1-2) factors with mixed research methods as results to find out the posed query. A) null and void consideration of the political settlements and lack of commitment to its full implementation between the signatories, B) misuse of ethnic and racial divisions by party leaders to achieve a superior position over rivals, C) internal economic crisis and poverty as the factor of citizen silence regarding wrong decisions and movements, D) Power monopolization and the dearth of a unified policy among parties, E) Manipulating and ploy of the opponent/s using the preeminent vacuums in the text of the agreement or superior regulations, and F) character destruction and blaming of the adversaries. 1) Using Afghanistan as a land to counterattack rival ideologies, and 2) Indo-Pakistan rivalry.