The impact of India-Pakistan rivalry on peacebuilding process in Afghanistan

This research examines the role of India and Pakistan in the Afghan conflict by addressing the following research question: “how has rivalry between India and Pakistan undermined the internationally–supported peacebuilding process in post-2001 Afghanistan?”. The central argument of this paper is that the Afghan conflict is more than a local power struggle between competing Afghan groups because external factors, particularly the India-Pakistan rivalry, permeates internal struggles and undermines Afghanistan’s stability, economic growth, and regional integration. For the purpose of the main argument of this research, India and Pakistan have projected their conflict into Afghanistan by considering it as a strategic value in their geopolitical, security and economic calculations. However, despite the fact that the India-Pakistan rivalry has been a major determinant in Afghanistan’s peace and stability, the prospects for cooperation between the two rival states in Afghanistan has been a neglected element in almost all proposals for peacebuilding efforts, and for that reason, it has attracted less attention of scholarly literature in and outside South Asia. What considerably distinguishes this research from the existing studies is its particular focus on the implications of the India-Pakistan rivalry for the Afghan peacebuilding process by testing the validity of the theoretical framework of liberal peace.