How Would a Realist Explain the Civil War in Afghanistan?

Abstract

This paper is looking to examine Afghanistan’s Civil war through core concepts of Realism. Realism holds that civil wars occur when the dichotomy between the domestic order and international chaos breaks down. In such a situation, central government loses its legitimacy and thus people start to own back the liberty that already was given to the central government for sake of security. In Afghanistan, the same dynamics happened. Since 1990s, people lost trust on the governments and thus mobilized around ethnical lines to accumulate power and seek security for them. This paper concludes that partition is the fundamental solution for civil wars like that of Afghanistan.