Afghanistan as a Victim of Remote Crisis Management
Author: Abdul Naser Noorzad, security and geopolitics researcher, exclusively for Sangar.
For over two decades, Afghanistan has served as a testing ground for complex geopolitical and security scenarios orchestrated by global powers. Historically and today, no political group in the country has had the capacity to build a genuine state or implement comprehensive programs for sustainable development and stability. Existing political factions have either been consumed by personal ambitions and ethnic or regional rivalries, or have deliberately—or unwittingly—become instruments of externally designed projects.
From the outset, U.S. and Western policy emphasized shifting focus from institutions and programs to individuals. This conscious choice pushed Afghanistan into a strategic deadlock, where political change depended on the survival or removal of a single person rather than a stable institutional system.
This approach had profound consequences for state-building. When personality-centered politics replaced program-focused strategies, institutions remained rootless and fragile. As a result, changing one leader could destabilize the entire system. Even with massive financial and military inflows, institutional capacities and national programs never had the opportunity to take hold. While internal factors mattered, the primary responsibility for the collapse of the republic rests with external actors, particularly the U.S. and its allies.
The plan to transform Afghanistan into a “safe haven for terrorists” and promote extremism was conceived as a long-term project. Achieving this goal required implementing changes under the guise of a “mock democracy”—a system that offered only the illusion of freedom and civil rights while effectively paving the way for radicalization. This gradual process desensitized the public to the growth of extremist networks and created conditions for the sustained presence of transnational terrorist organizations.
Today, Afghan society faces a deep crisis of trust. People no longer see any political leader as a savior. Experience has shown that even those who came promising change and salvation either became tools of foreign powers or collapsed under internal and external pressures. Jihadist leaders and resistance commanders—once celebrated for entering Kabul triumphantly—were suddenly removed from the political scene and expelled from the country due to strategic missteps and secret agreements between Karzai, Ghani, Abdullah, and the West.
The United States never had a genuine plan for state-building, political stabilization, or resolving Afghanistan’s decades-long crisis. Its primary mission was remote crisis management: delegating security responsibilities to local actors, intervening selectively at critical moments, and maintaining Afghanistan as a point of relative stability to manage regional dynamics. Within this framework, the Taliban became actors serving both a proxy role and the interests of external powers.
If this situation continues, the next five years look troubling. Afghanistan is heading toward becoming a resentful, impoverished, dependent, and internationally isolated society—cut off from modern technology and science, and more than ever entrenched in regressive ideology. This trajectory not only threatens the country’s future but also risks turning Afghanistan into a hub for exporting instability across the region and the world.
Evidence shows that the U.S. strategy of “remote rebalancing” has been fully effective. Indirect control via local networks, resource management, and intelligence influence, combined with structural dependency on external actors, has allowed Washington to dominate Afghanistan without an extensive military presence.
By operating within this framework, the Taliban have become a tool for advancing broader regional objectives, particularly amid geopolitical competition between the U.S., China, Russia, and Iran.
Today, Afghanistan is not a free or independent country—it is part of a chessboard, with its pieces moved by others. Unless this reality is fully understood and addressed through a coherent strategy, the future will be even darker than the present.
