By Dr Sharifullah Dorani*
Introduction
There is disagreement on the United States (US) motive for its intervention in Afghanistan. This essay[1] first explains what these, often conflicting views, are. It then states what views the author has found more persuasive. The essay ends with some concluding remarks.
The various conflicting views regarding US motive in Afghanistan
Former Afghan member of parliament Malalai Joya and author Derrick O’Keefe claimed that the US intervened in Afghanistan to create a military balance in the region against Russia, China and India’s rising military and economic capabilities and powers, and especially to curb China and Russia’s influence in Central Asia and the Caucuses. Furthermore, the intervention enabled the US to be in a close proximity with Iran so that it could keep a close watch on the latter.[2]
The American historian and educator Melvyn Leffler likewise claimed that US involvement in 2001 was a quest for primacy and military supremacy as always, so there was no major shift in its foreign policy.[3] British Academic Steven Hurst focused his book entirely on US involvement in Iraq, but his analysis could have relevance to the Afghanistan War. For him, the US intervened in Iraq in order to maintain its hegemonic position in the Persian Gulf by ensuring that the reliable flow of oil to the US and other ‘core’ (developed) states continued. The reliable flow of oil to the allies was intended to secure the ‘consent of the allies’ (or the ‘core’ states in the ‘World Capitalist System’) to US hegemony in the international oil system. The coming into power of the ‘Right’ wing (the Bush Junior Administration) of the Republican Party in 2000 was another causal factor as its approaches (militarism and unilateralism) drew the US into Iraq.[4]
The neoconservative members, or what Hurst referred to as the Right wing, and their ideas indeed played an important part in President Bush’s decision to intervene in Afghanistan. The neocons included the Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Under Secretary of Defense for policy Douglas Feith, Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley (who served as National Security Advisor during the second term of the Bush Junior Administration), Cheney’s Chief of Staff Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Zalmay Khalilzad in charge of Afghanistan and Iraq at the National Security Council (NSC), and Richard Perle, one of ‘the leading neoconservative intellectuals’ of the neoconservative movement, as the Head of the Defense Policy Board, an independent advisory group to the Secretary of Defense.[5]
To have a better understanding of how the neoconservatives could have influenced decision-making towards Afghanistan, it is essential to know their ideas. Two individuals played crucial parts in developing and championing neocon ideas: Irving Kristol, professor of social thought at New York University and later a (‘gifted’) journalist,[6] and Harvard University Professor of sociology and education Nathan Glazer, one of America’s ‘foremost urban sociologists, who became most closely identified with the circle of disillusioned liberals known as the neoconservatives’.[7] Both of them became fed-up with what they saw ‘as the dangerous folly of the New Left in the 1960s and 70s’ and thus moved from the left to the right.[8]
As far as foreign policy was concerned, neoconservatives’ ideas could be summed up as follows: go after ‘tyranny’ by engaging in a direct military war and therefore abandon the strategies of deterrence and containment in favour of offensive military actions ─ always be prepared to solve problems through military means; be precise and firm in one’s decision/belief and (like President Ronald Reagan) call a spade a spade; be prepared to pre-empt an attack involving nuclear, chemical or biological weapons; be prepared to act unilaterally if critical US interests were in question and the American allies proved sluggish; preserve US main objectives in the Middle East and South Asia, namely, keeping US and Western access to the regions’ oil; the US was and should act like an empire; preserve US pre-eminence (used as the euphemism of ‘strategic depth’), partly by developing unmatched military strength and partly by preventing the emergence of a US competitor, especially a hostile one; and use the US pre-eminence (of which the neocons were very proud) to shape the future security environment by getting rid of dictators and authoritarian regimes, and instead spread American ideas, mainly democracy, to build a peaceful relationship among the great nations. The neocons rejected peace through the balance of power in favour of peace through moral security. This was a position the Democrat President Woodrow Wilson took nearly a century back.[9]
However, many prominent US foreign policy makers (and thinkers), including former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, would disagree with such an approach as they supported peace through the balance of power. But Vice-President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld evidently found themselves in agreement with the neocons ideas and supported them.[10]
Many of the above neoconservative ideas and recommendations — which, as Steven Hurst claimed above, were influenced by militarism and unilateralism — could be found in the reasoning of President Bush for developing his doctrines,[11] which were the key pillars for the Global War on Terror (GWOT). The Bush Doctrines equally stressed the importance of military power, adopted an offensive stance by going (alone if necessary) after the terrorists, allowed for pre-emption, and promoted democratic values, more eagerly when the Iraq War was not going in the right direction. Above all, like the neocon ideas, the doctrines were bold and aggressive in pursuit of terrorists, and called a spade a spade by calling terrorists ‘evil’.[12]
There are those who claim that the US was interested in Afghanistan and invaded it in order to destabilise the region, especially Pakistan, and have access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. These are mainly Pakistani views and are mentioned in former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ memoirs.[13] Clinton wrote,
‘As their country’s problems worsened, many Pakistanis directed their anger at the United States, fueled by a rambunctious media that trafficked in wild conspiracy theories. They blamed us with stirring up trouble with the Taliban, exploiting Pakistan for our own strategic ends, and showing favoritism towards their traditional rival, India.’[14]
There are yet those who claim that US intervention was mainly for obtaining better access to the oil and natural gas resources of Central Asia, and for exploiting Afghanistan’s untapped natural resources worth $1–3 trillion of iron, copper, gold, metals, lithium, gas, oil and uranium, to name but a few.[15]
Author Peter Scott, however, wrote that the US intervened in Afghanistan to capitalise on Afghanistan’s illicit drugs[16] reportedly worth about $70 billion per year on the streets of Europe.
The more compelling claim for US intention in Afghanistan
For my book — America in Afghanistan: Foreign Policy and Decision Making From Bush to Obama to Trump — I used the Foreign Policy Decision-Making Approach from Foreign Policy Analysis. I found that the George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and now Joseph Biden’s Administrations’ chief ‘goal’ (even now in 2024) in Afghanistan has been twofold: to ensure Afghanistan did not turn into a terrorist base from which terrorists plotted another 9/11, and to weaken, and eventually defeat, al-Qaeda and later the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Afghanistan and Pakistan to an extent that both were incapable of posing a threat to the US and its allies. Put differently, the driving force behind the American foreign policy towards Afghanistan from its intervention in 2001 to its exit in 2021 (and now) has been largely self-defence or, to be accurate, preventative self-defence.
The Bush Administration was aware of the fate the British Empire and the Soviet Union had faced, but it was optimistic that the US would not face such a fate because the US had technologically advanced weapons and, importantly, the US was there ‘to liberate, not to occupy; to free, not to oppress the Afghan people.’[17]
Despite the rhetoric, bringing stability, nurturing Western-style democracy, rebuilding the war-shattered Afghan infrastructure, and establishing an efficient centralised government, though desirable, have not been US goals, because they required a large number of US troops and plenty of US dollars and therefore were beyond US interests and means.
However, the Bush and Obama Administrations (and, to some extent, the Trump Administration) ‘desired’ a relatively peaceful, secure, stable, prosperous, and even democratic Afghanistan, because such an Afghanistan was necessary for the achievement of US main goal, and America was willing to help the Afghans to secure such an Afghanistan by providing a light political, military, diplomatic and financial assistance. As I discuss in America in Afghanistan, the commission (and omission) of certain controversial policies by the Bush, Obama, Trump, and especially Biden Administrations, as well as the mistakes made by Afghan politicians, laid the seeds of insecurity, instability, ineffective governance, corruption and the eventual fall of the President Ashraf Ghani Government.
But what are those controversial policies and why did the US supported them? The controversial policies included turning a blind eye to (or in some cases encouraging) criminality and abuse of power by the strongmen (or warlordism), unlawfulness, ineffective governance, the tolerance of corruption, opium production/addiction, tolerance of regional interference (especially by Pakistan, Iran and Russia), oppression of women, poverty and unemployment, to name but a few.
The Bush, Obama Trump and Biden Administrations supported those controversial policies for three reasons. Firstly, they falsely assumed they were the right policies. As I discuss in America in Afghanistan, the policy assumptions made by the four US administrations were ill-informed, misjudged and derived from rigid ideologies rather than realities on the ground in Afghanistan, and therefore the policy choices failed at the implementation phases. Secondly, the contentious policies were cheap – something which the American public demanded. Thirdly, the US found itself unable to change the behaviours of certain countries, especially Pakistan, Iran and Russia. As the intervention continued, the US became less and less able to influence Presidents Karzai and Ghani (let alone the neighbouring states). The more the US got herself involved in the Afghanistan War, the more she felt powerless, stuck and at a loss.
Ordinary Afghans, however, hardly believed that the US found it difficult to deal with the threats the Afghans faced, such as the insurgency, corruption, abuse of power by the strong men, unemployment, poverty, neighbouring interference, etc. One of the characters, Mour, in my novel The Lone Leopard[18] says, ‘“If America decides, Afghanistan would be peaceful like that.” Mour would snap her thumb and middle finger. America has other ulterior motives. So she’s given the power to traitors. It’s called divide and rule.’
Ordinary Afghans had been sick and tired of the lack of peace and security, especially the criminality of the strong men, in the past two and a half decades, and when the US failed to establish both, ordinary Afghans became (understandably) frustrated and angry. Moreover, seeing those controversial policies, the Afghans could not ascertain whether the US wanted peace and security or war and insecurity. Many Afghans, including former President Hamid Karzai, concluded that the US had other ulterior motives and thus employed policies capable of keeping the war on to justify its presence.[19] Some neighbouring countries which wanted to weaken US further took advantage of ordinary Afghans’ anger and frustration by advocating conspiracy theories, some of which have been highlighted above. People like the female protagonist, Frishta, and her views in The Lone Leopard stood in minority when she says:
‘I’d like to urge you not to confuse [US/NATO’s] foreign policy mistakes with intention. Our international allies have spent trillions of dollars in Afghanistan. Thousands of their soldiers have lost their lives. They assisted us in achieving unprecedented accomplishments in politics, the economy, human rights, education, telecommunication, health care, free media… The list goes on. I understand our grand desires of peace and security have not yet been accomplished. But please don’t become blinded to the achievements we have made so far. Do not fall prey to conspiracy theories propagated systematically by our bullying neighbours. They intend to confuse us, so we can’t distinguish friends from foes. To set us one against the other. To divide us.’[20]
Later research may agree with Karzai and ordinary Afghans, but my analysis of US decision-making towards Afghanistan, to an extent, sympathises with Frishta and her reasoning. (However, it is essential to clarify that my analysis did not support the US invasion as that became a significant source of war; there were other ways the US could have explored to support the Afghan people. But since this essay concentrates on what were US interests in Afghanistan rather than whether it was a good idea to invade Afghanistan, I do not provide any discussion on the latter.)
Nevertheless, it is essential not to dismiss entirely the geopolitical (or realist theory) interests. During the first months of the Tramp Administration when it was reviewing its Afghanistan policy, the camp that supported sending more troops to Afghanistan argued that Afghanistan was located next to Pakistan with nearly a 200 million population and about 120 nuclear warheads; the country had the ability to produce 20 nuclear warheads per year, and in a few decades, it could ‘have a nuclear arsenal not only twice the size of India’s but also larger than those of the United Kingdom, China, and France, giving it the third-largest arsenal behind the United States and Russia’.[21] The US footprint in Afghanistan not only contributed to stability in Pakistan (to check on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons arsenal and to ensure its government did not collapse) but also prevented the intensification of security rivalry in the region, especially ‘the nuclear triangular competition’ among India, Pakistan and China. Preserving a footprint in Afghanistan was ‘the least risky option’ available to the Trump Administration to address the alarming nuclear threats in South Asia.
Indeed, to defeat terrorism and ensure regional stability, especially in Pakistan, the US required friends/allies in the Greater Middle East and Central Asia. It was only the Afghan Government that demonstrated to be both a reliable friend and an ally in the region, and, according to the pro-war camp, ‘most Afghans’ welcomed a US footprint on its soil. Other countries might not be as welcoming as Afghanistan. In fact, continued the camp, Pakistan, Iran and Russia assisted the Taliban with the aim to see the US ‘fail in Afghanistan’.
So, for the optimistic or pro-war camp, US strategic interest in Afghanistan was clear: Afghanistan provided ‘a location, and an ally’ for fighting terrorist groups in the Greater Middle East and Central Asia, and consequently was ‘central’ to that war. The hawkish camp strove to persuade Trump to see the Afghanistan War in a new light: US footprint in Afghanistan (and consequently the Afghanistan War) was linked to US wider war against terrorism, which was deemed to take decades to win. For them, US treasure and blood therefore have not been wasted entirely, and more spending would mean the US would be throwing good money after good money. (Incidentally, the line of reasoning that connected the Afghanistan conflict to the broad US anti-terrorism campaign partly convinced Obama in mid-2016 to abandon his exit plan.)[22]
The pro-war camp’s reasons for the continuation (and expansion) of the Afghanistan War suggest that Afghanistan indeed had geopolitical interests for the US. But alone those interests might have not pulled the US into Afghanistan had the 9/11 did not take place and Al-Qaeda was not present in Afghanistan!
Conclusion
The essay has studied various and often conflicting views about why the US was interested in Afghanistan. Many of them put forward persuasive arguments (based on numerous theories), such as the claim about geopolitical interests in the region, and some of those arguments (or theories) are worth being researched in the future.
Using the Foreign Policy Decision-Making Approach from Foreign Policy Analysis, this essay, however, sympathises with the claim that the overwhelming reason the US intervened in Afghanistan was to tackle the threat of Al-Qaeda (and later ISEL) from Afghanistan (and Pakistan). The thinking behind how to deal with those responsible for 9/11 was strongly influenced by President Bush’s doctrines which were in turn influenced by the triangle of the neoconservatives, Rumsfeld and Cheney.
In trying to achieve this goal, the US (somehow reluctantly) tried to have a relatively effective government in Afghanistan. All four US administrations, the Bush and Obama Administrations in particular, made attempts to achieve such a government in Afghanistan, but were not fully successful, owing to mistakes made by the four administrations/the Karzai and Ghani governments as well as interference by neighbouring countries in Afghan affairs. Ultimately, the Biden Administration pulled the plug on its ally in Kabul and withdrew its troops once the Taliban promised the administration that they would ensure America’s main goal was achieved in Afghanistan.
References
Ansari, Basherahmed. 2005. Afghanistan in the flames of oils and gas. Bangah Intesharat Maiwand, Kabul.
Bush, George W, West Point Commencement, June 1, 2002, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/bushrecord/documents/Selected_Speeches_George_W_Bush.pdf.
Cheney, Richard B. and Liz Cheney, In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir (New York: Threshold Editions, 2011).
Clinton, Hillary Rodham. 2014. Hard choices. New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster.
Defense Planning Guidance 1992 by Zalmay Khalilzad.
Defense Planning Guidance 1993 by Libby.
Dorani, Sharifullah. 2019. America in Afghanistan: Foreign Policy and Decision Making Approaches from Bush to Obama to Trump. I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury Publishing House.
Dorani, Sharifullah. 2022. The Lone Leopard. S&M Publishing House.
Dumbrell, John, ‘The Neoconservative Roots of the War in Iraq’, in Intelligence and national security policymaking on Iraq; British and American perspectives, ed. James Pfiffner and Mark Phythain. 2008. Collage station: Texas A&M university Press.
Gewen, Barry, ‘Nathan Glazer, Urban Sociologist and Outspoken Intellectual. Dies at 95’, New York Times, 19/01/2019.
Hodgson, Godfrey, ‘Irving Kristol obituary’, The Guardian, 20 September 2009.
Hurst, Steven. 2009. The United States and Iraq since 1979 hegemony, oil and war. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10391778.
Joya, Malalai, and Derrick O’Keefe. 2009. A woman among warlords: the extraordinary story of an afghan who dared to raise her voice. New York; scribner.
Kleveman, Lutz. 2003. The new great game: blood and oil in the Central Asia. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press.
Koberle, Stefan. 2003. The new great game: blood and oil in Central Asia. London: Atlantic.
Kristol, William, and Robert Kagan, ‘Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs, July/August, 1996, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/52239/william-kristol-and-robert-kagan/toward-a-neo-reaganite-foreign-policy.
Lieber, Robert J. 2005. The American era: power and strategy for the 2rst century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Leffler, Melvyn P., ‘September 11 in Retrospect; George W. Bush’s Grand Strategy, Reconsidered’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2011, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68201/melvyn-p-leffler/september-11-in-retrospect.
Gates, Robert Michael, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (Alfred A. Knopf, 2014).
Gordon, Philip H., ‘The End of the Bush Revolution’, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2006, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61734/philip-h-gordon/the-end-of-the-bush-revolution.
Gordon, Philip H., ‘Can the War on Terror Be Won?’, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2007, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/63009/philip-h-gordon/can-the-war-on-terror-be-won.
Mann, Jim. 2004. Rise of the Vulcans: the history of the Bush’s war cabinet. New York: Viking.
Marshall, Joshua Micah, ‘Remaking the World: Bush and the Neoconservatives’, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2003, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/59380/joshua-micah-marshall/remaking-the-world-bush-and-the-neoconservatives.
Mendoza, Alan, ‘”We should be prepared to intervene’: Richard Perle on Georg W. Bush, Barack Obama and the Arab Spring”’, Fathom Journal, Summer 2013.
Quinn, A., ‘“A House Divided”, Extended review article’. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 26:1, April 2013, pp. 267-281.
Rashid, Ahmed, Descent into Chaos: The World’s Most Unstable Region and the Threat to Global Security (London: Penguin, 2009).
Rowell, Andy. 2001. ‘“Route to riches: Afghanistan” in energy policy’, The Guardian, October 24, 2001.
Rumsfeld, Donald, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York: Sentinel, 2011).
Rustayi, Aubdelmanan. 2006. The wars of the Super Powers and the Oil Projects in Afghanistan.
Scott, Peter Dale. 2010. American war machine: deep politics, the CIA global drug connection, and the road to Afghanistan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Statement of Principles, Project for the New American Century, June 3, 1997, http://cf.linnbenton.edu/artcom/social_science/clarkd/upload/PNAC—statement%20of%20principles.pdf.
*Dr Sharifullah has a PhD from Durham University in the UK on America’s Afghanistan War. He has authored several articles and two acclaimed books: The Lone Leopard, a novel set in Afghanistan, and America in Afghanistan, published by Bloomsbury Publishing. Sharifullah is the founder of CEPSAF and the South Asia and Middle Eastern Editor at CESRAN International.
[1] For full view of America’s Afghan policy, see my book: Dorani, Sharifullah. 2019. America in Afghanistan: Foreign Policy and Decision Making Approaches from Bush to Obama to Trump. I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury Publishing House.
[2] Joya, Malalai, and Derrick O’Keefe. 2009. A woman among warlords: the extraordinary story of an afghan who dared to raise her voice. New York; scribner, p. 238.
[3] Leffler, Melvyn P., ‘September 11 in Retrospect; George W. Bush’s Grand Strategy, Reconsidered’, Foreign Affairs, September/October 2011, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68201/melvyn-p-leffler/september-11-in-retrospect.
[4] Hurst, Steven. 2009. The United States and Iraq since 1979 hegemony, oil and war. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. http://site.ebrary.com/id/10391778, pp. 1-20, 153-181.
[5] Mendoza, Alan, ‘“We should be prepared to intervene”: Richard Perle on Georg W. Bush, Barack Obama and the Arab Spring’, Fathom Journal, Summer 2013; Mann, Jim. 2004. Rise of the Vulcans: the history of the Bush’s war cabinet. New York: Viking, pp. 22, 112-13, 251, 273; Feith, Douglas J., 2008. War and decision: inside the Pentagon at the dawn of the year War on terrorism. New York, NY: Harper, pp. 24-28, 34, 42.
[6] Hodgson, Godfrey, ‘Irving Kristol obituary’, The Guardian, 20 September 2009.
[7] Gewen, Barry, ‘Nathan Glazer, Urban Sociologist and Outspoken Intellectual. Dies at 95’, New York Times, 19 January 2019.
[8] Hodgson, ‘Irving Kristol obituary’.
[9] The neocon views are found in the following: Dumbrell, John, ‘The Neoconservative Roots of the War in Iraq’, in Intelligence and national security policymaking on Iraq; British and American perspectives, ed. James Pfiffner and Mark Phythain. 2008. Collage station: Texas A&M university Press, pp. 26-27, 32- 34; Kristol, William, and Robert Kagan, ‘Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy’, Foreign Affairs, July/August, 1996, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/52239/william-kristol-and-robert-kagan/toward-a-neo-reaganite-foreign-policy>; Defense Planning Guidance 1992 by Zalmay Khalilzad; Defense Planning Guidance 1993 by Libby; Statement of Principles, Project for the New American Century, June 3, 1997, <http://cf.linnbenton.edu/artcom/social_science/clarkd/upload/PNAC—statement%20of%20principles.pdf>; Mann, Rise of the Vulcans, pp. 52, 76, 200, 210- 213.
[10] Cheney and Rumsfeld’s views are derived from Steven Hurst, The United States and Iraq Since 1979: Hegemony, Oil and War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), p. 7; Rashid, Descent into Chaos, pp. XLVI–XLVII; Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown,pp. 33–4, 205, 231–2; Cheney, In My Time, pp. 333, 374–7; Quinn, ‘A House Divided’,p. 269; Leffler, ‘September 11’; Gordon, ‘Can the War’; Marshall,‘Remaking the World’; Dumbrell, ‘The Neoconservative Roots’, pp. 29, 35.
[11] See Dorani, America in Afghanistan, pp.16-17, 20-21,23, 27-9, 41, 52, 55, 58, 68, 75-6.
[12] Bush, George W, West Point Commencement, June 1, 2002,
<http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/bushrecord/documents/Selected_Speeches_George_W_Bush.pdf>.
[13] These Pakistani views are mentioned in Clinton, Hillary Rodham. 2014. Hard choices. New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, p. 178; and, Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, p. 477.
[14] Clinton, Hard Choice, p.178.
[15] Kleveman, Lutz. 2003. The new great game: blood and oil in the Central Asia. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press; Koberle, Stefan. 2003. The new great game: blood and oil in Central Asia. London: Atlantic; Lieber, Robert J. 2005. The American era: power and strategy for the 21st century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Rowell, Andy. 2001. ‘“Route to riches: Afghanistan” in energy policy’, The Guardian, October 24, 2001; Ansari, Basherahmed. 2005. Afghanistan in the flames of oils and gas. Bangah Intesharat Maiwand, Kabul; Rustayi, Aubdelmanan. 2006. The wars of the Super Powers and the Oil Projects in Afghanistan; Joya and O’Keefe, A woman among warlords, pp. 231-241.
[16] Scott, Peter Dale. 2010. American war machine: deep politics, the CIA global drug connection, and the road to Afghanistan. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
[17] Cheney, In My Time, p.347.
[18] Dorani, Sharifullah. 2022. The Lone Leopard. S&M Publishing House.
[19] Dorani, The Lone Leopard, p.247.
[20] Dorani, The Lone Leopard, p. 402
[21] Franz-Stefan Gady, ‘Will Pakistan soon Have the World’s Third-Largest Nuclear Arsenal?’, The Diplomats, 31 August 2015.
[22] Landler, ‘The Afghan War’.
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