Abstract

Afghanistan is a land-locked country that lies at the crossroad between South and Central Asia. To the north and northwest of the country lie the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan; to the South and East is Pakistan; to the West of Afghanistan lies Iran, and to its north-east is China. It is this strategic geo-political location of Afghanistan that has made it both a crossroad between civilizations and a battlefield between competing global and regional powers (Wardak, 2004).