ISAS Briefs

If the year’s beginning is a prelude to what is likely to follow, 2018 will be a difficult year for Afghanistan. It may lay the ground on which the country is likely to travel. This paper first discusses the sources of extreme violence that greeted the dawn of 2018 and place it in the context of some developments outside the country’s borders. It follows up with a brief analysis of domestic political developments that do not augur well for the future. This paper then analyses how the serious United States-Pakistan spat is likely to affect Afghanistan and concludes with a brief focus on how China’s ambitions in the Asian mainland may influence the Afghan future.