The roles of global and regional actors and international organizations in intra-state wars: The case of Afghanistan (1989-2018)

This thesis addresses the role of third party in intra-state conflicts through Afghanistan. There are economic, sociological, cultural, political and psychological reasons for the emergence of intra- state conflicts. In this context, the purpose of this study is to examine the role of third parties in the Afghanistan crisis that has been going on since the 1970s. In this study, local factors that push third parties to intervene in the Afghanistan war are considered. From this point of view, the USSR intervened in Afghanistan by trying to take measures against the USA which was trying to surround it in the bipolar international system, but the important issue is the crisis in the local society and political structure of Afghanistan and its perception as a threat in the USSR. Therefore, the USSR's intervention in Afghanistan revealed the ongoing crises and the Afghanistan crisis continued until 2001 with the intervention of the USA and its allies. For this reason in this study, third party interventions in Afghanistan are generally divided into two periods as before and after 2001. Although Afghanistan entered into a deepening war over time in the first period, this situation changed in the second period. This happened because international organizations played a broad role during this intervention. Therefore, focusing on eliminating the structural and local factors of the crisis in Afghanistan, a state building process was initiated in the second period. Although the war did not end in the post-2001 period, important successes were achieved. Despite these successes, the main reason why the conflicts continue until today is the geopolitical rivalries of regional and global actors over Afghanistan, as well as local factors. The main finding of the research is that the structural local factors of the Afghanistan crisis persist and third parties intervene using these factors.