China is motivated primarily by security interests in Afghanistan. It does not want terrorism or extremist activity to spill over from Afghanistan into China. It wants to prevent terrorism from destabilizing the region. The primary security concern of China is potential threats from the relatively small East Turkistan Islamic Movement, a group that seeks to liberate Xinjiang Province and the Uyghur people from Chinese government control and impose an Islamic Russia and China have strong mutual security interests in Afghanistan in preventing terrorism and violent extremism. The credibility of Russia as a security partner, however, in the region is in doubt after its poor performance in The U.S. has limited policy options in this region given that it will not engage with the Taliban, has tense relations with China, and has sanctioned Russia. This is compounded by loss of U.S. credibility throughout the region due to the disastrous result of the U.S. war in A potential solution to this impasse is for the U.S. to support greater economic support and tools of regional connectivity to achieve positive-sum outcomes as Afghanistan’s neighbors seek to balance the influence of
Back to top