This article addresses the question of why regional cooperation among Afghanistan’s neighbours has been so difficult despite these countries’ common concerns. To answer this question, Afghanistan is conceptualised as placed at the core of overlapping regions: South Asia, the Middle East, Central Asia and, through China’s influence, East Asia. Over the past decade, interactions among different regions ‘through’ Afghanistan have increased, and overlap has intensified.
North East in BCIM-EC: Problems and Prospects
Widespread problems have made the operating environment ‘dysfunctional and inefficient’. Some of this is on account of inscrutable issues like ‘integration of the services with the MoD’ or ‘civil-military relations’ but, in large part, the immediate problem lies with MoD’s inability to resolve more mundane issues.