The Specter of Afghanistan: Security in Central Asia is a book co-authored by Kilill Nourzhano and Amin Saikal. The book is published by I.B. Tauris on February 11, 2021. The book contains five chapters and 230 pages.

Major Argument of the Book

The sense of security is pivotal to understand world politics. Security is the basic ingredient of the sovereignty of a country, which is the major theme of the book titled “The Specter of Afghanistan: Security in Central Asia,” as its title suggests. The book has a particular focus on Afghanistan’s instability and its impact on the foreign policy of the Central Asian states: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan since 2014. Afghanistan has ethnic, linguistic, and cultural resemblances with these Central Asian states. Although Afghanistan shares its borders with the Central Asian states, these states and Afghanistan mainly remain like strangers. According to the authors, Central Asian states are more concerned about the potential threat rather than the actual threat.

Afghanistan has been in a state of war for several decades. According to the authors, Washington’s major narrative of the Afghan mission in 2001 was to eradicate terrorism and bring peace and stability to Afghanistan. The intervention of major powers in Afghanistan has created an alarming situation in the Central........

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