Baku, January 13 (AZERTAC). The fall edition of the Caucasus International published by the Ankara-based Eurasian Association of Scientists in collaboration with the Center for Strategic Studies under the President of Azerbaijan has come out.

The fall edition provides an insight into Afghanistan’s security situation before and after the critical year of 2014, when the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will hand over security responsibility to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).

The Editor’s note of the fall issue writes: “Next year promises to be a very challenging year for all those involved in maintaining Afghanistan’s security and supporting its capacity building processes. In particular, Afghanistan and its neighbors will face significant security, diplomacy, political and socio-economic hurdles; the international community will also need to play a strong supporting role in regard to these challenges. The ISAF will continue its efforts to train and support ANSF, even as the future of the NATO mission remains uncertain.”

The articles in this issue focus on Afghanistan from the perspectives of the U.S., Europe, the South Caucasus, Central Asia as well as Afghanistan. The authors participating in the debate on Afghanistan’s security represent arrange of countries, including Afghanistan itself, the U.S., Italy, Poland, Turkey, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan. In addition to academics, the authors include opinion-makers, thinkers, and diplomats. Most of these contributors are sharing their first-hand observations of the security situation in Afghanistan and its neighboring states. This issue focuses on the strategic significance of the Afghan security as well as the security of its neighborhood, the security policies of international security organizations, and the domestic security challenges in Afghanistan. The first two contributions focus on the strategic and historical significance of the impending security transition. Professor Thomas Barfield’s contribution highlights the strategic importance of the Afghan security structure by exploring its historical context and the attendant political dynamics. Professor Roger Kangas, a leading expert on Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Middle East discusses the Afghan security transition from the perspective of Central Asian states. Contributions on the security in Afghanistan’s neighborhood come from Professor Riccardo Redaelli, Krzysztof Strachota and Azad Garibov. For his part, Professor Redaelli discusses domestic and regional implications of the ISAF withdrawal, and suggests that the current political scenario in Kabul is not very promising: personal rivalries, tribal feuds, ethno-tribal sectarianism, reluctance to comply with international requests for transparency and clear voting mechanisms. In this sense, Redaelli comes to the conclusion that building a united and stable country does not seem to be the top priority for the Afghan political elites.

Gulay Mutlu provides a useful summary of Afghanistan’s political history, followed by statistical and narrative analysis of the economic opportunities within the country; Mutlu seeks to answer the ever-pressing question “how can Afghanistan cope with the challenges facing its state and society after 2014?” NATO has played a central security role in Afghanistan’s future - but what is Russia’s position, and how has the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) as a regional military organization been responding to these developments? Janara Borkoeva discusses the response of the CSTO to the possible destabilization of Afghanistan, in the context of current and future Russian policy in Central Asia. In his contribution, Beishenbek Toktogulov looks at the efforts of the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), a mechanism for cooperation between NATO and Russia in fighting terrorism and insurgency in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2014. Toktogulov provides a comprehensive assessment of Russia’s position in relation to post-NATO Afghanistan. The role of the UN role in Afghanistan remains of central interest to the international community, and M. Zeki Gunay explores the ways in which Afghanistan has been discussed by the permanent members at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), based on an analysis of statements and speeches by each permanent member’s representative during Security Council meetings between 2011 and 2013.

Last but not least, this issue includes several articles on the domestic security challenges in Afghanistan. These articles include the contributions of Gulsah Gures and Dr. Oktay F. Tanrisever.

In addition, there are two short pieces, one from Hikmet Cetin, the former Turkish Foreign Minister and the former NATO senior civilian representative in Afghanistan.”