Abstract:

This study seeks to answer the puzzle of how the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban takeover will affect Central Asian regional security relations in the forthcoming period. Security threats originating from Afghanistan were among the most important security problems of the newly independent Central Asian states during the 1990s. After the end of the twenty-year military presence of the US in Afghanistan as of September 2021, the Taliban’s takeover of power brought forth the potential of Afghanistan-based instability in Central Asia again. In this article, the first Taliban rule during the 1990s and the second one that has begun since the Taliban takeover as of August 2021 are examined in terms of their impacts on Central Asian security relations through the comparative method. It is discussed within the framework of the securitization approach whether the security problems arising from Afghanistan are real security threats for the Central Asian states and the potential of these problems to be instrumentalized by both regional states and actors such as Russia and China. Through the comparative case analysis method and based on the analysis of primary and secondary sources, the article comes up with the following three main findings: Compared to the 1990s, Central Asian states, except Tajikistan, have less securitized the second Taliban rule in Afghanistan and they reacted to the Taliban takeover more confidently. Although not coming directly from the Taliban, threats originating from other radical religious organizations in Afghanistan such as the Islamic State-Khorasan pose to a certain degree real security risks for the regional states, especially for those bordering Afghanistan. The threat perception originating from Afghanistan has the potential to be securitized and instrumentalized in such a way as to help the governments in the countries of the region maintain their own power and states such as Russia and China increase their influence on the regional countries, especially in regional security relations.

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