Paper short abstract:

This article questions the potential of interventions to become a means of settling domestic conflicts of the states by one another, and how it may particularly contribute to the practice of dispute settlement in a conflict-prone region like Eurasia.

Paper long abstract:

The United Nations (UN) forbids states from interfering in each other's domestic affairs, in order to safeguard their territorial independence and national interests. This concept is essentially a corollary to each nation's territorial sovereignty. Although the duty of the “Non-Intervention” principle is usually seen as prohibiting all outside military interventions, there are historical examples of such action that are widely regarded as legitimate interventions (such as humanitarian intervention). During the process, humanitarian intervention may also cause some national elites, political leaders, and heads of states to undergo trials and punishments by the international judicial channels. The scholarship is currently preoccupied with the damages that these procedures may pose to the national interests of states. What is understudied under this framework is the role of interventions in solving the internal disputes of states and thereby saving their national interests, as contrary to the prevailing belief in this regard. As a case in point, Afghanistan’s intervention in the Tajik civil war between 1992-1997 proved advantageous to resolving the dispute between warring parties. Burhanuddin Rabbani and Ahmad Shah Massoud’s personal meetings with the leaders of both parties paved the way for an effective settlement and brought an end to the five-year long civil war. Building on the case of Afghanistan and Tajikistan, this article questions the potential of interventions to become a means of settling domestic conflicts of the states by one another, and how it may particularly contribute to the practice of dispute settlement in a conflict-prone region like Eurasia. In doing so, this article proposes a shift to the “Non-Intervention” principle in international relations. It posits that intervention, at least, may not always refer to a forcible action intruding a given country’s domestic values. Instead, it can sometimes function as a means of conflict resolution by a state to end a period of domestic stalemate in another state. As there is a considerably scarce amount of published materials on this case, the paper largely relies on the author’s interviews with former Jihadist leaders, then Afghan ambassadors to Tajikistan, and close figures to Ahmad Shah Massoud and Burhanuddin Rabbani.