The role of India, Britain and Tsarist Russia in determining the political boundaries of Afghanistan

Great Britain’s dominance in India and their attention and focus to preserve this fertile land and advance the Russians in Central Asia and pursue their great goal, which was to reach India and the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, it caused a clash of interests between the two colonial powers in South and Central Asia for the entire 19th century. Because of these goals, each of the parties had a special need for the current geography of Afghanistan at that time; The British based in India must dominate this geography directly or indirectly in order to prevent the passage of the army and the possible attack of the Russians to occupy India. On the other hand, in order to dominate and maintain their sovereignty in Central Asia and their possible attack on India, the Russians also needed to pass through the geography of Afghanistan. In this research, which has been carried out in a descriptive-analytical method and based on the library type, it aims to clarify how the Indo-British and Imperial Russians policy in creating Afghanistan’s political borders, and also answer the question that what role did the British and Russians have in determining the political borders of Afghanistan? The findings of the research show that those two European powers, to resolve their differences in the region, first put forward a buffer plan regarding Afghanistan and then based on that plan, they drew the borders of the country.