‘Explain the geographical impacts for an area affected by international conflict '
International conflict has had a detrimental impact on Afghanistan, which has become an impoverished LEDC due to decades of war . Years of conflict has resulted in the country’s development being stunted, which can be reflected by their low position of 169th on the Human Development Index, due to the poor social and economic framework within the country. The most recent conflict was in 2001 when the USA unleashed airstrikes on Afghanistan for the terrorist attacks in New York on 9/11, and this has resulted in a long battle between the Taliban and the USA and the western coalition. The war has created a range of problems including; resource scarcity, social decline (especially within education) and economic downturn.
The International conflict in Afghanistan enabled the Taliban regime to gain a strong power base in local areas, such as Kunduz. Their control led to social deprivation, as seen with the dismantling of the education system, which experienced cultural biases and female seclusion as a result of the conflict. Under the Taliban there is a firm belief in upholding the values of a patriarchal society, whereby only boys should be educated and girls should remain within the domestic sphere of the house. Consequently, education enrolment experienced a large gender gap, with 51% of boys attending schools, whilst only 21% of girls were enrolled (2006). This had a problem in the long term for the female gender, as a lack of education created a barrier to female empowerment. As the young women were not educated they did not have the knowledge and organisation to drive forward an agenda for equal rights. Hence, the conflict has made it harder for young women to assert themselves as equals to their male counterparts and break the perpetuating cycle of gender discrimination (within the education sector and beyond). Additionally, the conflict created unintended consequences for the economic wellbeing of the country. The absence of education for girls reduced the human capital available and neutralised a large part of the potential workforce, lowering the potential productivity of the country by 15%. Evidently, in this instance conflict in a local area was had social and economic implications for the country on a national scale, suggesting that conflict did have a significant impact on the geographical area.
