After the fall of Taliban regime in late 2001, Afghanistan with the help of international community embarked on a journey to a permanent political stability and multi-dimensional development. Afghanistan remains prone to interferences by unfriendly neighbors that have disruptive posturing towards our country. In order to emerge out of this vulnerability, Afghanistan has to manage to address the internal causes that could be exploited by external elements to incite and instigate instability inside the country. Afghanistan continues to be a violence-stricken society that needs to depart and move away from this phenomenon.

It should be mentioned that there are two main factors at play when one begins to look at this curse. In other words, violence stems from two major strands that continue to influence Afghan society and its individual members.

These are: (1) religious extremism, which has led to a hostile approach towards the people that may hold dissenting views. Those influenced by this hardline religiosity spare no opportunity to derail the democratic processes going on in the country.

Violence is allowed to be used to defend the values of this paradigmatic religious system of thought. In fact, under this paradigm, it is easy to take human lives for the sake of protecting the beliefs held by those that come be influenced by religious extremism or happen to be religious extremists.

There is no or a lowest level of tolerance towards others and their views and behaviors. They appear to be opportunists as well because they lurk in to even take advantage of the purest religious feelings of the people and capitalize on their emotions to deny the right to life of others.

There is no impossibility to be a true religious believer and in the meanwhile denounce violence as inhumane phenomenon or as an illogical tactic for promoting one's beliefs and values and defending them. (2) Ethnic preconceptions, which pave the way for those who are trapped in to have least tolerance towards other identity groups.

These manifest themselves in attempts for adopting exclusionary policies, which make the relations among different groups extremely tense. The two above-mentioned factors are liable to manipulations by foreign elements that do not want a stable Afghanistan in the region. Afghanistan cannot afford to remain trapped in these two scourges and must take steps to move away from them if it is to achieve peace and bring about prosperity for its citizens.