The territorial definition of the country was an entirely exogenous process, especially as the role of the Kabul amirs was limited even further by Great Britain’s exercise of a de facto protectorate over the foreign policy of Afghanistan from 1879 to 1919, the main period in which the boundaries were being drawn indeed, hardly a segment of the frontier was defined without direct diplomatic intervention by the British. Thus Afghanistan in its present boundaries was born, the result of geostrategic games in which it played no independent part. It was the “great game,” the famous rivalry between Britain and Russia in Central Asia, that led the latter two states to contemplate creating a buffer state between their respective dependencies, a kind of defensive barrier intended to eliminate all risk of direct confrontation between them. None of these boundaries was established before the last third of the 19th century. 2,430 km), and China on the northeast (76 km).
It is surrounded by four countries: the USSR on the north (2,140 km of common boundary), Iran on the west (945 km), Pakistan on the south and east (ca. Afghanistan, the seventh largest landlocked country in the world in area (652,626 km 2) is delineated by a boundary some 5,600 km long, over which it has never exercised more than partial control.