ABSTRACT
Since an adversarial hegemonic power no longer threatened the interests of the USA in the region, Afghanistan disappeared from its foreign policy agenda. The UN lowered the Afghan crisis in its list of priorities and the international community gave little attention to the country. When one superpower collapsed and the other lost its interest in the Afghan war, the crisis lost its global importance. It was transformed from a superpower clash into a complex civil war which attracted little international attention. The work of humanitarian nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and the UN agencies became difficult in Afghanistan. As the UN received less money for its Consolidated Appeals, it became the poorer part of the humanitarian sphere: in 1997, the NGO community had two to three times more money than the UN system. As in the 1992–4 phase, the financial trends between 1995 and 1998 sustain neither the 'realist' nor the 'institutionalist' scenario.
