Why are Russia and China expanding their roles in Afghanistan

Both Russia and China are much closer to Afghanistan than the US- so they clearly have much greater interests in what happens there. So what are they doing there?

STRATFOR has some answers.

Ultimately, the growing involvement of Russia and China with Pakistan will limit Washington's ability to bend Islamabad toward its own strategy in Afghanistan. Although the shared threat posed by the Islamic State's Khorasan affiliate provides a rare unifying purpose for the disparate external actors involved in Afghanistan, the geopolitical tensions inherent in great power competition mean that coordination on resolving the conflict will be intermittent, at best, as the war goes on through 2018.
Read the rest at the link.