Afghanistan - Its History, Its Conflicts

The culture of Afghanistan reflects its ancient roots and position as a crossroads for invading ethnic groups and traditions. Early humans lived in northern Afghanistan at least 50,000 years ago, farming communities in Afghanistan were among the earliest in the world. After 2000 BC successive waves of people from Central Asia moved into the area. Since many of these settlers were Aryans (speakers of the parent language of the Indo-European languages), a people who also migrated to Persia (now Iran) and India in prehistoric times, the area was called Aryana, or Land of the Aryans. By the middle of the 6th century BC the Persian Empire of the Achaemenid dynasty controlled the region. About 330 BC, Alexander the Great defeated the last Achaemenid ruler and made his way to the eastern limits of Aryana and beyond. After his death in 323 BC several kingdoms fought for control of his Asian empire. These kingdoms included Seleucids, Bactria, and the Indian Mauryan Empire. About the 1st century AD the Kushans, a central Asian people, won control of Aryana. Buddhism was the dominant religion from the 3rd century to the 8th century. Kushan power was destroyed at the end of the 4th century by a Turkic people of central Asian origin called the White Huns or Ephthalites. After the Ephthalites, the area was divided among several kingdoms, some Buddhist, some Hindu.

In the 7th century Arab armies carried the new religion of Islam to Afghanistan. By the middle of the 12th century the Ghurid kingdom arose. The Ghurids in turn were routed early in the 13th century by the Khwarizm Shahs, another central Asian dynasty. They were swept away in about 1220 by the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan, who devastated the land. Near the end of the 14th century the central Asian military leader Tamerlane (Timur Lang) conquered the region of Afghanistan and moved on into India. His sons and grandsons, the Timurids, could not hold Tamerlane�s empire together. However, they ruled most of present-day Afghanistan from Herat. A descendant of Tamerlane on his father�s side and Genghis Khan on his mother�s side, Babur (Zahiruddin Muhammad) took Kabul in October 1504. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, Afghanistan was fought over by the rulers of the Mughal Empire, centered in India, and those of the Safavid dynasty, in Persia. Usually the Mughals held Kabul and the Persians held Herat, with Kandahar frequently changing hands. The Pashtun tribes increased their power, but they failed to win independence. In the 18th century, Nadir Shah, the king of Persia, employed the Abdali tribe of Pashtuns in his wars in India. Ahmad Shah, an Abdali chief who had gained a high post in Nadir Shah�s army, established himself in Kandahar after Nadir Shah�s assassination in 1747. An assembly of tribal chiefs proclaimed him shah and the Afghans extended their rule as far east as Kashmir and Delhi, north to the Amu Darya, and west into northern Persia. In the 19th century, palace rivalries and internal conflicts gradually reduced the Afghan empire to roughly its present borders. Both the British in India and the Russians sought to bring Afghanistan under their influence. This Anglo-Russian rivalry (called the Great Game) resulted in two wars, the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838-1842) and the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880). After the second of these wars, the British won control of Afghanistan�s foreign relations. Abd-ar-Rahman Khan extended his control throughout the territory within these boundaries. His son, Habibullah, who reigned from 1901 until 1919, took the first steps toward the introduction of modern education and industry. Habibullah�s son and successor, Amanullah, initiated a brief war, the Third Anglo-Afghan War, in 1919 to end British control over Afghan foreign affairs. The resulting peace treaty recognized the independence of Afghanistan.

Amanullah was determined to modernize his country. In 1926 he took the title of king. His reforms, including efforts to induce women to give up the burka, and to make men wear Western clothing in certain public areas, offended religious and ethnic group leaders. Revolts broke out, and in 1929 Amanullah fled the country.
Order was restored in 1930 by four brothers who were relatives of Amanullah. One of them, Muhammad Nadir Shah, became king, but he was assassinated in 1933. His son, Muhammad Zahir Shah, succeeded him. Power remained concentrated in the hands of Zahir and the royal family for the next four decades. In 1946 Afghanistan joined the United Nations (UN).

In 1953 Muhammad Daud, a nephew of Nadir Shah, became prime minister. Daud began to modernize Afghanistan rapidly with the help of economic and especially military aid from the USSR; the modern Afghan army was largely created with Soviet equipment and technical training. The United States declined to assist in this process. Social reform proceeded slowly because the government was afraid to antagonize conservative ethnic group leaders and devout Muslims. Relations with Pakistan deteriorated after Daud called for self-determination for the Pathan tribes of northwestern Pakistan.

In 1963, hoping to halt the growth of Soviet influence and to improve relations with Pakistan, Zahir Shah removed Daud as prime minister. In 1964 Afghanistan adopted a new constitution, changing the country from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy. The armed forces still depended on the Soviet Union for equipment and training. A severe drought in the early 1970s caused economic hardship, and the popularity of the regime declined.

In 1973 Muhammad Daud overthrew the king in a coup. He declared Afghanistan a republic with himself as president. Daud announced ambitious plans for economic development and tried to play the USSR against Western donors, but his dictatorial government was opposed both by radical left-wing intellectuals and soldiers and by traditionalist ethnic leaders. The leading leftist organization was the People�s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), which had been founded in 1965 and in 1967 split into a pro-Soviet Parcham faction and a much more radical Khalq faction. The two groups joined forces in 1976 to oppose Daud.

In April 1978, after Daud launched a crackdown against the PDPA, leftist military officers overthrew him. PDPA leader Noor Muhammad Taraki became president. Taraki and his lieutenant Hafizullah Amin, both members of the Khalq faction, purged many Parcham leaders. Taraki announced a sweeping revolutionary program, including land reform, the emancipation of women, and a campaign against illiteracy. Late in 1978 Islamic traditionalists and ethnic leaders who objected to rapid social change began an armed revolt. By the summer of 1979 the rebels controlled much of the Afghan countryside. In September Taraki was deposed and later killed. Amin, his successor, tried vigorously to suppress the rebellion and resisted Soviet efforts to make him moderate his policies. The government�s position deteriorated, however, and on December 25, 1979, Soviet forces invaded. They quickly won control of Kabul and other important centers. The Soviets executed Amin on December 27 and Babrak Karmal, leader of PDPA�s Parcham faction, was installed as president.

President Jimmy Carter condemned the December 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in both his 1980 State of the Union message and a subsequent address to a joint session of the United States Congress. Carter claimed a Soviet presence in Afghanistan threatened control of vital oil exports from the Middle East. His pledge to protect strategic U.S. interests in the Persian Gulf region �by any means necessary� became known as the Carter Doctrine. Carter�s critics faulted his assumption that Soviet control of Afghanistan jeopardized U.S. access to the Persian Gulf and its resources.

During the 1980s Soviet forces increasingly bore the brunt of the fighting. By 1986 about 118,000 Soviet troops and 50,000 Afghan government troops were facing perhaps 130,000 guerrillas. Although the Soviet troops used modern equipment, including tanks and bombers, the guerrillas were also well armed, and they had local support and operated more effectively in familiar mountainous terrain. In 1986 the United States began supplying the rebels with Stinger missiles able to shoot down Soviet armored helicopters.

Karmal denounced Amin�s repressive policies and promised to combine social and economic reform with respect for Islam and for Afghan traditions. But the government, dependent on Soviet military forces, was unpopular, and the rebellion intensified. During the next few years about 3 million war refugees fled to Pakistan and 1.5 million fled to Iran. Many refugees also moved from the countryside to Kabul. The antigovernment guerrilla forces included dozens of factions. They operated from bases around Peshawar, Pakistan, and, to a lesser extent, in Iran. They were sustained by weapons and money from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and China. By the mid-1980s the United States was spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year to aid Afghan rebels based in Pakistan.

In May 1986 Karmal was replaced as PDPA leader by Mohammad Najibullah, a member of the Parcham faction who had headed the Afghan secret police. In November 1987 Najibullah was elected president

When Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet leader in 1985, he gave high priority to getting Soviet troops out of the costly, unpopular, and apparently unwinnable war in Afghanistan. In May 1988 Afghanistan, Pakistan, the USSR, and the United States signed agreements providing for an end to foreign intervention in Afghanistan, and the USSR began withdrawing its forces. The Soviet withdrawal was completed in February 1989.

The rebels, who did not sign the agreement concerning the Soviet withdrawal, maintained their fight against the Afghanistan central government with weapons that they continued to get from the United States via Pakistan. They rejected offers from Najibullah to make peace and share power, and refused to consider participating in any national government that included Communists. Thus the civil war continued. The United States and Pakistani sponsors prompted the Peshawar-based rebels to besiege Jalalabad, a strong point for Najibullah in southern Afghanistan. After months of fighting, however, the Afghan government scored a clear victory. A March 1990 coup attempt also failed to bring down Najibullah. He continued to receive Soviet food, fuel, and weapons to help maintain his control. However, rebels persisted in terrorizing the civilian population by rocket bombardment of Kabul and other cities. Finally in late 1991 the USSR and the United States signed an agreement to end military aid to the Kabul government and to the rebels.

In 1992 as the resistance closed in on Kabul, the Najibullah government fell and the Peshawar groups joined forces with General Abdul Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek, and Ahmad Shah Massoud, a Tajik, in the north and central mountains to assume control in Kabul. As a result, Burhanuddin Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik, became interim president from July through December 1992, and took office as full president in January 1993. A strong attempt was made to keep the Pashtun leaders, who traditionally held the power in Afghanistan, out of the most important government positions. Kabul was besieged beginning in 1992, first by various mujahideen (guerrilla) factions and then by the Pashtun-dominated Taliban, which sought to reestablish Pashtun dominance in the capital.

The Taliban emerged in the fall of 1994 as a faction of mujahideen soldiers who identified themselves as religious students. The movement started in the south and worked its way toward Herat in the northwest and Kabul in the east. It made outstanding military gains using armor, heavy rocket artillery, and helicopters against government forces. The Taliban�s stated mission was to disarm the country�s warring factions and to impose their strictly orthodox version of Islamic law. Some experts suspect the Pakistani government of supporting the Pashtun-dominated Taliban, in order to keep the combat within Afghanistan and out of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, which is a major part of the Pashtun homeland.

The term of Rabbani�s government expired in December 1994, but he continued to hold office amid the chaos of the civil war. Factional fighting since the beginning of January 1994 kept government officers from actually occupying ministries and discharging government responsibilities. Most cities outside of Kabul were administered by former resistance commanders and their shuras (councils). In June 1996 Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had resigned as prime minister in 1994 to launch a military offensive against forces loyal to Rabbani, again assumed the post, this time to help Rabbani�s government fight the Taliban threat. Despite their efforts, the Taliban took Kabul in September 1996. Rabbani and Hekmatyar fled north, joining other factions in an opposition alliance against the Taliban. The opposition coalition of ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras took the name United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, commonly known as the United Front or the Northern Alliance. The Taliban advanced north toward the mountain strongholds of the Northern Alliance and by the late 1990s had taken control of almost all of Afghanistan. Northern Alliance forces held a small portion of the country�s territory in the north.

The effects of the war on Afghanistan were devastating. Half of the population was displaced inside the country, forced to migrate outside the country, wounded, or killed. Estimates of combat fatalities range between 700,000 and 1.3 million people. With the school system largely destroyed, industrialization severely restricted, and large irrigation projects badly damaged, the economy of the country was crippled. Despite some negative reaction, the presence of so many refugees in neighboring Pakistan and Iran actually improved Afghan relations with those countries. In addition, many of the refugees improved their lives considerably by leaving Afghanistan and the dangers of war therein. Because the majority of the refugees were religious, their fellow Muslims in Iran and Pakistan accepted them, even while the Iranian and Pakistani governments were striving to bring about the fall of the Communist regime in Kabul.

Today Afghanistan is comprised of a variety of ethnic groups, the overwhelming majority of whom are Muslim, usually either followers of Sunni or Shia Islam. The people of Afghanistan are related to many of the ethnic groups in Iran, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan; the borders drawn between these groups are arbitrary

The population of Afghanistan includes many different ethnic groups. The Pashtuns (Pushtuns), who make up about two-fifths the population, have traditionally been the dominant ethnic group. Their homeland lies south of the Hindu Kush, but Pashtun groups live in all parts of the country. Many Pashtuns also live in northwestern Pakistan, where they are called Pathans. Pashtuns are usually farmers, though a large number of them are nomads, living in tents made of black goat hair. Male Pashtuns live by ancient tribal code called Pashtunwali, which stresses courage, personal honor, resolution, self-reliance, and hospitality. The Pashtuns speak Pashto, which is an Indo-Iranian language and one of the two official languages of Afghanistan.

The Tajiks (Tadzhiks), a people of Iranian origin, are the second largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. They live in the valleys north of Kabul and in Badakhshan. They are farmers, artisans, and merchants. The Tajiks speak Dari (Afghan Persian), also an Indo-Iranian language and the other official language of Afghanistan. Dari is more widely spoken than Pashto in most of the cities. The Tajiks are closely related to the people of Tajikistan.

In the central ranges live the Hazaras. Although their ancestors came from the Xinjiang region of northwestern China, the Hazaras speak an archaic Persian. Most are farmers and sheepherders. The Hazaras have been discriminated against for a long time, in part because they are minority Shiites (followers of Shia Islam) within a dominant Sunni Muslim population. In the east, north of the Kabul River, is an isolated wooded mountainous region known as Nuristan. The Nuristani people who live there speak a wide variety of Indo-Iranian dialects. In the far south live the Baluchi, whose Indo-Iranian language (called Balochi) is also spoken in southwestern Pakistan and southeastern Iran.

To the north of the Hindu Kush, on the steppes near the Amu Darya, live several groups who speak Turkic languages. The Uzbeks are the largest of these groups, which also include Turkmen and, in the extreme northeast Vakhan Corridor, the Kyrgyz people. The Kyrgyz were mostly driven out by the Soviet invasion and largely emigrated to Turkey. All of these groups are settled farmers, merchants, and seminomadic sheepherders. The nomads live in yurts, or round, felt-covered tents of the Mongolian or Central Asian type.

Prior to the current war important political positions were distributed almost equally among ethnic groups. This kept ethnic tensions and violence to a minimum, though the Pashtuns in Kabul were always the politically dominant group. In the mid-1990s attempts were made to reestablish shared rule; however, many of the ethnic groups sought a greater share of power than they had before the war, and violence was a common result of the disputes.

From Encarta 98 Encyclopedia