Date Posted: Tuesday, October 07, 2003

OFFICIAL NAME: Islamic State of Afghanistan

Location: Southern Asia, north and west of Pakistan, east of Iran
Area: 251,825 sq mi, 652,225 sq km.

Capital: Kabul

Religions: Sunni Muslim 89.2%; Shi’i Muslim 8.9%; Zoroastrian 1.4%; Hindu 0.4%

Languages: Pashto and Dari (Persian)

Population: 24 million (UN 2003)

Life Expectancy: 43 years (male), 43 years (female) (UN)

Monetary unit: 1 Afghani = 100 puls

Main Exports: Fruit, nuts, carpets, wool, and opium

Landlocked and mountainous, Afghanistan has always been a thorn in the side of invading armies and their imperialist designs. Sandwiched between the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent, Afghanistan has long been fought over by competing powers. As one historian of Afghanistan writes: “The list of people and conquerors who have touched or influenced Afghan history reads like a roster of nearly every aggressive force that has been set loose in Asia over the past 4,000 years.”

The area has been part of the Persian empire (sixth century BC) and that of Alexander the Great (fourth century BC). Hindu influence entered with the Hepthalites and Sassanians, and the Arabs introduced Islam during the eighth and ninth centuries. Islam served as a unifying bond between the region’s people, who were sharply divided along ethnic and tribal lines. After the breakdown of Arab rule, several semi-autonomous states began to form. They were crushed by the Mongol invaders in thirteenth century, who went on to dominate the region for the next three centuries. After the Mongols were routed, Afghanistan was divided between India’s Mughal Empire and Persia’s Safavid Empire until the eighteenth century.

In 1747, Ahmed Shah Durrani, a young Pashtun soldier, led forces that freed Afghanistan from foreign domination. He expelled the Persians, captured Ghazni and Kabul, and proceeded on a war of conquest that lasted over 20 years. Ahmed Shah established the borders of modern Afghanistan, and by the time of his death, the Durrani Empire included Khorasan, Kashmir, Sind, and most of the Punjab. A fearless warrior and an accomplished poet, Ahmed Shah is widely considered by Pashtuns as the Father of Afghanistan. In 1761, he laid out the plans of modern Kandahar. He was buried in his capital in 1772. Ahmed Shah’s successors turned out to be utterly incompetent rulers, and the country again slipped into anarchy.

In the nineteenth century, the British rulers of the Indian Subcontinent began eyeing Afghanistan as an outpost against other countries with imperialist designs. The British fought three wars with the Afghans between 1838 and 1919, all of which ended in disaster for the British. Between 1838 and January 1842, the British held on to Kabul, but were then forced to abandon it because of intensifying resistance. Assured of safe passage, the British commander led about 700 Britons (soldiers, wives, and children), 3,800 Indian troops, and more than 12,000 camp followers from the city. Their trek through the snow-clad mountains to Peshawar turned into a death march, for only one man (a doctor) survived to tell the story. Once the British realized that conquering Afghanistan by force was difficult, they tried to set it up as a buffer state by granting extensive military and economic aid to its tribal rulers.

In the 1930s, the country had a stable monarchy. But during the 1970s, it was overthrown by rebels who wanted to institute Marxist reforms. These reforms sparked rebellion and, under the pretext of establishing order, thousands of Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979. This event turned Afghanistan into a key Cold War battleground. The Mujahideen (Afghan guerillas) launched a struggle to expel the invaders, and were helped in this endeavor by the U.S., which was intent on turning Afghanistan into the Soviet Union’s Vietnam. The Mujahideen prevailed, and the Soviet Union withdrew in 1988-89.

The outside world eventually lost interest in Afghanistan, even as the country’s protracted civil war continued. The Mujahideen, who had once been comrades-in-arms, now turned their guns against one another. Lawlessness, kidnapping, and banditry became the order of the day. Out of this chaos emerged the Taliban - originally a group of Islamic students - in 1996.

The Taliban brought a measure of stability after nearly 20 years of conflict. However, their rigid interpretation of Islam attracted domestic and international condemnation. The Taliban, who were mostly Pashtun, were opposed by an alliance of factions drawn mainly from Afghanistan’s minority communities based in the north.

In control of about 90% of Afghanistan until late 2001, the Taliban were recognized as the legitimate government by only three countries (Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Pakistan). They drew the ire of the U.S. and its allies over the presence on their soil of Osama bin Laden, whom the U.S. accuses of masterminding the bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, and the September 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S.

After the Taliban’s refusal to hand over bin Laden, the U.S. initiated aerial attacks in October 2001, paving the way for opposition groups to drive them from power.

On November 27, 2001, a U.N.-sponsored conference in Bonn, Germany, convened to settle on an interim government to replace the Taliban. Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun tribal leader and supporter of the former king, was chosen to head the interim government for six months. In June 2002, he was chosen as interim head of state at the Loya Jirga (traditional assembly of tribal representatives). His mandate to govern will expire in 2004.