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Afghanistan
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Afghanistan (Pashto/Dari-Persian: افغانستان, Afğānistān) is
a country at the crossroads of Asia. Usually placed in Central
Asia geographically, Afghanistan is also sometimes categorized
within South Asia and the Middle East, as it has cultural,
ethno-linguistic, and geographic links with most of its
neighbors. It is bordered by Iran in the west, Pakistan in the
south and east, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the
north, and China to the east. It has a population of 30 million
people, although this remains an estimate, as no official census
has been taken for decades.
Afghanistan literally translates to 'land of the Afghans', but a
plethora of other names have been applied to its general
location in the past. Between the fall of the Taliban after the
U.S. invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 Loya jirga,
Afghanistan was referred to by the Government of the United
States as the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan. Under
its new constitution, the country is now officially named the
Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
Origin and history of the name
The name of Afghanistan derives from word Afghan. The Pushtuns
appear to have begun using the term Afghan as a name for
themselves from the Islamic period onwards. According to W.K.
Frazier Tyler, M.C. Gillet and several other scholars, "The word
Afghan first appears in history in the Hudud-al-Alam in 982 AD."
There are numerous views, regarding the origin of name Afghan,
most of them being purely speculative as can be seen below:
Makhzan-i-Afghni by Nematullah written in 1612 CE, traces the
Afghan or Pakhtun origin from the super-Patriach Abraham down to
one named King Talut or Saul. It states that Saul had a son
Irmia (Jeremia), who had a son called Afghana. Upon the death of
King Saul, Afghana was raised by David, and was later promoted
to the chief command of the army during the reign of King
Solomon. The progeny of this Afghana multiplied numerously, and
came to be called Bani-Israel. In the sixth century BCE,
Bakhtunnasar, or Nebuchadnezzar king of Babul, attacked Judah
and exiled the progeny of Afghana to Ghor located in the center
of what is now Afghanistan. In course of time, the exiled
community came to be addressed as Afghan after the name of their
ancestor, and the country got its name as Afghanistan. This
traditional view has many historical discrepancies, and is
therefore not accepted by modern scholarship---the last pleader
for the Bani-Israel hypothesis being Mayor Raverty (The Pathans,
1958, Olaf Caroe).
Another version of Pushtun legend places Afghana, the professed
eponymous ancestor of the Afghans or Pushtuns, as a contemporary
of Muslim Prophet Mohammad. On hearing about the new faith of
Islam, Qais from Aryana travelled to Medina to see the Muslim
Prophet Muhammad, and returned to Aryana as a Muslim. Qais Abdur
Rashid purportedly had many sons, one of whom was Afghana.
Afghana, in turn, had four sons who set out to the east to
establish their separate lineages. The first son went to Swat,
the second to Lahore and India, the third to Multan, and the
last one to Quetta. This legend is one of many traditional tales
amongst the Pashtuns regarding their disparate origins. Again,
it was this legendary Afghana who is stated to have given the
Pushtuns their current name. It is notable that the Afghan of
this legend is separated from the Afghana of Solomon's times by
at least 11 centuries.
Dr H.W. Bellew, in his book An Enquiry into the Ethnography of
Afghanistan, believes that the name Afghan derives from the
Latin term Alban, used by Armenians as Alvan or Alwan, which
refers to mountaineers, and in the case of transliterated
Armenian characters, would be pronounced as Aghvan or Aghwan. To
the Persians, this would further be altered to Aoghan, Avghan,
and Afghan as a reference to the highlanders or "mountaineers"
of the eastern Iranian plateau.
Some people hold that the name derives from "Abagan" (i.e
without God) which term the Persians are stated to have coined
for the Pushtuns to describe them as Godless or non-believers.
It is claimed that word Abagan is antonym of the word Bagan
(=believer in God) just as word apolitical is antonym of
political in the English language.
There are also a few people who link "Afghan" to an Uzbek word "Avagan"
said to mean "original". Still others believe that the name
derives from Sanskrit upa-ganah, said to mean "allied tribes".
Another etymological view is that the name Afghan evidently
derives from Sanskrit Ashvaka or Ashvakan (q.v), the Assakenoi
of Arrian. This view was propounded by J. W. McCrindle and is
supported by numerous modern scholars (Lassen, Martin, Bishop,
Crooks, Vidyalnar, Singh, Smith, Dey and several others). In
Sanskrit, word ashva (Iranian aspa, Prakrit assa) means "horse",
and ashvaka (Prakrit assaka) means "horseman". Pre-Christian
times knew the people of eastern Afghanistan as Ashvakas
(horsemen), since they raised a fine breed of horses and had a
reputation for providing expert cavalrymen. The
fifth-century-BCE Indian grammarian Panini calls them Ashvayana
and Ashvakayana. Classical writers use the respective
equivalents Aspasios (or Aspasii, Hippasii) and Assakenois (or
Assaceni/Assacani, Asscenus). The Aspasios/Assakenois (=
Ashvakas = cavalrymen) is stated to be another name for the
Kambojas because of their equestrian characteristics (see List
of country name etymologies).
The last part of the name Afghanistan originates from the
Persian word stān (country or land). The English word Afghanland
that appeared in various treaties between Qajar-Persia and the
United Kingdom dealing with the Eastern lands of the Persian
kingdom (modern Afghanistan) was adopted by the Afghans and
became Afghanistan.
Before being called 'Afghanistan', the region had gone through
several name changes in its long history of around 5000 years.
One of the most ancient names, according to historians and
scholars, was Ariana - the Greek pronunciation of the ancient
Avestan Aryanam Vaeja or the Sanskrit "Aryavarta", Land of the
Aryans. Today this Old-Persian, and Avestan expression is
preserved in the name Iran and it is noted in the name of the
Afghan national airline, Ariana Airlines. The term 'Ariana
Afghanistan' is still popular amongst Persian speakers in the
country.
Many centuries later, Afghanistan was part of Greater Khorasan,
and hence was recognized with the name Khorasan (along with
regions centered around Merv and Neishabur), which in Pahlavi
means "The Eastern Land" (خاور زمین in Persian). (Dehkhoda,
p8457)
History
Main article: History of Afghanistan
Afghanistan exists at a unique nexus-point where numerous
Eurasian civilizations have interacted and often fought and was
an important site of early historical activity. Through the
ages, the region today known as Afghanistan has been invaded by
a host of peoples, including the Aryans, Medes, Persians,
Greeks, Mauryans, Kushans, Sassanians, Arabs, Turks, British,
and Soviets, but rarely have these groups managed to exert
complete control over the region. On other occasions, native
Afghan entities have invaded surrounding regions to form empires
of their own.
Buddhas of Bamiyan, dating back to the 1st century Pre-Islamic
Afghanistan, were the largest Buddha statues in the World. They
were destroyed by religious zealots Taliban in 2001 calling them
Un-IslamicBetween 2000 and 1200 BCE, waves of
Indo-European-speaking Aryans are thought to have flooded into
modern-day Afghanistan, setting up a nation that became known as
Aryānām Xšaθra, or "Land of the Aryans." Zoroastrianism is
speculated to have possibly originated in Afghanistan between
1800 to 800 BCE. Ancient Eastern Iranian languages such as
Avestan may have been spoken in Afghanistan around a similar
time-line with the rise of Zoroastrianism. Around 1000 BCE (or
earlier), the Indo-Aryan Vedic civilization may have arisen near
the vicinity of the Kabul valley of eastern Afghanistan, but
this remains speculative as more viable theories based upon
archaeological finds tend to support the emergence of the Vedic
civilization east of the Indus and/or Ganges in what is today
Pakistan and India. By the middle of the 6th century BCE, the
Persian Empire supplanted the Medes and incorporated Aryana
within its boundaries; and by 330 BCE, Alexander the Great had
invaded the region. Following Alexander's brief occupation, the
Hellenic successor states of the Seleucids and Bactrians
controlled the area, while the Mauryans from India annexed the
southeast for a time and introduced Buddhism to the region until
the area returned to the Bactrian rule.
During the 1st century CE, the Kushans, a Tocharian people from
Central Asia with Indo-European origins, occupied the region.
Thereafter, Aryana fell to a number of Eurasian tribes —
including Parthians, Scythians, and Huns, as well as the
Sassanian Persians and local rulers such as the Hindu Shahis in
Kabul — until the 7th century CE, when Muslim Arab armies
invaded the region.
The Arabs initially annexed parts of western Afghanistan in 652
and then conquered most of the rest of Afghanistan between
706-709 CE and administered the region as Khorasan, and over
time much of the local population converted to Islam, but
retained their Iranian languages. Afghanistan became the center
of various important empires, including the Ghaznavid Empire
(962-1151), founded by a local Turkic ruler from Ghazni named
Yamin ul-Dawlah Mahmud, that expanded its suzerainty over a vast
area from Kurdistan to northern India. This empire was replaced
by the Ghorid Empire (1151-1219), founded by another local
ruler, this time of Tajik extraction, Muhammad Ghori, whose
domains included huge parts of Central and South Asia, and laid
the foundations for the Delhi Sultanate in India.
In 1219, the region was overrun by the Mongols under Genghis
Khan, who devastated the land. Their rule continued with the
Ilkhanates, and was extended further following the invasion of
Tamerlane (Timur Leng), a ruler from Central Asia. By 1400, all
of Afghanistan came under his dominion, and he also laid the
foundation of another Islamic empire in India, the Mughal
Empire. The Uzbek-born Babur, a descendant of both Tamerlane and
Genghis Khan, established an empire with its capital at Kabul by
1504, and then expanded into South Asia in 1525 and established
the Mughal Empire's rule throughout much of what is today
Pakistan and northern India by 1527. As the empire shifted
eastward, the Safavids of Persia challenged Mughal rule while
the two superpower empires of the day battled over the fate of
Afghanistan for decades with the Persians acquiring the area by
the mid-17th century.
Local Ghilzai Pashtun tribesmen successfully overthrew Safavid
rule, and under the Hotaki dynasty, briefly controlled all or
parts of Persia itself from 1722 to 1736. Following a brief
period under the rule (1736-1747) of the Turko-Iranian conqueror
Nadir Shah, one of his high-ranking military officers, Ahmad
Shah Abdali, himself a Pashtun tribesman of the Abdali clan,
called for a loya jirga following Nadir Shah's assassination
(for which many implicate Abdali) in 1747. The Afghans/Pashtuns
came together at Kandahar in 1747 and chose Ahmad Shah, who
changed his last name to Durrani (meaning 'pearl of pearls' in
Persian), to be king. The Afghanistan nation-state as it is
known today came into existence in 1747 as the Durrani Empire,
and expanded outward from traditional Pashtun territories to
include all of what is today Afghanistan, a portion of Mashad in
Iran, and all of Pakistan and Kashmir as well. The Durrani
Empire lasted for nearly a century until internecine conflict
and wars with the Persians and Sikhs diminished their empire by
the early 19th century. However, the current borders of
Afghanistan would not be determined until the coming of the
British.
During the 19th century, following the Anglo-Afghan wars (fought
in 1839-1842, 1878-1880, and lastly in 1919), Afghanistan saw
much of its territory and autonomy ceded to the United Kingdom.
The United Kingdom exercised a great deal of influence, and it
was not until King Amanullah acceded to the throne in 1919 (see
"The Great Game") that Afghanistan regained complete
independence. During the period of British intervention in
Afghanistan, ethnic Pashtun territories were divided by the
Durand Line, and this would lead to strained relations between
Afghanistan and British India, and later the new state of
Pakistan, over what came to be known as the Pashtunistan debate.
The historical rulers of Afghanistan were part of the Abdali
tribe of the ethnic Afghans, whose name was changed to Durrani
upon the accession of Ahmad Shah. They belonged to the Saddozay
segment of the Popalzay clan, or to the Mohammadzay segment of
the Barakzay clan, of the ethnic Afghans. The Mohammadzay
frequently furnished the Sadozay kings with top counsellors, who
served occasionally as regents, and identified with the name
Mohammadzay.
Since 1900, eleven monarchs and rulers have been unseated
through undemocratic means: in 1919 (assassination), 1929
(abdication), 1929 (execution), 1933 (assassination), 1973
(deposition), 1978 (execution), 1979 (execution), 1979
(execution), 1987 (removal), 1992 (overthrow), 1996 (overthrow)
and 2001 (overthrow).
The longest period of stability in Afghanistan was between 1933
and 1973, when the country was under the rule of King Zahir
Shah. However, in 1973, Zahir's brother-in-law, Sardar Mohammed
Daoud launched a bloodless coup. Daoud and his entire family
were murdered in 1978 when the communist People's Democratic
Party of Afghanistan launched a coup known as the Great Saur
Revolution and took over the government.
Opposition against, and conflict within, the series of communist
governments that followed, was considerable. As part of a Cold
War strategy, the US government began to covertly fund and train
anti-government Mujahideen forces through the Pakistani secret
service agency known as Inter Services Intelligence or ISI,
which were derived from discontented Muslims in the country who
opposed the official atheism of the Marxist regime, in 1978. In
order to bolster the local Communist forces the Soviet Union -
citing the 1978 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good
Neighborliness that had been signed between the two countries in
1978 - intervened on December 24, 1979. The Soviet occupation
resulted in a mass exodus of over 5 million Afghans who moved
into refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan and Iran. More than 3
million alone setteled in Pakistan. Faced with mounting
international pressure and the loss of approximately 15,000
Soviet soldiers as a result of Mujahideen opposition forces
trained by the United States, Pakistan, and other foreign
governments, the Soviets withdrew ten years later, in 1989. For
more details, see Soviet war in Afghanistan.
The Soviet withdrawal was seen as an ideological victory in the
US, which ostensibly had backed the Mujahideen in order to
counter Soviet influence in the vicinity of the oil-rich Persian
Gulf. Following the removal of the Soviet forces in 1989, the US
and its allies lost interest in Afghanistan and did little to
help rebuild the war-ravaged country. The USSR continued to
support the regime of Dr. Najubullah (formerly the head of the
secret service, Khad) until its downfall in 1992. However, the
absence of the Soviet forces resulted in the downfall of the
government as it steadily lost ground to the guerrilla forces.
[1]
As the vast majority of the elites and intellectuals had either
been systematically eliminated by the Communists, or escaped to
take refuge abroad, a dangerous leadership vacuum came into
existence. Fighting continued among the various Mujahidin
factions, eventually giving rise to a state of warlordism. The
chaos and corruption that dominated post-Soviet Afghanistan in
turn spawned the rise of the Taliban in response to the growing
chaos. The most serious fighting during this growing civil
conflict occurred in 1994, when 10,000 people were killed during
factional fighting in Kabul.
Exploiting the chaotic situation in Afghanistan, a few regional
bedfellows including fundamentalist Afghans trained in refugee
camps in western Pakistan, the Pakistani secret intelligence
service (ISI), the regional Mafia (well-established network that
smuggled mainly Japanese electronics and tyres before the
Russian invasion, now involved in drug smuggling) and Arab
extremist groups (that were looking for a safe operational hub)
joined forces and helped to create the Taliban movement (Rashid
2000).[2] Backed by Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and other strategic
allies, the Taliban developed as a politico-religious force, and
eventually seized power in 1996. The Taliban were able to
capture 90% of the country, aside from the Afghan Northern
Alliance strongholds primarily found in the northeast in the
Panjshir Valley. The Taliban sought to impose a strict
interpretation of Islamic Sharia law and gave safe haven and
assistance to individuals and organizations that were implicated
as terrorists, most notably Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
The United States and allied military action in support of the
opposition following the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attacks
forced the Taliban's downfall. In late 2001, major leaders from
the Afghan opposition groups and diaspora met in Bonn, and
agreed on a plan for the formulation of a new government
structure that resulted in the inauguration of Hamid Karzai as
Chairman of the Afghan Interim Authority (AIA) on December 2001.
After a nationwide Loya Jirga in 2002, Karzai was elected
President.
On March 3 and March 25, 2002, a series of earthquakes struck
Afghanistan, with a loss of thousands of homes and over 1800
lives. Over 4000 more people were injured. The earthquakes
occurred at Samangan Province (March 3) and Baghlan Province
(March 25). The latter was the worse of the two, and caused most
of the casualties. International authorities assisted the Afghan
government in dealing with the situation.
As the country continues to rebuild and recover, as of late
2005, it was still struggling against widespread poverty,
continued warlordism, a virtually non-existent infrastructure,
possibly the largest concentration of land mines on earth and
other unexploded ordinance, as well as a sizeable illegal poppy
and heroin trade. Afghanistan also remains subject to
occasionally violent political jockeying, and the nation's first
elections were successfully held in 2004 as women
parliamentarians were selected in record numbers. Parliamentary
elections in 2005 helped to further stabilize the country
politically, in spite of the numerous problems it faced,
including inadequate international assistance. The country
continues to grapple with occasional acts of violence from a few
remaining al-Qaeda and Taliban and the instability caused by
warlords.
See also: Afghanistan timeline, Invasions of Afghanistan
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