Afganistan.
Information.
AFGANISTAN, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is a landlocked country located in the heart of Asia Area - 652,090 sq. km. Population - 29,863,000 (2005) Carital - Kabul. It is largely bordered by Pakistan in the south and east, Iran in the west, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan in the north, the People's Republic of China in the far northeast. Afghanistan is a country at a unique nexus point where numerous Indo-European civilizations have interacted and often fought, and was an important site of early historical activity. Through the ages, the region has been home to various people, among them the Aryan (Indo-Iranian) tribes, such as the Kambojas, Bactrians, Persians, etc. Between 2000 and 1200 BC, waves of Indo-European-speaking Aryans from the north of Amu Darya are thought to have flooded into northern Afghanistan and then spreading south towards India and west towards Persia, setting up a nation that during the rule of Medes and Achaemenid Persians. Buddhas of Bamyan were the largest Buddha statues in the world, dating back to the first century AD. It has been speculated that Zoroastrianism might have originated in what is now Afghanistan between 1800 to 800 BC[citation needed]. Ancient Eastern Iranian languages, such as Avestan , may have been spoken in this region around a similar time-line with the rise of Zoroastrianism. By the middle of the sixth century BC, the Persian Empire of the Achaemenids supplanted the Median Empire and incorporated what was known as Persia to the Greeks within its boundaries; and by 330 BC, Alexander the Great had invaded Afghanistan and conquered the surrounding regions. Following Alexander's brief occupation, the Hellenistic successor states of the Seleucids and Greco-Bactrians controlled the area, while the Mauryas from India annexed the southeast for a time and introduced Buddhism to the region until the area returned to the Bactrian rule. During the first century AD, the Kushans created a vast empire centered in modern Afghanistan and were patrons of Buddhist culture. The Kushans were defeated by the Sassanids in the third century. Although various rulers calling themselves Kushans (and generally known as Kushano-Sasanians) continued to rule at least parts of the region today known as Afghanistan, they were probably more or less subject to the Sassanids. The late Kushans were followed by the Kidarite Huns who, in turn, were replaced by the short-lived but powerful Hephthalites, as rulers of the region in the first half of the fifth century. The Hephthalites were defeated by the Sasanian king Khosrau I in AD 557, who re-established Sasanian power in Persia. However, the successors of Kushans and Hepthalites established a small dynasty in Kabulistan called Kushano-Hephthalites or Kabul-Shahan and were later defeated by the Muslim Armies. In the Middle Ages, up to the eighteenth century, the region was known as Khorasan. Several important centers of Khorasan are thus located in modern Afghanistan, such as Balkh, Herat, Ghazni and Kabul. 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 Timur Lang ("Tamerlane"), a ruler from Central Asia. In 1504, Babur, a descendant of both Timur Lang and Genghis Khan, established the Mughal Empire with its capital at Kabul. By the early 1700s, Afghanistan was controlled by several ruling groups: Uzbeks to the north, Safavids to the west and the remaining larger area by the Mughals or self-ruled by local Afghan tribes. In 1738, Nadir Shah and his army, which included four thousand Pashtuns of the Abdali clan, conquered the region of Kandahar; in the same year he occupied Ghazni, Kabul and Lahore. On June 19, 1747, Nadir Shah was assassinated, possibly planned by his nephew Ali Qoli. In the same year, one of Nadir's military commanders and personal bodyguard, Ahmad Shah Abdali, a Pashtun from the Abdali clan, called for a loya jirga following Nadir's death. The Afghans gathered at Kandahar and chose Ahmad Shah as their King. Since then, he is regarded as the founder of modern Afghanistan. After the inauguration, he changed his title or clans' name to "Durrani", which derives from the Persian word Durr, meaning "Pearl". By 1751, Ahmad Shah Durrani and his Afghan army conquered the entire present-day Afghanistan Pakistan, Khorasan and Kohistan provinces of Iran, along with Delhi in India. In October 1772, Ahmad Shah retired to his home in Maruf, Kandahar, where he died peacefully. He was succeeded by his son, Timur Shah Durrani, who transferred the capital from Kandahar to Kabul. Timur died in 1793 and was finally succeeded by his son Zaman Shah Durrani. During the nineteenth century, following the Anglo-Afghan wars (fought 1839-42, 1878-80, and lastly in 1919) and the ascension of the Barakzai dynasty, Afghanistan saw much of its territory and autonomy ceded to the United Kingdom. The UK exercised a great deal of influence, and it was not until King Amanullah Khan acceded to the throne in 1919 that Afghanistan re-gained complete independence over its foreign affairs (see "The Great Game"). During the period of British intervention in Afghanistan, ethnic Pashtun territories were divided by the Durand Line. 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 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 Shah's brother-in-law, Sardar Daoud Khan, launched a bloodless coup. Daoud Khan and his entire family were later 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, in 1979 the United States government under President Jimmy Carter and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski began to covertly fund and train anti-government Mujahideen forces through the Pakistani secret service agency known as Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), who were derived from discontented Muslims in the country that opposed the official atheism of the Marxist regime. 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—intervened on December 24, 1979. According to media and official government sources, between 110,000 to 150,000 Soviet troops, assisted by another 100,000 or so pro-communist Afghan troops, were present in Afghanistan. The Soviet occupation resulted in a mass exodus of over 5 million Afghans that moved into refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan, Iran and other countries. More than 3 million settled in Pakistan, over a million in Iran and many others in different countries of the world. Faced with mounting international pressure and the loss of over 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. The Soviet withdrawal from the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was seen as an ideological victory in the US, which had backed the Mujahideen through three US presidential administrations 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 or influence events there. The USSR continued to support President Najibullah (formerly the head of the secret service, KHAD) until his downfall in 1992. However, the absence of the Soviet forces resulted in the downfall of the pro-communist government as it steadily lost ground to the guerrilla forces.[39] The result of the fighting was that the vast majority of the elites and intellectuals had escaped to take refuge abroad, a dangerous leadership vacuum thereby coming into existence. Fighting continued among the various Mujahideen factions, eventually giving rise to a state of warlordism. The most serious fighting during this growing civil conflict occurred in 1994, when over 10,000 people were killed in Kabul. The chaos and corruption that dominated post-Soviet Afghanistan in turn spawned the rise of the Taliban, who were mostly Pashtuns from the Helmand and Kandahar region. The Taliban developed as a politico-religious force, and eventually seized Kabul in 1996. By the end of 2000, the Taliban were able to capture 95% of the country, aside from the opposition (Afghan Northern Alliance) strongholds primarily found in the northeast corner of Badakhshan Province. The Taliban sought to impose a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law and were later implicated as supporters of terrorists, most notably by harbouring Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network. During the Taliban's seven-year rule, much of the population experienced restrictions on their freedom and violations of their human rights. Women were banned from jobs, girls forbidden to attend schools or universities. Those who resisted were punished instantly. Communists were systematically eradicated and thieves were punished by amputating one of their hands or feet. Meanwhile, the Taliban managed to nearly eradicate the majority of the opium production by 2001.[40] Ahmed Shah Massoud was a famous military commander. He fought the Soviets in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s, until he was assassinated by al Qaeda on September 9, 2001. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom, a military campaign to destroy the Al-Qaeda terrorist network operating in Afghanistan and overthrow their host (the Taliban government). The US made common cause with the Afghan Northern Alliance to achieve its ends. In December 2001, major leaders from the Afghan opposition groups and diaspora met in Bonn, Germany, and agreed on a plan for the formulation of a new democratic government that resulted in the inauguration of Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun from the southern city of Kandahar, as Chairman of the Afghan Interim Authority. After a nationwide Loya Jirga in 2002, Karzai was chosen by the representatives to assume the title as Interim President of Afghanistan. In 2003, the country convened a Constitutional Loya Jirga (Council of Elders) and ratified a new constitution the following year. Hamid Karzai was elected President in a nationwide election in October 2004. Legislative elections were held in September 2005. The National Assembly – the first freely elected legislature in Afghanistan since 1973 – sat in December 2005, and was noteworthy for the inclusion of women as voters, candidates, and elected members. Hamid Karzai became the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan in 2004, following an election that was held in the country for the first time in history. As the country continues to rebuild and recover, it is still struggling against poverty, poor infrastructure, large concentration of land mines and other unexploded ordnance on earth, as well as a huge illegal poppy cultivation and opium trade. Afghanistan also remains subject to occasionally violent political jockeying. The country continues to grapple with the Taliban insurgency, the threat of attacks from a few remaining al Qaeda, and instability, particularly in the north, caused by the remaining few semi-independent warlords.