Afghanistan the land of rolling steppes, mountains, and barren deserts, covering approximately 250,000 square miles makes it almost the size of Texas.[1] This country lies to the east of the Iranian Plateau and almost two thirds of the country is higher than 5,000 feet. [2] Many mountain ranges in Afghanistan are noted for being the highest in the world.[3] Sir Martin Ewan wrote, “The ranges that bisect the country may be likened to a hand outstretched toward the west, with the wrist lying on the Pashmir knot.”[4] The Pashmir Knot like a Celtic knot lie outstretched all the way to the Western edge where you run into the Himalayas and Karakoram.[5] The palm of this imaginary hand holds the Hindu Kush or the “Killer of Indians,” and the memory of their death as they were forced across the passage to the khanates of Central Asia.[6] Koh-i-Baba, a large complexus of mountain ranges and uplands appear like outstretched fingers that meander in a western direction forming the fingers of the hand of the Band-i-Turkestan, the Safed, Koh, the Siah Koh and the Parapmisus Range each wane as it approaches the Iranian Frontier.[7] Two more fingers of the hand are the Kirthar Range going into Baluchistan and the Paghman Range, which drop right into the capital of the country, Kabul; follow a route to the south.[8] The plains are to the North and South. In the south, there lies the “basin of the Helmand River, enclosing in its semi-circular course the barren expanse of the Dasht-i-Margo, the Desert of Death.”[9]
Afghanistan’s frontiers were mostly established around the end of the nineteenth century. Its borders ran westward along the side of Uzbekistan, the Republics of Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan for almost thirteen hundred miles.[10] It stretches into the west “from the Pamirs along the Amu Darya and then across country to the Hari Rud the river that marks the northern end of its frontier with Iran.”[11] It borders China for fifty miles in the northeast in the Pamirs Mountains. From this point lies the Durand Line, which separates Afghanistan and Pakistan by a frontier. [12] This frontier meanders westward for around eight hundred miles then turns around and drives towards the west for another seven hundred miles going around the Helmund Valley extending all the way to the Iranian Frontier, which is to the south of Hamun.[13] The Hamun drains into a complexus of marshes and lakes that drain into the Helmund. The border between Afghan and Iran go to the north for almost six hundred miles where it adjoins the Hari Rud.[14] The Hindu Kush meets the Amu Darya basins as a section of the mountains, which splits Central and South Asia. The few passages across the mountains are too treacherous to pass six months of the year due to heavy snowfall. Still many have tamed these mountains in search of conquests and both spiritual and material. Balkh, the ancient city once sitting on the silk-road now lay in ruins directly in between China and the Mediterranean and is the most accessible of the passes over the Hindu Kush.[15]
The descendents of Bobur’s Mogul held a loose reign and control over the Kabul, Peshawar, the plains in between the Suleiman Range and the Indus River, while the Safavids controlled the lands to the west and Herat during the sixteenth and seventeenth century.[16] The Moguls and the Safavid’s ruled Afghanistan until the eighteenth century. The Abdali Pushtoons replaced them.[17] There was a contention between the Safavids and Babur’s Mogul descendents over Kandahar and was fought over many times with exchanges of power between the “sixteenth century and the middle of the seventeenth century.”[18] Once in awhile Pushtoon tribal uprising occurred against the Moguls. Unfortunately, there was too much suppression and bribery inherent in the Pushtoon judiciary system for them to be successful in over throwing the Moguls who retained a precarious hold until the beginning of the eighteenth century. [19]
In 1709, Mir Wais Hokaitai, a skilled leader and chieftain of his tribe the Gilzhai tribe defeated the Safavids.[20] Mir Wais was intelligent and wealthy. When he was younger he went to the Persian court enjoying it.[21] Now that he was older and had gained control, he sought to gain control over Persia and knew its security ws vulnerable.[22] The tribe and its horsemen soon rode towards Persia killing the vastly unpopular Persian governor who had attempted to force Shi’ism on the people searching for plunder.[23]
The Tribal Chief Wais died in 1715, leaving a contest for the thrown so his son Mir Mahmud led a major campaign all the way to the Persian capital Isfahan in 1722. On the journey to Isfahan he crossed with a Persian army larger than his own with 24 cannons, which was, “under the direction of an itinerant French artilleryman M Phillipe Columbe, and then, after a long and bloody siege, stormed the city.”[24] After the sack and massacre in Isfahan, the city never recovered its former glory. Mir Mahmud ruthlessly set out to trick the nobles into coming to a banquet and then proceeded to send his troops into massacre them. Mir Mahmud, “degenerated into a homicidal maniac, died or was murdered by his own men and was succeeded in 1725 by his cousin Ashraf.”[25] In 1729, Ashraf attempted to take advantage of Safavid’s weakness by defeating an Ottoman Army. In the same year, a resurgent Persian army led by Nadir Quli Khan, “a former camel bandit”[26] defeated Asraf.[27]
In 1716, the Abdalis conquered Harat and went on to take Meshed. In 1732, Nadir drove back Ghilzai and the Persian Shah to retake Heart.[28] In 1738, Nadir took the Persian throne, Kandahar, and Kabul.[29] In 1747, Nadir degenerated into sadism and paranoia to the point that his own Qizibash officers had to kill him. The body guards had too fights there way out to return to Kandahar after Nadir was killed.
Ahmed Khan, underestimated by those around him was next put in the position of power due to being from one of the least powerful sub-tribes because the elders thought he would be manipulated easily.[30] He soon obtained Pushtoon loyalty by creating opportunities for plunder and warfare. Gilhzai, his rivals were beaten down because of their campaign against the Persian Army and submitted quite easily to him. [31] He possessed the best fighting force in the region, was in possession of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, and then overtook a caravan full of Indian treasures, which allowed him to, “pay his army, conciliate political and tribal rivals and finance his campaigns.”[32] After he gained the title Durr-i-Dauran, the Abdalis were known as Durranis. By 1748, he was able to take Kabul and Peshwar from Ghazni. The Mogul Emperor put up no resistance to Nadir so he took Delhi and then on terms of peace the Emperor, “ceded all the territory earlier held by Nadir Shah with the province of Sind.”[33] In the following, years he would go back and forth between his Indian properties and his homeland due to his love of the hills and their more hospitable climate due to a constant threat from the Marathi Armies. However, the most conclusive and massive battle that was to ever take place in the Indian sub-continent was in 1761. The battle left the Marathi Army bereft of enough power to fight off the Punjab and the British, but had this battle not taken place it is very likely that the Marathi Army could have fought off the British colonizers and the Punjab.[34]
At the apex of Ahmed Shah’s power his kingdom extended from Amu Darya to the Arabian Sea, in a westward direction it reached beyond Meshed, to the east it extended all the way to Delhi, and it also contained Kashmir, Sind, and what is now known as Baluchistan.[35] He was a great military leader, politician, and diplomat. He understood the region, how to keep the tribal leaders happy, and how to appease the Pushtoon tribes and keep their allegiance. He was able to retain his composure while at the same time allowing the people access to him. He appealed to the Pushtoons because of his poetry written in Pushtu, his religious values, and the manner in which he retained his dignity. His great weakness was in his ineptitude to raise his men above thieves and warriors. He never was able to turn his men into administrators and governors. So the advancement of the society under his rule remained at a tribal level with constant warring and freebooting.[36] He was founder of the Dozai dynasty that lasted till 1818 and the Durrani Dynasty, which remained in place until 1978 under a different sub-tribe.[37] The Afghans came to know him as, “Father of the Nation.”[38]
Tribal politics, warring, and political gamesmanship would continue well into the twentieth century. Some reasons given were heavy taxes levied but one leader Amanullah who tried to bring a since of modernization into the country by enacting women’s rights and education was overthrown due to the strict conservative nature of the Islamic fundamentalists.[39] His representation was further put into disregard when others in power tried to water down his reforms concerning women.[40] But that which really put him under the most fire was when he used aid from the British in order to utilize two of their planes to be piloted by Germans to attempt to keep him in power. The Islamic looked to this use of the infidels aid and come to believe he was a traitor to Islam. Eventually he was forced to abdicate due to his attempt at inducing western reforms. In 1929, he abdicated, fleeing the country in his Rolls Royce. Thus all the way up to 1929 Afghanistan still had no measures of modernization.[41]
Afghanistan was one of Asia’s untouched cultural and economic systems. Since it was land locked it was not as open to trade as other Asian countries. And with its rugged landscape it was a harsh fight to over take the warring tribal leaders that believed in Islam to the point of dying for it. Therefore, it existed in a state of existence that did not contain modernization. It was settled in three basic systems. There were villages, nomadic encampments, and towns.[42] All three forms of settlements are closely linked. Thomas Barfield wrote, “Villages depend on towns to supply them with manufactured goods, and the wealth of the town depends on the surplus that their hinterlands provide.”[43] This is most apparent on bizarre day, which happens one or two times a week. The whole of the countryside comes into the towns in order to purchase or sell their goods. Some of the people just come into, “experience the crowd.”[44] Towns that usually are devoid of business on bizarre days are swarmed with the people of Afghanistan.[45] Teahouses are filled to the brim with those who have come to visit, socialize, and gossip. There are caravans full of goods pulled by teams of donkeys. [46] Nomads tie the economy of this system together since they have, “mobile tents, nomads travel by regular routes, and have close economic connections with towns their in winter areas and rural villages in their summer areas. In many part of the country they also own land, so the distinction between nomad and villagers is not a strict one.”[47]
In the villages, households work small land plots owned individually. In low lands that are irrigated they grow rice, cotton, melons, and citrus fruit. In the mountains they grow wheat and “have groves of trees to produce mulberries, stone fruit and nuts”, while on the plains they grow barley.[48] They plow large tracts of land in hopes of a high level of snowfall or spring rain. Mountain villages are smaller than other villages because they have to be able to feel all the inhabitants. They have huts they move to summer villages called (ailoq) especially in Central Afghanistan so they can feed their livestock well. [49]
Most of the nomads who migrate long distances are Pushtuns and have moveable black goat-haired tents. They primarily raise livestock and move them from the low lands in the winter to the high lands in the summer. They raise sheep and camel in order to carry their baggage.[50] The nomads depend on their ability to sell cheese, dried yogurt, clarified butter, wool, animals, and/or skins in the bizarre or urban markets for cash.[51] There are over one million nomads in Afghanistan. These nomads play an important role in the Afghanistan culture and economy still to this day. They are the ones that bring to market many of the staples of a typical Afghanistan citizen’s diet. Also in exchange for these goods that many need to purchase at market, the cash received by the nomads give them the ability to turn a profit and to make more goods to sell at the market in the future; therefore, the nomads tie the economy and culture together in many ways which make the towns a very special meeting place for all of these parties.
The towns are trade centers where pastoral and agricultural goods can be traded for manufactured goods. Local artisans make many goods valuable to those living in villages or who are nomads. Town life is diversified with many different ethnic groups co-existing together. Those that live in the mountains commonly come to towns to gain employment for the winter and return in the summer to help with the crops.[52] Migrants from rural areas many times will settle in a town in order to connect the rural family to the center of commerce. Surrounding both the towns and villages are large walls[53], a product of past days of their past tribal warring and great military leaders who once sacked Isfahan the capital of Persian, to leave it to never recover.
Many over the years underestimated the role of Islam in Afghanistan due to the secular society in Kabul.[54] Thomas Barfield argues, “Afghanistan is a form of Islamic society in which religion is not an ideology but remains an all-encompassing way of life.”[55] Today many look at Islam in Afghanistan as a political view but this lessens the importance of the relative role it plays in day-to-day life in Afghanistan because, “When religion is a way of life, it permeates all aspects of everyday social relations, and nothing is separate from it.”[56] Therefore in Afghanistan Islam permeates every aspect of society from cultural, social, economic, and political.[57]
Afghanistan was never a colony. So the Islamic identity is fused with a cultural identity. Barfield wrote, “Issues of identity politics and cultural practice that spark debate in other Islamic countries, which originated in their experience of a colonial past, mass education, urbanization, rapid economic changes, and mass mobilization through explicitly political parties, have had little resonance in Afghanistan.”[58] Indeed Barfield was in Afghanistan the first time living amongst nomads in the mid 1970’s only to return in 2002 twenty-five years later to find little had changed amongst these villages, nomads, and towns.[59] There is a very low level of literacy, along with an agrarian economy still in use today.[60] The very explicitly defined geography and early history of Afghanistan shows how the geography of this country plays a great factor in keeping it like a preserved Islamic portrait of what life was like before many of the Islamic countries were colonized.
Bibliography
Thomas Barfield, Afghanistan: A Cultural And Political History, (Princeton University Press: Princeton and Oxford, 1950).
Martin Evans, A Short History of Its People and Politics, (Curzon Press: United Kingdom, 2001).
[1] Martin Evans, A Short History of Its People and Politics, (Curzon Press: United Kingdom, 2001), p. 1.
