By the 1st millennium BC. e. on the territory of modern Afghanistan, several independent cultural and historical regions (proto-states) have already formed – Arachosia, Drangiana (later Seistan), Areya, Bactria, Margiana, Gandhara. In the 6th c. BC. they became part of the Persian state of the Achaemenids, and then were subjugated in the 4th century. BC.… Read More »
Based on map by DigoPaul, Afghanistan is a country that today is primarily associated with war, the Taliban, hardship and misery. But that was not always so. The country was once rich in cultural diversity and Afghanistan also has a lot to offer in terms of landscape. Magnificent mountains and fresh mountain air – especially… Read More »
Afghanistan The gateway to Central Asia Crossroads between East and West, Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, where it is very difficult to find the means to survive. This is partly due to the adverse environmental, social and economic conditions, but above all to the many wars that have involved the… Read More »
The territory included in the borders of the Afghan state was occupied in ancient times by īrānic peoples; but subsequent immigrations have constituted a very complex ethnic framework, in which the îrānic elements properly called are alongside Indo-Aryan and Turkish-Mongolian elements. The Tāgīk (Tajiks), the Qizilbāsh and the Afghāni proper belong to the ī r… Read More »
The 1993 Islāmabād agreement, by which G. Hekmatyar (leader of the party of Islam) became prime minister, failed to stabilize the situation. In the stalemate a new armed group emerged, known by the name of Ṭālibān (from the Arabic ṭālib ‘student’), made up of young Afghans of Pashtūn origin, coming from the Islamic schools of… Read More »
The political structure provisionally given to the country derived from the procedures for concluding these operations: essentially entrusted to an ad interim head of state, residing in Kābul and protected by an international military force under a UN mandate, the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), and indirectly controlled by a group of ‘strongmen’ with their… Read More »
One of the first effects of the changed attitude on the part of the Soviet Union had been the replacement of the top of the Afghan government in Karmal by Mohammed Najibullah (May 1986), who attempted to initiate a policy of national reconciliation and to broaden popular support for the government.. A new Constitution, promulgated… Read More »
Due to its strategic position, as the gateway to India, the new Afghan state greatly interested Great Britain, which cared to prevent a rival power from settling there. In 1809 the first Anglo-Afghan treaty was stipulated, aimed at preventing a possible French or Persian invasion of India. The subsequent expansion of the influence of Russia,… Read More »
In the first historical times the present territory of Afghanistan, conquered by Cyrus, fell under Persian control: the inscription of Darius in Bisutun recalls, among the oriental satrapies of the Achaemenid empire, Bactria and Gandhara. In 329 BC Alexander, in the footsteps of Darius, reconquered the Afghan provinces which had, in the meantime, recovered independence.… Read More »
The tightening of the Taliban’s position vis-à-vis the staff of Western humanitarian organizations – both UN agencies and other independent organizations – that took place during 2001 is just one more element in this process. Relations between the Taliban and the international community began to deteriorate in 1998, when the United States reacted to the… Read More »
The Islamic Movement of the Taliban (in Pashto language: De talebano islami ghurdzang or De talebano islami tehrik) is so called because of the origin of all its most important leaders and most of its base militants from the madrasas, the religious schools of the Pakistan and the peripheral areas of Afghanistan. Taleban is the… Read More »
The Taliban, the Muslim fundamentalists who control 90% of Afghanistan, announce that they have completed the demolition of the two giant Buddha statues located in the Bamiyan valley and dating back, in all probability, to the 3rd and 5th centuries AD The iconoclastic fury of the Taliban was unleashed by an edict of Mullah Mohammad… Read More »
Destruction of the Buddhas “Only God Almighty is worthy of being worshiped, nobody else and nothing else.” Thus read an edict, a fatwa, of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the official name of the Taliban state, issued on February 26, 2001 and signed by Mullah Mohammad Omar al Mujahed, his supreme guide, also called Amir-ul-Mumenin… Read More »
The withdrawal of Soviet troops from the Afghanistan, completed in February 1989, and the gradual reduction of US support for the Islamic guerrillas did not in any way facilitate the return to a normal situation in a country ravaged by civil war. The pro-Soviet regime of M. Najibullah failed in its attempt to implement a… Read More »
According to the census of June 1979, the population of the Afghanistan it was 13,051,358 residents, excluding nomads (estimated at around two and a half million people); official 1987 estimates credited the combined figure of 18.6 million. Refugees who have taken refuge abroad and have not yet returned must be deducted from this figure. Their… Read More »
On December 27, 1979, Soviet troops invaded the Afghanistan Amin was deposed and killed, and was replaced by B. Karmal, leader of the Parcham faction . The governments of Western and Islamic countries reacted with official positions: from the American president J. Carter to the regime of the ayatollah Khomeini, to that of General Zia-ul-Haq’s… Read More »
The second political orientation, also made up of various camps, referred to the same intellectual and rationalist principles and appealed to the tradition of the Prophet and the Šarya (Islamic law), denying much of the tradition that had emerged from history. Religion tended to be ideologized (hence the use of the term Islam), emphasizing the… Read More »
On the international level, during 1988, two events changed the military and political situation to the detriment of the Mujahideen: the mysterious “ plane crash ” of August 17, in which Pakistani president Zia-ul-Haq was killed, and the election to the American presidency of G. Bush, with a less ideological attitude than Reagan. While on… Read More »
According to very recent estimates, the population of the Afghanistan it has 18,750,000 residents, on an area of 649,969 km 2 ; the average density is therefore 28.8 residents / km 2, but the population, over 80% dedicated to agricultural and pastoral activities, is concentrated above all in the less arid valleys and in urban… Read More »
Research in the field of Islamic archeology began with a prospection by J. Hackin in 1936 in the Afghan Sīstān during which important remains belonging to buildings and cities partially destroyed by the invasion of Tamerlane in 1384 were reported. on older foundations prior to the Arab invasion. Particularly notable are the ruins of Tar-o… Read More »
Our knowledge for the Hellenistic period is very scarce. Only recently (1958) did we have a very important proof of the vitality of the Greek element that followed Alexander’s army in Afghanistan with the discovery of a Greek-Aramaic bilingual edict of Aśoka near Qandahār. The inscription then allows us to locate almost with certainty one… Read More »
Afghan archeology is still very little known due to the vastness of the territories still imperfectly known and the complexity of the problems it presents. The most valid contribution to his knowledge was brought by the French archaeological mission which began its work under the guidance of the great Alfred Foucher, in 1922, which was… Read More »
According to recent estimates the Afghanistan it has a population of about 12 million, almost a fifth of which belong to nomadic tribes. In the last decade, the economic conditions of the Afghanistan have slightly improved, thanks to the financial aid granted by the USA (53.5 million dollars from 1949 to 1956) and the USSR… Read More »
From the beginning of 1929 the reformer king Amānullāh found himself facing the revolt of misoneist elements, encouraged by the class of religious leaders and led by a man of the people, Bačiah-i Saqqā, who became the emir Ḥabībullāh. The fates were uncertain. At the end of February 1929, the future ruler, Moḥammed Nādir, arrived… Read More »
The first news spread in Western culture about Afghānistān dates back to over twenty-two centuries ago, after Alexander of Macedon had traveled in every direction the country and the neighboring districts for almost four years (330-327 BC). Arrived there from the Persian territories to the SE. of the Caspian, descended from the Arius valley (today… Read More »
The rivers of Afghānistān flow into the three basins of the Indus, the Helmand and the mū Daryā. The region from which the main ones depart is in the Kōh-i Bābā; the watershed between the non-drainage region and the peripheral one proceeds along the crest of the Hindū Kush, passes W on the Kōh-i Bābā,… Read More »
Communications. – The Russian railway of Turkestān reaches as far as Termez, and the Samarkand-Krasnovodsk railway has a branch from Merw to the border post of Kushinski, connected to Merw by the telegraph; in India the north-western railway reaches New Ciāman, within the Afghan border. A line of about 400 km would be enough. through… Read More »
Muslim state of Anterior Asia. The name Afgh ā nist ā n (seat of the Afgh ā n) does not correspond to the ethnographic conditions (there are numerous non-Afghan populations within the borders, and many Afghan tribes outside), and has only been in use since the middle of the century. XVIII, when the supremacy of… Read More »
His loyalty to England during the European war made us forget that, in the early years, Ḥabīb Ullāh’s relations with India were strained, following the protection that the emir, bigoted, granted to religious leaders of the frontier, arousing troubles, and also a too large import of German artillery through India. Only in 1905 was a… Read More »
Second AFGH war ā na. – Three English armies invaded Afghānistān; Shēr ‛Alī, abandoned by the Russians, died; his son Ya ‛qūb Khān, recognized by the English, gave them tracts of territory near Bōlān and Kuram, and concluded the treaty of Gandamak, with which he entrusted all his foreign relations to England, received guarantees of… Read More »