Afghanistan
Source Database: Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East
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Central Asian country, formerly the Republic of Afghanistan, was renamed the Islamic State of Afghanistan in April 1992.
According to the only official census (allegedly taken in 1979, a year of expanding civil war), Afghanistan's total population slightly exceeds 15.5 million. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated Afghanistan's population figures for 1986/87 to be 16.7 million--with 11 million living in Afghanistan and 5.7 million refugees (2.4 million in Iran, 3.2 million in Pakistan, and 0.1 million elsewhere), the world's largest refugee population.
In 1978, pro-Soviet leftists took power in a violent coup and concluded an economic and military treaty with the former Soviet Union. Late in December 1979, Soviet troops moved into Kabul, the capital, fanning out into the countryside to fight the Islamist rebels (Mojahedin). This guerrilla warfare lasted until a U.N.-mediated withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1988/89. After the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991), the communist regime in Kabul fell (April 1992), but the new Islamic government that took over is yet to consolidate its power due to continued factional infighting.
Geography. Afghanistan is landlocked, comprising some 251,773 square miles (647,500 sq km). It shares borders with Iran, Pakistan, the Xinjiang province of China, and the newly independent successor Central Asian states of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Kabul remains Afghanistan's capital and its largest city, with more than 1.5 million, including internal refugees. Cities of 50,000 to 200,000 people include Qandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad, and Kunduz.
The Hindu Kush Mountains (rising to 24,000 feet [7,315 m]) stretch diagonally from the northeast, through the center, to the Herat region in the west, dominating the country's topography, ecology, and economy. Deep narrow valleys, many of them impenetrable, cover much of the central, northeastern, eastern, and south-central areas, surrounded by the fertile Turkistan plain and foothills in the north and northwest, the Herat-Farah lowlands, the Sistan basin and Helmand valley in the west, and the deserts of the southwest. Four major river systems drain the Hindu Kush--the Amu Darya (Oxus) drains the northern slopes and marks much of the former Afghan--Soviet border; the Hari Rud drains the northwest; the Helmand-Arghandab, the southwest; and the Kabul, the east. Communications and road systems between these valleys are poor, although a few difficult passes connect them with Central Asia and the subcontinent of India. Temperatures and the amount and form of precipitation are directly dependent on altitude. Summers are very hot and dry, the temperatures reaching 120°F (49° C) in the desert south and southwest. Winters are bitterly cold, the temperatures falling to -15°F (-26° C), with heavy snow cover in the mountains. Precipitation is low, two to six inches (50-150 mm) in the south and southwest, and twelve to fourteen inches (300-350 mm) in the north.
Economy. Afghanistan has thirty provinces (wilayat), divided into districts (woluswali) and subdistricts (alaqadari). According to government figures, the per-capita income in 1986/87 was 160 U.S. dollars. Although rich in natural resources, mineral extractions benefit investors or remain undeveloped. For example, in 1985/86, of the annual production of natural gas (estimated reserves of over 100,000 million cubic meters), 97 percent was exported to the Soviet Union at a rate of 2.6 billion cubic meters a year. Deposits of petroleum, coal, copper, high-grade iron ore, talc, barite, sulphur, lead, zinc, salt, lapis lazuli and other semiprecious and precious gemstones exist; some are extracted.
Before 1978, 85 percent of the population lived in 22,000 villages; they farmed or were Nomads. Their major subsistence crops are wheat, maize, barley, and rice; major cash crops are cotton, sugar beet, oilseeds, fruits, nuts, and vegetables. Sheep (including Karakul/Persian lamb), goats, and cattle are the main sources of milk, meat, wool, hides, and pelts, while camels, horses, and donkeys serve as means of transportation in the difficult terrain. Livestock become the vital buffer during poor harvests. Since 1978, the civil war has seriously damaged more than half the villages and much of the agriculture infrastructure. Reports show that 1987 wheat production was reduced by 50 percent, sheep and goats to 30 percent, and cattle to 52 percent of 1978 levels.
Industries include rugs, carpets, and textiles, chemical fertilizers, sugar, plastics, leather goods, soap, cement, natural gas, oil, coal, and hydroelectric power. Government figures for 1986/87 show industrial production accounted for 23.87 percent of gross domestic product. Exports, primarily to the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, India, and Pakistan, included natural gas, cotton, livestock products, rugs, medicinal herbs, fruits, and nuts, with reported earnings in 1988 of 512 million U.S. dollars. Imports of wheat, foods, textiles, vehicles, machinery, and petroleum products, at a cost of 996 million U.S. dollars in 1988, came mostly from the Soviet Union and Japan.
Language and Ethnic Groups. Two major ethnolinguistic communities, Indo-Iranian and Turko-Mongol, live in Afghanistan. The Indo-Iranians include the dominant Pakhtu-speaking Pakhtun (or Pashtun, traditionally estimated at 45-50%); the Afghan-Persian or Dari-speaking Tajik (25-30%); and minority Nuristani, Gujar, Baluch, Wakhi, Sheghni, and Zebaki. The Hazara, who have a Mongol appearance, speak Hazaragi, a Persian dialect, and are estimated at 12 to 15 percent of the population. The Turkic speakers include the Uzbeks (about 10%), Turkmen, Kazakh, and Kirghiz. Persian (most widely spoken) and Pakhtu are the official government languages. Islam is the religion of more than 99 percent of Afghans--about 80 percent are hanafi Sunni and about 20 percent Shi'a (mostly Imami and some Isma'ili). Also present are very small numbers of Hindus, Sikhs, Jews, and Christians.
Education. Primary education, grades one through eight, is compulsory for ages seven to fifteen. Secondary school continues for an additional four years (voluntary). Most schools in rural areas were destroyed during the early years of the civil war. Resistance organizations and international aid agencies have, in recent years, tried to reestablish schools in the liberated areas. Some poorly equipped and poorly run schools for Afghan refugee children in host countries also exist. Since 1979, the execution, imprisonment, and departure of many teachers badly disrupted institutions of higher education. In 1987, an estimated fifteen thousand Afghans received training and education in the Soviet Union. In 1988, the Kabul government claimed eight vocational colleges, fifteen technical colleges, and five universities in operation. Losses of previously trained manpower, along with the damage to educational, health-care, and cultural facilities and the lack of training opportunities for the new generation of Afghans during the 1980s and 1990s leave prospects for the future reconstruction of Afghanistan extremely challenging.
Government. On the basis of the 1987 constitution, the government structure consists of a bicameral legislature called the Melli Shura. It consists of a 192-member Sena (Senate) and a 234-member Wolusi Jirga (House of Representative). Members are elected by the Watan (PDPA) party, except for a few members of the Sena and fifty members of the Wolusi Jirga reserved for opposition parties. The president is elected for a seven-year term by the majority vote of a Loya Jirga (Grand Assembly) as head of the executive branch--who appoints the prime minister, who in turn appoints the cabinet (the council of ministers). The judicial branch is headed by the supreme court.
History. The emergence of Afghanistan in 1747 as a separate political entity is credited to Ahmad Shah Durrani, who made the city of Qandahar his capital and created a great empire stretching from Khurasan to Kashmir and Punjab; and from the Oxus river (Amu Darya) to the Indian Ocean. His son Timur Shah (1773-1793) shifted the capital to Kabul and held his patrimony together. By the turn of the nineteenth century, the Durrani empire had declined because of fraternal feuds over royal succession. Between 1800 and 1880, Afghanistan became a battleground during the rivalry between Britain and Russia for control of Central Asia. Afghanistan emerged as a buffer state, with its present boundaries demarcated entirely by Britain and Russia--and with Britain in control of Afghanistan's foreign affairs. The Afghan wars fought against the British by Dost Mohammad Barakzai, his son, and his grandson (1838-1842; 1878-1880) had ended in defeat.
With British military and financial help, a member of the Barakzai Pakhtun clan--Emir Abd al-Rahman, the so-called Iron Emir--consolidated direct central government rule by brutally suppressing tribal and rural leaders to lay the foundation of a modern state (1880-1901). His son, Habibollah Khan, who ruled from 1901 to 1919, relaxed some of the harsher measures of the previous rule and in 1903 established the first modern school, Habibia. Later, the first significant newspaper, Siraj al-Akhbar, was published in Kabul (1911-1918). When Habi-bullah was assassinated, his son Amanollah took the title of king (1919-1929) and declared Afghanistan's independence from Britain, which was granted after a brief war in 1919 (see Rawalpindi, Treaty of). King Amanullah, impressed by the secular sociopolitical experiments of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in the new Republic of Turkey, launched a series of secular, liberal constitutional reforms and modernization programs, which led to a rebellion--justified as jihad (religious war) against his rule--forcing his abdication. After nine months of rule by a non-Pashtun (Emir Habibullah II), a member of the Musahiban family of the Barakzai clan, Muhammad Nadir (1929-1933), reclaimed the monarchy. Following Nadir's assassination, his son of nineteen, Mohammad Zahir (1933-1973), became king.
From 1933 to 1963, Zahir reigned while two of his uncles and a cousin ruled as prime ministers. Concerned primarily with preserving their family's position, the Musahiban adopted a cautious approach toward modernization, with highly autocratic domestic and xenophobic foreign policies until about 1935. During Sardar (Prince) Muhammad Daud's term as prime minister (1953-1963), with substantial military and economic aid, initially from the Soviet Union and later from the West, a series of five-year modernization plans was begun, focusing on the expansion of educational and communications systems. In 1963, Daud resigned because of disagreements over his hostile policies toward Pakistan and his favoring of greater dependence on the Soviet Union. King Zahir then appointed Dr. Muhammad Yusuf, a commoner, as prime minister.
King Zahir's last decade (1963-1973) was a period of experimentation in democracy, which failed-- mostly due to his reluctance to sign legislation legalizing political parties and his unwillingness to curb interference in democratic processes by his family and friends. The Communist party and Islamist-opposition movements were formed during this period; they agitated against both the government and each other. In July 1973, Daud, the former prime minister (and king's cousin and brother-in-law), overthrew the monarchy with assistance from the pro-Soviet Parcham wing of the Communist party in a military coup, to become the president of the Republic of Afghanistan (1973-1978). Daud returned autocratic rule and persecuted his perceived enemies, especially members of the Islamist movements. He relied heavily on his old networks and began to distance himself from the pro-Soviet communists whom he had protected and nurtured. In an environment of growing discontent, in April 1978, a communist coup ousted and killed Daud.
Nur Muhammad Taraki, the head of the People's Democratic party of Afghanistan (PDPA), was installed as president of the revolutionary council and prime minister (1978/79). He renamed the country the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA), abolished the constitution, and banned all opposition movements. Less than two months later, the coalition of two warring factions of PDPA--Khalq (People) and Parcham (Banner)--that had joined to gain power then fell apart. Khalq monopolized all power, offering Parcham leaders ambassadorial posts overseas, and began purging Parcham members from military and civilian posts. Supported by the Soviets, Taraki attempted to create a Marxist state, but by the spring of 1979 a nationwide rebellion began--led by Islamist-opposition groups and Muslim religious leaders. Brutal retaliation by government in rural areas forced the flight of thousands of refugees to Iran and Pakistan. In September 1979, Hafizullah Amin, then deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs and an advocate of hardline communist policies, suspecting a plot against himself, killed President Taraki and assumed Taraki's duties. During Christmas 1979, the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan with eighty thousand troops. They killed Hafizullah Amin and installed Babrak Karmal, leader of the Parcham, as the new head of state. Soviet intervention intensified factionalism between the Parcham and Khalq parties, which resulted in riots and strikes in the major cities. It turned anticommunist rebellions into a jihad for the cause of Islam and national liberation.
From 1980 to 1986, Karmal tried but failed to consolidate his power, reduce factional strife, and promote national unity. In 1986, Dr. Najibullah Ahmadzai, the former head of the state security forces (KHAD) and a member of Parcham, assumed power, relieving Karmal of all party and government duties. He adopted a shrewd policy of unilateral cease-fires, offers of negotiation and power sharing with his opponents, and the formation of a coalition government of national unity. He also adopted a new constitution in 1987, allowing the formation of a multiparty political system and a bicameral legislature. He won some support from his internal leftist opponent, but the seven-party alliance of mojahedin (Islamic Unity of Afghan Mojahedin) remained defiant, calling for unconditional Soviet withdrawal and the abolition of communist rule.
The failure of a Soviet military victory and the ever increasing outside military and financial support from the mojahedin (from 1984 to 1988) led to the signing of the Geneva accords on April 14, 1988, under United Nations auspices. The accords called for the withdrawal of 120,000 Soviet troops, which was completed on February 15, 1989. After Soviet troop withdrawal, the continuing civil war in Afghanistan was overshadowed by the events of the democratization of Eastern Europe (1989) and what became the former Soviet Union (1991). The collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of their military and financial support to Dr. Najibullah's communist government, and the desertion of his militia forces to the Islamist resistance all resulted in Najibullah's ouster from power on April 16, 1992. A coalition of Islamist forces from northern Afghanistan led by Commander Ahmad Shah Mas'ud surrounded Kabul. In Peshawar, a fifty-member Interim Council of the Islamist resistance groups was formed and dispatched to assume power in Kabul from the communists. Following two days (April 26-27, 1992) of factional fighting that resulted in dislodging Golbud-din Hekmatyar's forces from Kabul, Sebghatullah Mujaddedi, the president of the Interim Council--later called Shura-i qiyadi (Leadership Council)--took power on April 28, 1992, as the Head of the Islamic State of Afghanistan for a period of two months. Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani succeeded him as the interim president of the country on June 28, 1992, for four months. During his tenure Rab-bani and the Leadership Council were to organize and convene the Shura-i Hall wa Aqd or the Loya Jirgah (the Council of Resolution and Settlement or the Grand National Assembly) representing all the peoples of Afghanistan, including those living in exile, to choose the next president for a term of eighteen months. The new president would then oversee the drafting of a new constitution and the first general election.
In opposition to Rabbani's government, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's forces launched a rocket attack in late August 1992 destroying much of Kabul. Other forms of factional fighting along sectarian, ethnic, and regional lines have plagued the new Islamist regime, seriously hampering repatriation of the refugees, reconstruction, and the return of law and order in the warravaged country. At the end of December 1992, a shura (assembly) of some 1,335 members convened and elected the sole candidate, Burhanuddin Rabbani, the interim president for two years. Five of the nine Islamist factions reportedly boycotted the assembly, disputing the validity of Rabbani's election. The possibility of all-out civil war looms large while the suffering of millions of ordinary Afghans continues.
-- Shahrani, M. Nazif
FURTHER READINGSBibliography
- Arnold, Anthony. Afghanistan's Two-Party Communism: Parcham and Khalq. Stanford, Calif., 1983.
- Bradsher, Henry S. Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. Durham, N.C., 1985.
- Dupree, Louis. Afghanistan. Princeton, N.J., 1980.
- Gregorian, Vartan. The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan: Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880-1946. Stanford, Calif., 1969.
- Roy, Olivier. Islam and Resistance in Afghanistan, 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass., 1991.
- Shahrani, M. Nazif, and Robert L. Canfield, eds. Revolutions & Rebellions in Afghanistan: Anthropological Perspectives. Berkeley, Calif., 1984.
Source Citation: "Afghanistan." Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East. 4 Vols. Macmillan Reference USA, 1996. Reproduced in History Resource Center. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/HistRC/
Document Number: BT2355200018
