AFGHANISTAN

population: 32,738,376 (July 2008 est.)
ethnic groups: Pashtun 42%, Tajik 27%, Hazara 9%, Uzbek 9%, Aimak 4%, Turkmen 3%, Baloch 2%, other 4%
languages: Afghan Persian or Dari (official) 50%, Pashto (official) 35%, Turkic languages (primarily Uzbek and Turkmen) 11%, 30 minor languages (primarily Balochi and Pashai) 4%, much bilingualism
religion: Sunni Muslim 80%, Shia Muslim 19%, other 1%
literacy: 28.1% (male 43.6%, female 12.6%)
GDP composition: agriculture 38%, industry 24%, services 38%.
labor force, by sector: agriculture 80%, industry 10%, services 10% (2004 est.)


1747-1823: Ahmed Shah Durrani creates the Durrani Empire, after the end of Nadir Shah's reign over Persia. Expanded east, sacking Delhi in 1757 (where he agreed to leave the weakened Mughals in power "as long as Shah Alam II acknowledged Ahmad Shah's suzerainty over Punjab, Sindh, and Kashmir"). Later forced to confront the expanding powers of the Maratha Empire at the Third Battle of Panipat in 1761. "The victory at Panipat was the high point of Ahmad Shah's -- and Afghan -- power." Already, soon after, he was losing control of Punjab to the Sikhs--he took Amritsar, sacked Lahore in 1762 and massacred thousands of inhabitants, but could not subjugate the resistance in Punjab. In the North, as well, compelled to negotiate borders with the Uzbek Emir of Bukhara. After Ahmed Shah's death in 1772, the Empire fell apart--his successors failed to stitch together competing tribes, and by 1818 controlled only Kabul and surrounding areas.

1823-1839: The Barkazai Dynasty takes power after battling the Durrani Empire (Shuja Shah had assasinated the elder brother of Dost Muhammad Khan, triggering the feud). Dost Muhammad Khan rules from 1826-1839; initially receptive to British overtures, but following their entreaties to him to keep to himself and abandon hopes of retaking Peshawar from the Sikhs, he renews relations with the Russians.

1838-1842: Fearful that Tsarist moves (1813 Treaty of Gulistan, 1826 Treaty of Turkmanchai, and other advances) indicated that the Russians were preparing for an invasion of British India, via Afghanistan, the British launched the First Anglo-Afghan War--an attempt to impose a reliable puppet regime under the leadership of Shuja Shah (who had ruled the Durrani Empire till 1809, and tried to retake it from Dost Muhammad Khan in 1834--under the cover of this battle the Sikhs had taken Peshawar). But by 1842 they were forced to retreat--a retreat which ended in a complete massacre of the occupying forces (of roughly thirty thousand personnel, only one man escaped).

1842-1878: After these troops were expelled by Mohammad Akbar Khan, Afghanistan was ruled again by his father, Dost Mohammad Khan till 1863. After his death, his sons Sher Ali Khan and Mohammad Afzal Khan who feuded over the kingdom until Afzal's death in 1867. (Akbar Khan had died in1845, possibly poisoned by his father, who feared his ambitions).

1878-1880: Though the 1855 Treaty of Peshawar had cemented British support for Sher Ali Khan in Afghanistan (the British saw his emirate as a buffer state), Sher Ali Khan grew distrustful at the weakness of British support, which only went so far. Sher Ali Khan's 1878 refusal to accept a British diplomatic mission triggered the Second Anglo-Afghan war. In May 1879, Sher Ali Khan's successor and son Muhammad Yaqub Khan signed the Treaty of Gandamak with the British, relinquishing control of foreign affairs to the British (and ceding Quetta and other frontier areas--the British had already taken Baluchistan in 1859, leaving Afghanistan land-locked). Though the British more-or-less withdrew, further uprisings followed--though the were unsuccessful, Yaqub Khan was suspected of complicity, and thus replaced by his cousin Abdur Rahman Khan in 1880.

1880-1919: Abdur Rahman Khan answered the prayers of the British, respecting their diktats. He united the disparate tribes, as well as tried to "modernize" Afghanistan (his vizier, Mahmud Tarzi, was important in this process). Under his rule, the Durand Line was drawn in 1893. His son, Habibullah Khan, who peacefully succeeded him in 1901, then ruled till 1919. (In 1907, an Anglo-Russian Convention marked the end of "The Great Game").

1919-1929: After Habibullah Khan was assasinated on a hunting trip, his third son, Amanullah Khan took power. Amanullah, under the influence of Tarzi (who was his father-in-law), introduced further reforms (women's rights, educational rights, Western dress, etc.). However, to stem intrigue in his own court, he crossed the Durand Line in May 1919, which trigged the Third Anglo-Afghan War. After recovering from defeats in the initial skirmishes, the superior technology of the British told--indeed, this war saw the inaugural aerial bombardment of Afghanistan. The fighting concluded in three months, at which point the British dictated the terms of the Rawalpindi Agreement in August 1919. Amanullah eventually succumbed in 1929--after he abdicated, his brother was deposed by the Tajik Habibullah Kalani, who ruled from January to October.

1929-1973: Nadir Shah, who had served as Amanullah Khan's minister of war until he quit in protest at the reforms, toppled Habibullah Kalani in October (the Pashtun tribesmen were unwilling to submit to a Tajik king). He abolished most of Amanullah's reforms. After his assasination by a college student in 1933, his 19 yr-old son, Mohammad Zahir Shah took control (though Nadir Shah's three younger brothers formed an influential clique of advisers around Zahir Shah). Some limited steps towards political liberalization were made (a legislature, education for women, etc.). In 1953, power shifted away from the uncles to the younger generation of the family--Zahir Shah's cousin, Mohammad Daud Khan, became Prime Minister in 1953. He concentrated much of his energies on the issue of Pashtunistan, resulting in numerous skirmishes with Pakistan on the border in the 1950s and 1960s (in 1962, Daud sent Afghan troops into Bajaur). He resigned, however, in 1963--the King had requested his resignation due to the deleterious effects of his Pashtunistan policies. In 1964, a new, democratic constitution was passed--relatively fair elections were held in 1965 and 1969, though the country could not yet be said to be a functioning democracy, in any sense (still closer to an absolute monarchy than a constitutional one).

1973-1978: In 1973, Daud took advantage of the King's absence to launch a bloodless coup. His rule was brutish, marked by harsh repression of dissident politics (he replaced Zahir Shah's constitutional set-up with a largely nominated loya jirga; in 1977, a presidential, one-party system was approved by said assembly). Though he didn't pursue the issue of Pashtunistan, he distanced himself from the USSR ("At first Daoud’s dictatorship leaned towards the Soviet Union in foreign policy and the Communists supported him. By early 1978, though, Daoud was swinging back towards the US and he had the main Communist leaders arrested.")

1978-1979: The PDPA, which had been founded in 1965 by Nur Mohammad Taraki, Hafizullah Amin, and Babrak Karmal, had been marred by a serious internal schism: Taraki and the Khalq faction represented the more radical arm, committed to a Marxist-Leninst vision of revolution carried out by educated cadres, whereas Karmal and the Parcham faction believed that the underdeveloped character of Afghanistan meant that the emphasis should instead be on building a federation of national and democratic forces. Though they split in the late 60s, the USSR compelled them to reconcile in 1977. In April 1978 (the Saur revolution), the PDPA organized a coup, led by Hafizullah Amin--Daud and most of his family was killed in the uprising. While in power, they were ambitiously secular, and moved to waive farmers' debts and nationalize agricultural resources. Nonetheless, "[though they] had support in the cities [they had] very little in the countryside, where 90 percent of Afghans lived," and soon confronted peasant rebellions led by village mullahs. It was brutal in repressing this opposition (including opposition led by the soon-to-be-purged Parcham faction)--thousands of political prisoners were held and executed in the months leading up to the Soviet invasion in 1979. In September 1979, Amin took over after a palace shootout in which Taraki was killed. (There was also, of course, the small matter of pre-emptive American funding for mujahideen groups, admitted later by Brzezinski.)

(A different view, articulated by Parenti: "“It was a totally indigenous happening. Not even the CIA blamed the USSR for it,” writes John Ryan, a retired professor at the University of Winnipeg, who was conducting an agricultural research project in Afghanistan at about that time. The Taraki government proceeded to legalize labor unions, and set up a minimum wage, a progressive income tax, a literacy campaign, and programs that gave ordinary people greater access to health care, housing, and public sanitation. Fledgling peasant cooperatives were started and price reductions on some key foods were imposed.")

1979-1992: The USSR invaded in December 1979 to prop up the teetering, besieged government (only after months of PDPA requests had gone largely unheeded). There was some suspsicion that Amin was untrustworthy (even that he was a CIA agent!). Kamral was installed as President, the Khalq faction was purged. "The mullahs had been saying that the Communists were Russian puppets. Now everyone could see that this was true." The phases of the Russian Operation:

• Decmeber 1979-February 1980: Occupation of major urban centers, military bases, strategic installations.
  
• March 1980-April 1985: "The Soviet armed forces held the cities and patrolled the highways with tanks. But in the countryside they came under sustained attack. Here their main tactics were land mines, helicopter gunships, bombers and free fire zones." The resistance was waging a guerilla war, and winning.
  
• April 1985-January 1987: Gorbachev came to power in Moscow, declared his impatience with the war. Gradually the USSR shifted the burden of fighting onto the Afghan army.
• January 1987-February 1989: A general peaceful withdrawal of Soviet troops, leaving behind a strained DRA to fight the mujahideen.

In 1986, Mohammad Najibullah was elected President, in place of Kamral. Yet, despite a new constitution and a policy of national reconciliation, insurgents did not negotiate with the new government and the war raged on. Though the Soviets withdrew, they supported Najibullah until the fall of the USSR in 1991.

1992-1996: As a result of the war, "about two thirds of the population were killed, wounded or forced to flee." In 1992, mujahideen entered Kabul, and Najibullah was forced to flee--he sought sanctuary in the UN compound. A war for Kabul ensued, which brutalized the capital: "Kabul had survived the Soviet occupation without being bombed. Now the city was flattened as competing Islamist parties shelled the working class areas. Kabul looked like a German or Japanese city after the Second World War."

1996-2001: The Taliban won the war for Kabul in 1996, after having been patronized by the ISI beginning in 1994. "The soldiers were boys from the religious schools in the Afghan refugee camps in Pakistan. Taliban simply means “the students”. The boys had spent most of their lives not in traditional villages but in that very 20th century institution, the refugee camp." ("The Taliban were driven to emphasise their Islamic credentials partly because everyone knew they were in fact clients of the Pakistani and American governments. Their public executions in football stadiums were barbaric but also welcome to many Afghans. The Taliban enforced law and order, they were more honest than the commanders and people hoped for security. Their odd and un-Afghan Islam went too far for most people. So they had little passionate support but a good deal of toleration in Pushtun areas from people who felt they were better than the alternatives.") Furthermore, "the central ideology of the Taliban was Pushtun chauvinism. The Taliban were exclusively Pushtun. Since the 1920s Afghan politics had always been polarised on religious and class grounds. The Communists, for instance, had always included Pushtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and people from other groups, and so had the Islamists. The various factions, too, had been mixed. Ethnicity was not trivial, but it was not the main basis of politics. Now that Communist and Islamist politics had betrayed people, ethnicity was all that was left for political organising."

2001-2009: America invades and occupies Afghanistan in October 2001, with the assistance of NATO, deposing the Taliban. Karzai is installed in December 2001: "He was an American client but not simply a puppet. His government relied on three real sources of power. One was the US army. The other was the Northern Alliance, who were willing to put up with the Americans but expected them to leave eventually. The third was a certain degree of popular support in Pushtun areas... The explanation for the lack of resistance is simple. Afghans had endured 23 years of war. That meant death but also desperate insecurity, a life of all against all. There was little passionate support for the Taliban or the Islamists. People were willing to settle for almost anything not to live in perpetual fear." In 2002, a loya jirga affirms Karzai as interim president. In 2003, a constitutional loya jirga is convened, which ratifies a new constitution in January 2004. In elections held in October 2004, Karzai wins and becomes President ("The elections in 2004 were a clear demonstration of the willingness to give peace a chance. The Americans forbade any credible candidate from running against Karzai for president. But Afghans turned out in very large numbers to vote for him and for parliamentary representatives.") Legislative elections are held in September 2005. The national assembly sits in December 2005, for the first time in 32 years. Despite all this, of course, the same patchwork of warlords and criminals that prevailed earlier are reported to retain effective control over the country--via these democratic institutions. As of 2007, significant resistance is reported to have re-emerged (called the Taliban, though this is probably more provocative than accurate; at the very least, the resistance is indigenous and largely a result of the failures of the present administration)--with very recent reports suggesting they control wide swathes of the country. President Obama, of course, has promised to commit more troops in order to win the "good war." Perhaps the abiding lesson, though, is that "Afghanistan is one of the few places in the world where progressives and the left have consistently lined up with brutal imperial mass murder. That is why the right wing is strong in Afghanistan." (Again, the Parenti view: "One might agree with John Ryan who argued that if Washington had left the Marxist Taraki government alone back in 1979, “there would have been no army of mujahideen, no Soviet intervention, no war that destroyed Afghanistan, no Osama bin Laden, and no September 11 tragedy.” But it would be asking too much for Washington to leave unmolested a progressive leftist government that was organizing the social capital around collective public needs rather than private accumulation.")