Afghanistan

G

Social Services

Near the end of Soviet involvement in Afghanistan, more than 100 national government organizations and private volunteer relief agencies from more than 20 countries were bringing relief and assistance to Afghans, both inside the country and outside to the refugee population. The government maintained hospitals to raise the level of public health. Mass vaccinations eliminated smallpox and greatly reduced typhoid fever. Government campaigns also greatly reduced the incidence of malaria. In the 1990s, however, civil war and extreme poverty prohibited improvements in the country’s welfare system.

After the Soviets departed in 1989, life in Afghanistan became desperate. In 1993 there was on average only 1 physician for every 7,000 Afghans. In the mid-1990s there was only 1 functioning hospital for every 500,000 people in some areas. Medical supplies were in short supply because of frequent hijacking of relief convoys. Trachoma (a contagious eye disease that can result in blindness) and dysentery remained widespread, and skin diseases were rampant. Tuberculosis reached epidemic levels with surveys showing 80 percent of families with at least one member sick. Large numbers of people sustained injuries, especially lost limbs, during the war. By the mid-1990s the Red Crescent Society (the equivalent of Red Cross in Muslim countries) had opened a clinic in Kandahār. Other humanitarian relief agencies, including the United Nations World Food Program (UNWFP), subsequently began efforts to help feed Afghanistan’s starving population. Immediately after the Taliban regime was ousted in late 2001, the UNWFP stepped up its efforts to deliver food to the population, particularly in remote areas that the relief agencies had been denied access to by the Taliban. Such humanitarian assistance remained crucial through the country’s postwar reconstruction because so many Afghan people had been without enough food, adequate shelter, or medical care for so long.

H

Defense

Prior to the Soviet-Afghan War, the government of Afghanistan had long relied on the USSR for military equipment and advisers. In 1978 the Afghan army numbered 110,000 men, but desertions reduced it to 50,000 by 1986. Many deserters joined the mujahideen in fighting a guerrilla war against the Soviet occupation until 1989. During the subsequent civil war, elements of the former army, national guard, border guard, national police, and ethnic militias were broken up among the various mujahideen factions. Thereafter, mujahideen commanders maintained control over their own private militias, which enabled them to hold power over most of the country outside Kābul.

In early 2002 Kofi Annan, secretary general of the United Nations, and Hamid Karzai, then the interim leader of Afghanistan, discussed the urgent need to form a well-trained and disciplined Afghan police force and army. In 2003 U.S. and French forces began training recruits for a new multiethnic Afghan National Army (ANA). Karzai ordered all private militias to disarm and merge into the ANA to help bring a goal of 70,000 soldiers into the national army. Many regional commanders resisted disbanding their private militias, however, and the disarmament and army-building process progressed slowly.

---

---

VII

History

Excavation of prehistoric sites suggests that early humans lived in northern Afghanistan at least 50,000 years ago and that farming communities in Afghanistan were among the earliest in the world. After 2000 bc successive waves of people from Central Asia moved into the area. Since many of these settlers were Aryans (speakers of the parent language of the Indo-European languages), a people who also migrated to Persia (now Iran) and India in prehistoric times, the area was called Aryana, or Land of the Aryans.

By the middle of the 6th century bc the Persian Empire of the Achaemenid dynasty controlled the region of Aryana. About 330 bc, Alexander the Great defeated the last Achaemenid ruler and made his way to the eastern limits of Aryana and beyond. After his death in 323 bc several kingdoms fought for control of his Asian empire. These kingdoms included Seleucids, Bactria, and the Indian Mauryan Empire.

A

Buddhist Period

About the 1st century ad the Kushans, a central Asian people, won control of Aryana. Buddhism was the dominant religion from the 3rd century to the 8th century ad. Ruins of many monasteries and stupas, or reliquary mounds (structures where sacred relics are kept or displayed), from that period still remain. They line what was once a great Buddhist pilgrimage road from India to Balkh, in northern Afghanistan, and on into Central Asia.

Kushan power was destroyed at the end of the 4th century ad by a Turkic people of central Asian origin called the White Huns or Ephthalites. After the Ephthalites, the area was divided among several kingdoms, some Buddhist, some Hindu.

B

Islamic Period

In the 7th century ad Arab armies carried the new religion of Islam to Afghanistan. The western provinces of Herāt and Sistan came under Arab rule, but the people of these provinces revolted and returned to their old beliefs as soon as the Arab armies passed. In the 10th century Muslim rulers called Samanids, from Bukhara in what is now Uzbekistan, extended their influence into the Afghan area. A Samanid established a dynasty in Ghaznī called the Ghaznavids. The greatest Ghaznavid king, Mahmud, who ruled from 998 to 1030, established Islam throughout the area of Afghanistan. He led many military expeditions into India. Ghaznī became a center of literature and the arts.

The Ghaznavid state grew weaker under Mahmud’s descendants and gave way in the middle of the 12th century to the Ghurid kingdom, which arose in Ghur, in the west central region of present-day Afghanistan. The Ghurids in turn were routed early in the 13th century by the Khwarizm Shahs, another central Asian dynasty. They were swept away in about 1220 by the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan, who devastated the land.

Near the end of the 14th century the central Asian military leader Tamerlane (Timur Lang) conquered the region of Afghanistan and moved on into India. His sons and grandsons, the Timurids, could not hold Tamerlane’s empire together. However, they ruled most of present-day Afghanistan from Herāt.

The period from the Ghurid through the Timurid dynasty produced fine Islamic architectural monuments. Many of these mosques, shrines, and minarets still stand in Herāt, Qal‘eh-ye Bost, Ghaznī, and Mazār-e Sharīf. An important school of miniature painting flourished at Herāt in the 15th century.

A descendant of Tamerlane on his father’s side and Genghis Khan on his mother’s side, Babur (Zahiruddin Muhammad) took Kābul in October 1504 and then moved on to India, where he established the Mughal Empire.

Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, Afghanistan was fought over by the rulers of the Mughal Empire, centered in India, and those of the Safavid dynasty, in Persia. Usually the Mughals held Kābul and the Persians held Herāt, with Kandahār frequently changing hands. The Pashtun tribes increased their power, but they failed to win independence.

	More from Encarta
	•  7 tips for funding an online degree •  How to succeed in the fashion industry without being a top designer •  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain