Gathering Strength:. Peggy Kelsey
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mid-1700s, Ahmad Shah Durrani, aka Ahmad Shah Abdali, Ahmad Shah Baba, and the "Father of Afghanistan," gave birth to his country by conquering cities from Mashhad (in present day Iran) to Herat to Kabul, and down to Lahore (Pakistan) and Delhi (India). He used the fortunes he amassed to bind rival chiefs to his cause by giving them large shares of land and booty. His country became known as Yagestan, which means "Land of the Unruly." It was also called Khohistan, the "Land of Mountains," and later Afghanistan, the "Land of Afghans."
In 1813, the Russians and British began playing what Rudyard Kipling would call the "Great Game." The Russians, ruled by Catherine the Great of the Romanov dynasty, were expanding their empire southward. The British, concerned that the Russians would also expand into Persia (now Iran), thereby coming within striking distance of the British Indian Raj, the so-called "Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire," pushed northward. This struggle for control was not a war. "Occasional battles broke out, and a few massacres, an atrocity here and there, but the Great Game consisted mostly of plotting, pushing, conspiring, maneuvering, manipulating, politicking, bribing and corrupting people in the region mentioned."8
To balance the competing influences of the British, Soviets, and Germans in Afghanistan, King Habibullah Khan maintained a policy of neutrality during World War I, as did his successor, Zahir Shah, during World War II. Zahir Shah also signed a non-aggression treaty with Turkey, Iran, and Iraq in 1937.
Afghanistan’s current borders encompass about a quarter million square miles, 12-15% of it suitable for farming. Its western border abuts Iran. Its northern boundary follows the Amu Darya River, also known as the Oxus, opposite Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. The Wakhan Corridor, a "panhandle" extending to the east, dates from 1873, when Great Britain and the Russian Empire established it as a buffer between their opposing spheres. The corridor is roughly 140 miles (227 kilometers) east-to-west and between 10 and 40 miles (16-32 km) north-to-south. China lies along its eastern edge. South and east of Afghanistan is Pakistan, itself part of British-dominated India until 1947.
Afghanistan lies between the 38th and 27th parallels, as does the land between Washington, DC, and Key West, Florida, but altitude determines its climate to a greater extent. Kabul, at roughly 6000 feet (1829 meters) above sea level, has hot dry summers and cold snowy winters. In Kandahar and Herat, at elevations hovering around 3000 feet (914 m), average summer temperatures are over 100° F (38° C). Mazar-e Sharif, the lowest of the large provincial cities at 1240 feet (378 m), averages 102° F (39° C) in July. In Bamyan, not the coldest place in Afghanistan, winter temperatures have been recorded as low as -22° F (-30° C).
Before the series of wars that began in 1979, forests covered about 4.5% of Afghanistan, mostly in the east and southeast. By 2010, those forests of evergreens, oaks, poplars, hazelnuts, almonds, and pistachios had declined to 2.0%. The northern plains, with the country’s most fertile soil and rich crops of grain and fruit, fed the region and the nation before the wars.9 Ancient underground canals, or kariz, provide irrigation in the southwestern deserts for melons, wheat, grapes, and orchards of pomegranates and apricots. Dug by ancient peoples, karizha are cooperatively maintained by surrounding villages.
The steppes of the Wakhan Corridor are home to several endangered species,10 including snow leopards and the Argali sheep, more widely known in the West as Marco Polo Sheep, named by Europeans for the Great Explorer, who described them after he crossed into the country in 1273.11 In 2008, breeding grounds of the rare large-billed reed warbler were discovered in the Corridor by researchers of the World Conservation Society.12
The 1950s and 1960s were a golden era for urban Afghan women. Photographs from that era13 show women with knee length skirts and uncovered heads, female professionals, as well as men and women talking together in public and going to movie theaters. Some women I interviewed remember these times.
By the mid-1950s, the Soviet-American rivalry known as the Cold War was in full swing and the US and the USSR were playing their own version of the "Great Game," as each tried to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. For example, both superpowers constructed road systems. In the mid-1960s, the Soviets built the mile-long Salang Tunnel at an altitude of over 10,000 feet (3048 m). The tunnel eliminated about 125 miles (201 km) from the very dangerous mountainous route between the Soviet border and Kabul. Soviet roads mostly connected their own border towns in the north with Kabul. American-built roads connected Kabul to Pakistan in the south and Iran in the west. The Soviets built a nitrogen fertilizer plant, an automobile repair facility, assorted factories, and a gas pipeline from the Afghan Shibarghan fields in the north to the Soviet border, and both sides were working to improve agriculture.
The US contracted with the Morrison-Knudsen14 company and the Afghan government to build the ill-fated Helmand Valley Project. Their plan was to "kindle economic development and bolster the Afghan-US bilateral relationship"15 by building two dams to control the flow of the Helmand River. They also built hydro-powered electrical plants and a system of canals to distribute water for agriculture.
Because of skyrocketing costs, the planned intensive ground water surveys were scrapped and the project rushed to completion. As a result, the two dams caused underground water to rise, bringing underground salt to the surface,16 ruining the already poor soil for farming. From 1946 through 1963, the project consumed 19% of the Afghan government’s budget, drained brains from other parts of the country, and slowed down economic growth overall. Its failure soured US-Afghan relations.
The USSR began to gain more political influence, and on July 17, 1973, while King Zahir Shah was in Italy, his cousin Daoud Khan seized power with Soviet backing and declared himself President and Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.
The land reforms that followed (taking land from the rich and powerful and distributing it among the poor) along with modernization (forcing women out from under their burqas, forcing girls and boys to leave their villages to attend schools in the provincial cities) precipitated revolts and clashes throughout the country. The Marxists’ professed atheism added fuel to the fire and contributed to conservative backlash. What had been intended to help the poor was badly implemented, and the feudal order remained strong enough that people followed tribal leaders into rebellion against the government.
The Cold War competition dominated American foreign policy, and six months before the Soviet invasion, the US began covertly urging the mujahidin to rebel, intending to provoke the Soviets to invade and give them their own version of our Vietnam war.17
Kabulis and other educated people around the country, many of whom had jobs under the Soviet-backed regimes, supported the communists because they saw the programs addressing what they viewed as backwardness and inequities in their own society.18 But the Afghan communists, especially in Kabul, split into competing factions that imprisoned and murdered each other along with their rivals’ families and supporters. Between 1978 and 1992, several successive Soviet-backed presidents were assassinated at the behest of their successors. When the mujahidin took over Kabul in 1992, the last president standing, Mohammad Najibullah, fled to sanctuary in the UN compound. He lived there until 1996. The Taliban killed him that same year when they took Kabul.
To keep the Cold War cold, the Americans needed their support for the anti-communist partisans to be surreptitious. Once the Soviets invaded, American collaboration with Pakistan to arm the mujahidin began in earnest.19 Commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a fanatical Islamist and one of the world’s largest heroin dealers, received the lion’s share of US money and weapons.20 Others of the strongest and most repressive warlords received funding as well, leaving moderate tribal leaders to fend for themselves.
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