Afghanistan
Afghanistan (/æfˈɡænɪstæn, æfˈɡɑːnɪstɑːn/ (listen); Pashto/Dari: افغانستان, Pashto: Afġānistān [avɣɒnisˈtɒn, ab-],[a] Dari: Afġānestān [avɣɒnesˈtɒn]), officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central and South Asia. Afghanistan is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south; Iran to the west; Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan to the north; and China to the northeast. Occupying 652,000 square kilometers (252,000 sq mi), it is a mountainous country with plains in the north and southwest. Kabul is the capital and largest city. The population is around 32 million, composed mostly of ethnic Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks.
Settled life emerged in what are now Afghanistan and adjoining areas 9,000 years ago, evolving gradually into the Indus Valley Civilization of the third millennium BCE.[13] Indus civilization's archaeological sites were discovered on the Amu Darya at Shortugai and in Kandahar Province at Mundigak; the latter flourished during the Bronze Age Helmand culture. Indo-Aryans migrated through Bactria-Margiana area to Gandhara, followed by the rise of the Iron Age Yaz I culture (ca. 1500–1100 BCE),[14] which has been closely associated with the culture depicted in the Avesta, the ancient religious texts of Zoroastrianism.[15] The region, then known as "Ariana", fell to Achaemenid Persians in the 6th century BCE, followed by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE, who married Roxana in Bactria before his Kabul Valley campaign, where he faced resistance from Aspasioi and Assakan tribes. The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom became the eastern end of the Hellenistic world. Following the conquest by Mauryan Indians, Buddhism and Hinduism flourished in the region for centuries. The Kushan emperor Kanishka, who ruled from his twin capitals of Kapiśi and Puruṣapura, played an important role in the spread of Mahayana Buddhism to China and Central Asia. Various other Buddhist and Hindu dynasties also ruled the region, including the Saka, Kidarite, Hephthalite, Alkhon, Nezak, Zunbil, Turk Shahi, and Hindu Shahi.
Muslims brought Islam to Sassanian-held Herat and Zaranj in the mid-7th century, while fuller Islamization was achieved between the 9th and 12th centuries under the Saffarid, Samanid, Ghaznavid, and Ghurid dynasties. In the 13th century, the Khwarazmian-held region was ravaged by Mongols. Parts of the region were later ruled by the Khalji, Timurid, Lodi, Sur, Mughal, and Safavid empires.[16] The political history of the modern state of Afghanistan began with the Hotak dynasty, whose founder Mirwais Hotak declared southern Afghanistan independent in 1709. In 1747, Ahmad Shah Durrani, who is considered as the founder of the state, established the Durrani Empire with its capital at Kandahar. In 1776, the Durrani capital was moved to Kabul while Peshawar became the winter capital;[17] the latter was lost to Sikhs in 1823 followed by an unsuccessful attempt to recover it in 1837. In the late 19th century, Afghanistan became a buffer state in the "Great Game" between British India and the Russian Empire.[18][19] In the First Anglo-Afghan War, the British East India Company seized control of Afghanistan briefly, but following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919 the country was free of foreign influence, eventually becoming a monarchy under Amanullah Khan, until almost 50 years later when Zahir Shah was overthrown and a republic was established. In 1978, after a second coup, Afghanistan first became a socialist state and then a Soviet protectorate, evoking the Soviet–Afghan War in the 1980s against mujahideen rebels. By 1996, most of the country was captured by the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban, who ruled as a totalitarian regime for over five years; they were removed from power after the US invasion in 2001 but still control a significant portion of the country. The ongoing war between the government and the Taliban has contributed to the perpetuation of Afghanistan's problematic human rights record including complications of women's rights, with numerous abuses committed by both sides, such as the killing of civilians.
Afghanistan is a unitary presidential Islamic republic. The country has high levels of terrorism, poverty, child malnutrition, and corruption. It is a member of the United Nations, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, the Group of 77, the Economic Cooperation Organization, and the Non-Aligned Movement. Afghanistan's economy is the world's 96th largest, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of $72.9 billion by purchasing power parity; the country fares much worse in terms of per-capita GDP (PPP), ranking 169th out of 186 countries as of 2018.
Contents
Etymology
Main article: Name of Afghanistan
The root name "Afghān" is, according to some scholars, derived from the name of the Aśvakan or Assakan, ancient inhabitants of the Hindu Kush region.[20][21][22][23][24] Aśvakan literally means "horsemen", "horse breeders", or "cavalrymen" (from aśva or aspa, the Sanskrit and Avestan words for "horse").[25] Historically, the ethnonym Afghān was used to refer to ethnic Pashtuns.[26] The Arabic and Persian form of the name, Afġān was first attested in the 10th-century geography book Hudud al-'Alam.[27] The last part of the name, "-stan" is a Persian suffix for "place of." Therefore, "Afghanistan" translates to "land of the Afghans," or "land of the Pashtuns" in a historical sense. The modern Constitution of Afghanistan, however, states that the word "Afghan" shall apply to every citizen of Afghanistan.[28][6]
History
Part of a series on the
Ancient
Related historical names of the region
Main article: History of Afghanistan
Many empires and kingdoms have also risen to power in Afghanistan, such as the Greco-Bactrians, Sakas, Kushans, Kidarites, Hephthalites, Alkhons, Nezaks, Zunbils, Turk Shahis, Hindu Shahis, Lawiks, Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavids, Ghurids, Khwarazmians, Khaljis, Kartids, Timurids, Lodis, Surs, Mughals, and Safavids, and finally, the Hotak and Durrani dynasties, which marked the political origins of the modern state.[29] Throughout millennia several cities within the modern day Afghanistan served as capitals of various empires, namely Bactra (Balkh), Alexandria on the Oxus (Ai-Khanoum), Kapisi, Sigal, Kabul, Kunduz, Zaranj, Firozkoh, Herat, Ghazna (Ghazni), Binban (Bamyan), and Kandahar.
The country sits at a unique nexus point where numerous civilizations have interacted and often fought. It has been home to various peoples through the ages, among them the ancient Iranian peoples who established the dominant role of Indo-Iranian languages in the region. At multiple points, the land has been incorporated within vast regional empires, among them the Achaemenid Empire, the Macedonian Empire, the Indian Maurya Empire, and the Islamic Empire.[30] For its success in resisting foreign occupation during the 19th and 20th centuries, Afghanistan has been called the "graveyard of empires,"[31] though it is unknown who coined the phrase.[32]
Prehistory and antiquity
The Citadel of Herat was built by Alexander the Great
Main article: Pre-Islamic period of Afghanistan
Excavations of prehistoric sites suggest that humans were living in what is now Afghanistan at least 50,000 years ago, and that farming communities in the area were among the earliest in the world. An important site of early historical activities, many believe that Afghanistan compares to Egypt in terms of the historical value of its archaeological sites.[33][34]
Bilingual (Greek and Aramaic) edict by Emperor Ashoka from the 3rd century BCE discovered in the southern city of Kandahar
Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the geographical area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west, and north. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages have been found in Afghanistan. Urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BCE, and the early city of Mundigak (near Kandahar in the south of the country) may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley Civilization. More recent findings established that the Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up towards modern-day Afghanistan, making the ancient civilization today part of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India. In more detail, it extended from what today is northwest Pakistan to northwest India and northeast Afghanistan. An Indus Valley site has been found on the Oxus River at Shortugai in northern Afghanistan.[35][36] There are several smaller IVC colonies to be found in Afghanistan as well.
After 2000 BCE, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan; among them were many Indo-European-speaking Indo-Iranians. These tribes later migrated further into South Asia, Western Asia, and toward Europe via the area north of the Caspian Sea. The region at the time was referred to as Ariana.[33][37]
Zoroastrianism and Hellenic era
A "Bactrian gold" Scythian belt depicing Dionysus, from Tillya Tepe in the ancient region of Bactria
The religion Zoroastrianism is believed by some to have originated in what is now Afghanistan between 1800 and 800 BCE, as its founder Zoroaster is thought to have lived and died in Balkh. Ancient Eastern Iranian languages may have been spoken in the region around the time of the rise of Zoroastrianism. By the middle of the 6th century BCE, the Achaemenids overthrew the Medes and incorporated Arachosia, Aria, and Bactria within its eastern boundaries. An inscription on the tombstone of Darius I of Persia mentions the Kabul Valley in a list of the 29 countries that he had conquered.[38]
Alexander the Great and his Macedonian forces arrived in Afghanistan in 330 BCE after defeating Darius III of Persia a year earlier in the Battle of Gaugamela. Following Alexander's brief occupation, the successor state of the Seleucid Empire controlled the region until 305 BCE when they gave much of it to the Maurya Empire as part of an alliance treaty. The Mauryans controlled the area south of the Hindu Kush until they were overthrown in about 185 BCE. Their decline began 60 years after Ashoka's rule ended, leading to the Hellenistic reconquest by the Greco-Bactrians. Much of it soon broke away from them and became part of the Indo-Greek Kingdom. They were defeated and expelled by the Indo-Scythians in the late 2nd century BCE.[3][39]