The history of Afghanistan is so complex that every attempt at simplification must inevitably lead to superficiality and confusion. Perhaps, in view of what has been said in Chapter 2 it may suffice to say that all the nomadic incursions that affected Central Asia also played their role in the history of Afghanistan. The Saka, the Yue-chi, the Hephthalites, the Turks, the Arabs, the Seljuks, the Mongols – they all left their traces in the economic as well as the cultural pattern of the country. They destroyed irrigation, diverted caravan trade and decimated the population, but they also brought new impetus to the arts, new elements in ornament and design, and provided, broadly speaking, a sort of cross-fertilisation between one area and the other, between the civilisation of the nomads and that of the sedentary peoples.
At the time of the Achaemenids, Afghanistan was a loosely administered set of eastern satrapies of the empire. The Greeks brought in an alien element implanted on the Iranian cultural base, which, in its turn, got mixed with Indian influences brought in by the westward expansion of Buddhism. In the Kushan times, the art of Gandhara flourished and expanded north as far as Xinjiang (see p.49 and Chapter 12). Then, for a century and a half, the Afghan provinces were again part of the Persian Empire under the Sasanians, with a corresponding increase in Iranian cultural influence. Buddhism and Zoroastrianism co-existed peacefully until the Arab invasion produced a new religion and with it a new cultural pattern.
At the court of the Ghaznavid and Ghorid sultans (the tenth to twelfth century) the settled Iranian culture mingled with the nomadic Turkish one while the repeated raids into the Indian subcontinent inevitably exercised some influence upon the rulers of both dynasties.
After the devastating incursions of the Mongols and of Timur, Afghanistan, or more precisely its western part, experienced a century of prosperity under Timur’s successors, Shahrukh and Husayn Baykara.
After a lengthy period of war between principalities, Afghanistan became part of the empire of a Turkish usurper, Nadir Shah, who in turn defeated the Safavid shah of Persia and the Moghul sultan of Delhi. After his assassination, the chief of the Durrani (Abdali) tribe, Ahmad Shah, gained supremacy over other Afghan tribes and in quick succession extended his holdings as far as Khorassan in the west and the Punjab in the east.
In the first half of the nineteenth century Afghanistan became a pawn in the ‘Great Game’ between the two great powers of the time: Britain advancing into the Punjab and Russia moving into Central Asia. In 1839, the British army moved into Afghan territory while the Russians moved against Khiva. Both expeditions ended in disaster. The Russians became bogged down in the desert without ever reaching their target, while the British, in 1842, had to retreat from Kabul and on the way to Jalalabad were massacred by the Afghans.
While the tug-of-war between Britain and Russia continued for the rest of the century, Afghanistan was, after 1880, reunited under the firm rule of Amir Abdurrahman who, in a series of radical reforms, tried to modernise the country, break the power of local strongmen and introduce an administrative structure based on provinces governed by appointed governors. In 1884 the occupation of Merv brought the Russians into the vicinity of Afghanistan, and both the amir and the British were worried about the possibility of a Russian advance on Herat. The town’s defences were hastily strengthened and it was in the course of these works that the remnants of the famous Musalla were destroyed.
In 1893 the boundaries between Afghanistan and India, as well as between Afghanistan and Russia, were fixed by the Durand Commission. The McMahon Commission similarly established, in 1903, the border between Afghanistan amd Persia. Nevertheless, a stretch of this border was definitely fixed as late as 1935.
The rivalry between Britain and Russia continued after the First World War, with both sides competing for influence in Kabul. The reforms aimed at westernstyle modernisation introduced in the late 1920s by King Amanullah provoked an uprising and had to be partially revoked by the king’s successor, Nadir Shah. Under King Zahir Shah, Afghanistan accepted aid from Germany, Italy and Japan, and prior to the Second World War the Germans had become the most important foreign community in Kabul.
After the war the Afghans supported the idea of an independent ‘Pushtunistan’ comprising also the north-western province of Pakistan. Frustrated by the American aid to Pakistan, the Afghans turned to the Soviet Union, whose aid led to the increased influence of the Soviets in Kabul. In the late 1950s Afghan officers were trained in the USSR and Soviet advisers were active in Afghan military schools. A crisis over ‘Pushtunistan led to the closure of the Pakistani border in 1961 and left Afghanistan wholly dependent on the USSR. In 1973, King Zahir was deposed and the prime minister, Muhammad Daoud, proclaimed a republic with himself as president. The Soviet penetration increased under his rule until, in 1978, a group of Moscow-trained officers staged a bloody coup in which Daoud was assassinated. A Communist-led government under Nur Muhammad Taraki took power, but factional strife within the party led to another coup in 1979. After only three months, in December 1979, the Russians invaded Afghanistan and installed a puppet government with Babrak Karmal as president. This sparked off a guerilla war that lasted ten years, without the Russians ever being able to pacify the country. Their ignominious retreat in 1989, after heavy casualties, triggered off the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Afghanistan their retreat provoked a civil war, with millions of refugees in Iran and Pakistan, and with the risk of militant Islamism spreading over into the newly independent Central Asian republics.
By the end of 2010 and after nine years of fighting, the bleak prophecy of Ahmed Rashid seems to have been confirmed.1 The central government is weak and its writ does not extend far beyond the Kabul area, which may be the reason why most recent archaeological work has been done in this area. Although Kabul is slowly rising from ‘the miles of rubble’, it had been at the turn of the century, the infrastructure that can sustain society is still rather chaotic. The economy is still too dependent on poppy and drugs and tribal chiefs are still calling the shots in the provinces, preventing the realisation of any large state-wide reconstruction project. The building of security forces, the army and the police, is proceeding at a snail’s pace with many setbacks, and the Taliban, still finding refuge and supplies in Pakistan’s Tribal territories, are in fact gaining ground, not only in the south, but also in the east and north-east. The main supply line of the allied forces, the Peshawar–Jalalabad–Kabul road, is frequently disrupted or blocked, whereas the Taliban supplies can get into the country by the Quetta–Kandahar road mostly undisturbed. The interior situation in Pakistan and the Iran-Pakistan differences over the Sunni-Shia relations are beyond the scope of this book, but their repercussions contribute in no insignificant way to the rising sectarianism in Afghan society. Seen in this way, a fragmentation or even partition of the country remains a possibility. Its unification under Amir-Abdurrahman thus looks like an exceptional event in its history.2
1 Rashid, A., Taliban, p.207.
2 Rashid, A., Descent into Chaos, 2008.