Whew, this is my first diary. Kinda nervous. Anyway, I wanted to start out by talking about Afghanistan. The Central Asian country has a long, illustrious history, which I'm sure very few Coalition troops know of.
We begin our story over 5,000 years ago. Immigrants from the southern Harappan civilization were moving into what would become southern Afghanistan. These Aryans (for that was what they were) had grown displeased with the decay of their nation. They fought several short wars with small groups of Indo-Europeans, and quickly forced this disorganized and technologically inferior enemy to move to more fertile lands west. The Aryans founded the magnificent city of Mundigak in the style of their homeland. This fledgling people traded with their brothers the Harappan to the south and the cities of Jiroft and Tappeh Sialk in the Fertile Crescent. The Afghans moved steadily north, eventually founding the city of Balkh (Bactra) in 1500 B.C.E. at the edge of their territory in northern Afghanistan. The Afghans were surrounded to the north, west, and east by hostile and primitive tribes of Indo-Europeans, which they often had to fight to keep out of their territory. During this period, the nation was primarily Vedic, though they would become a blend of Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, and Buddhism later. The Indo-Europeans eventually managed to force their way into Afghanistan, founding the Oxus civilization around the same time that Balkh was founded. Afterward followed a long period of piece, until the Medes invaded. Then, Afghan life and culture changed forever.
The Medes were an Iranian warrior people. From 625-615 B.C.E., they crushed the Neo-Assyrian empire, consolidating their authority in the Fertile Crescent. The Medes crushed the Afghani warrior-farmers and conquered most of southern Afghanistan. Only Balkh stood defiant, repelling all attempts at invasion. In 550 B.C.E., the Medes fell, and the Afghans breathed a sigh of relief, only to be freshly invaded by the Achaemenid empire. After followed a period of darkness and desperation among the Afghans. The only hope came in the form of Buddhism, which spread as far as Balkh in 500 B.C.E. The Bactrans used this new religion as a unifier and a inspiration; in just a few years, revolts were raging across Afghanistan, and the Achaemenids could barely hold on to the territory. In 330 B.C.E., the Achaemenids, whose empire had been consumed in revolt, fell, and their lands were taken by Alexander's empire; he left most of northern Afghanistan alone, though the south was under his rule. After he died, the empire split up into several fragments. The piece that had control over Afghanistan was under the control of Seleucus, one of Alexander's generals, and thus was called the Seleucid empire.
Now came the time of the Indo-Greek kingdoms, a fusion of two vibrant and ancient cultures. Greco-Bactria, as the first was called, ruled the region until 130 B.C., when King Heliocles I was defeated and driven out of Bactria by a coalition of local tribes. His dynasty continued to rule the area around Kabul and Alexandria of the Caucasus, until 70 B.C. when King Hermaus was defeated by another tribal coalition, driving the Greeks to India. The Kingdom lost ever-larger sections of land until 10 A.D., when the last, unknown king of the Indo-Greeks was defeated and his forces scattered to the winds, thus leaving the Afghans to deal with their own business for 662 years.
In 652 A.D., Muslim Arabs roared into Afghanistan through the western city of Herat, introducing Islam wherever they went. Afghanistan at the time was split up among several weak, squabbling rulers who were easy pickings for the highly organized and determined Muslims. However, the Muslim army was deterred in eastern Afghanistan, as resistance from mountain tribes there was fierce. This part of Afghanistan was ruled by the twin Turk kingdoms of Kabul and Gandhara. The Shahiya dynasty from Kabul ruled the city and the ancient province of Gandhara (now Kashmir and northern Pakistan) up into the ninth century. Though they lost Gandhara in the ninth century, they continued to rule eastern Afghanistan until the Ghaznavids rose in the early tenth century.
In 997, Mamhud of Ghazni, a self-made sultan, turned the provincial city of Ghazni into the culturally vibrant, magnificent capital of a mighty empire that stretched from Afghanistan to Iran. His empire rose quickly and fell quickly, the Ghaznavids being forced back into Ghazni in 1148. However, the sultans still ruled in the city itself until the early 20th century. After the Ghaznavids' fall, various weak, regional warlords attempted to conquer the country, but failed. In 1205, however, the Shah Muhammed II of the Khwarezmid Empire conquered all of Persia and Afghanistan. But fourteen years later, in 1219, the Mongols, led by Genghis Khan, swept across all of Asia, beginning a new chapter in Afghan history.
The Mongols burned and looted most of the great, ancient cities of Afghanistan, including Herat and Balkh, and tore up farms for their horses to graze, resulting in widespread starvation. Large numbers of Afghans were also slaughtered wholesale by the barbaric invaders. All of Afghanistan was forced to become part of the huge Mongol Empire, except for isolated mountain regions where tribal coalitions stood fiercely defiant and independent, as they always had. After a few years of misery, Tamerlane incorporated Afghanistan into his Timurid Empire, rebuilding most of the infrastructure the earlier Khans had destroyed. His grandson Pir Muhammed ruled in Kandahar. The area progressed under his rule, becoming one of the finest regions of the Timurid Empire.
In 1525, Babur, a distant relative of Tamerlane, rose to power in Kabul, the aging Great Khan handing Afghanistan and northern India over to him in a ceremony. Babur founded the Mughal Empire in Kabul and promptly lost all of western and northern Afghanistan, retaining only the desolate eastern and southern mountains. The north became the Kingdom of Balkh, ruled by Uzbek Khans, and the west was ruled by Persian Safavids. The three powers in the region fought a constant war over the strategically important region of Kandahar. (In an interesting side note, Babur's epigraph is carved into a wall at Kandahar; however it is unfinished, with a note next to it stating that he could not finish before hearing of a Persian attack to the west.) Babur managed to re-conquer most of the main Afghan cities before marching south into India. Instead of looking toward Afghanistan, the Mughals focused on India, leaving the region on its own.
Many years later, in 1709, Mirwais Khan Hotak, chief of the Ghilzai Pashtuns of Kandahar, led a revolt against the Safavids, killing Gurgiin Khan (better known as George XI), the Georgian governor of Greater Kandahar and the direct representative of the Persian Shah Huseyn. After this, Mirwais ordered the deaths of all the remaining Persian warriors in the region. The Afghans under Mirwais then defeated two large Persian armies dispatched from Isfahan to crush the rebels. The area of Kandahar was thus made an independent local kingdom. In 1715, Mirwais died of natural causes and his son Mir Mahmud. Mahmud, a truly legendary man, led the Afghan armies into Persia, defeated the Persians several times, and captured Isfahan itself. He crowned himself the new Persian Shah and immediately began a reign of terror and vengeance against his new subjects. In 1725 he was assassinated by his brother Ashraf Khan. Interestingly enough, he is believed to have had Alzheimer's Disease in his last few years. The empire broke into two, with Ashraf ruling Persia and Mahmud's other brother Shah Husayn Hotak ruling Kandahar. Ashraf managed to seal peace with the Ottoman Empire in 1727, though the Russians, taking advantage of the political unrest, seized vast tracts of land for themselves. The Hotaki dynasty was self-destructive and violent, members often turning on each other in bloody succession feuds, keeping the empire in constant turmoil. Ashraf had nearly three thousand dissenting civilians and scholars murdered, which cause a feeling of bitterness among the Persians. He had to deal with constant rebellions throughout the Empire. The Hotakis were removed from power in Persia in late 1729, by the mighty Nadir Shah, head of the Afsharids. The last Hotaki, Shah Husayn Khan, ruled Afghanistan until 1738 when Nadir's forces and an obscure group of Pashtuns under Ahmad Shah Durrani defeated him at Kandahar.
That year, Nadir Shah and his four thousand Pashtuns conquered Ghazni, Kabul, and Lahore as well. Here he stopped and began to consolidate his power in the region, leading to a rare peace that lasted until 1747. In that year, he was assassinated by the by the Persians. Ahmad Shah Durrani, his second-in-command, called for a loyal "jirga" or grand assembly to select a leader from the Afghans. For the first time in history, Afghans from all around the nation gathered in Kandahar and voted a new head of state to power; it was Durrani. He was given the title padshah durr-i dawran (King, Pearl of the Age), and Afghanistan, named Abdali at the time, was renamed to the Durrani Empire. Durrani united all the Pashtun tribes under his rule and ruled well until 1772, when he died of old age and was succeeded by his son, Timur Shah Durrani. Timur transferred the capital to Kabul. He died in 1793, and the crown passed to his son, Zaman Shah Durrani.
Zaman and his descendants had a weak hold over the Empire, and lost most of its territory, reducing it to southern Afghanistan and northern India. Durrani's other grandson, Shuja, who Zaman had sworn to kill, fled into Punjab, seeking refuge with the Sikhs. The Sikhs hated the Durranis, as Ahmad Shah had destroyed their holiest shrine, the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, and defiled it with the blood of cows and the decapitated body of Baba Deep Singh. With the Sikhs under his leadership, Shuja seized the throne and ruled until 1809, when the Sikhs, led by Ranjit Singh and supported by the British, rose up and wrested a large part of the Kingdom of Kabul from him. The British destroyed Shuja's palace and killed him in the same year. Afghanistan lay prostrate, with the Russian empire steadily advancing from the north and the British from the south.
In 1826, Dost Mohammad Khan seized control in Kabul and attempted to appease both the British and Russian empires. This failed attempt to survive, plus growing British concern about Russian power in Central Asia, resulted in two Anglo-Afghan wars and the Siege of Herat, 1837-1838, in which Persians, trying to capture Afghanistan from both Russians and British, fought several battles with the British around Herat. This growing influence of the British and Russian empires in Central Asia is known as the "Great Game", and it lasted until 1907, when growing instability in Russia and increasing resistance in Afghanistan forced the northern Empire to abandon the area. Amir Abdur Rahman gained the Afghan throne in 1880, ruling until 1901. He was a British puppet, and thusly the Afghans were very anti-Russian. However, with the next king, Habibullah Khan, the British were knocked out of power in Afghanistan, though Habibullah stayed resolutely neutral in World War I, despite occasional skirmishes with the British in the south. He was assassinated in 1919, possibly by family members opposed to his moderate stance on most affairs. His third son, Amanullah, managed to regain full control of Afghanistan's foreign policy from the British by launching the Third Anglo-Afghan War against British India. After the ensuing conflict, the exhausted British signed the Treaty of Rawalpindi in August 1919, effectively ending any British control of Afghan affairs.
King Amanullah ended Afghanistan's traditional isolationism in the years following. He established diplomatic relations with many countries, toured Europe and Turkey in 1927 (where he became a great admirer of Ataturk's modernization and secularization agenda), and introduced many reforms intended to modernize Afghanistan. Elementary school education became compulsory, due to one of the key forces behind the reforms, the Foreign Minister and Amanullah's father-in-law Mahmud Tarzi. Some of the reforms, such as the banning of the traditional hijab (female veil), and the opening of schools which taught both girls and boys, quickly alienated many tribal and religious leaders. Faced with overwhelming armed opposition, Amanullah was forced to abdicate in early 1929 as Kabul fell to Habibullah Kalakani's (a religious fanatic) forces.
Prince Mohammad Nadir Khan, Amanullah's cousin, led his own forces to crush Habibullah Kalakani's in October of the same year. With considerable tribal support, he declared himself King Nadir Shah. He quickly consolidated power and abandoned many of Amanullah's radical reforms, favoring a more gradual approach to modernization. However, in 1933, he was slain in a revenge killing by a Kabul student. Nadir Khan's 19-year-old son, Mohammad Zahir Khan, took the throne and reigned until 1973. Until 1946, he reigned with the help of his uncle Sardar Mohammad Hashim Khan, the Prime Minister, who continued the reforms of Nadir Khan. In '46, another of Zahir's uncles, Sardar Shah Mahmud Khan, began an policy experimenting with greater political freedom, but which he reversed when it went further than he thought it would. In 1953, he was replaced as PM by Mohammad Daoud Khan, the king's cousin and brother-in-law. Daoud sought a close relationship with the Soviet Union and a more hostile one towards Pakistan. However, skirmishes with Pakistan and widespread panic led to an economic crisis, which resulted in Daoud's resignation in 1963. From then on, Zahir Shah took a more active role in government, promulgating a liberal constitution which created a bicameral legislature to which one-third of the deputies were elected by the king. The people elected another third, and the last third was elected indirectly by provincial assemblies. Though this democratic experiment created few reforms, it allowed the large growth of extremist parties on both sides. This led to the rise of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) which was closely tied to the Soviet Union. In 1967, the PDPA split into two rival factions; the Khalq (Masses), led by Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin, and supported by much of the military, and the Parcham (Banner)led by Babrak Karmal.
Amid poor economic stability, former Prime Minister Daoud Khan seized power in a non-violent coup in 1973, while Zahir Shah was in Italy, receiving eye treatment. He abolished the monarchy and the constitution and declared Afghanistan a republic with him as its first President and Prime Minister. His attempts to carry out badly needed reforms were plagued with difficulty and met with little success. The new constitution in 1977 failed to quell political instability, and Hafizullah Khan and much of the military Khalq, ordered arrested and executed, managed to remain at large and organize an uprising.
You probably know the rest; the fall of Daoud's government, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the rise of Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban, and the eventual American invasion. It makes one wonder; so many empires have found their end in this backwoods, third-rate little country called Afghanistan; will the U.S.A. be next?