Afghanistan: Land of Valor, Land of Sorrow - I
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
CA
If there was an angel sitting on top the Hindu Kush mountains looking down on Afghanistan, he would shed a tear for each of the last three thousand years and each tear would be an ocean large enough to cause flooding in both the Kabul River and the Amu Darya.
Afghanistan is a land of sorrow, invaded time and again over the centuries, ravaged by mighty conquerors and ruthless destroyers. Necessity has made the people of the land valiant warriors, resisting the writ of foreigners. Today, they stand at a point in history when the destructive force of technological warfare unleashed by nations thousands of miles away threatens to overwhelm them and drag Pakistan into the consequent whirlpool.
The history of Afghanistan is dictated by its geography. It sits on a mountainous plateau at the intersection of axes connecting India, Central Asia, Mesopotamia and China. Ancient caravans plying their goods between these great centers of civilization passed through its valleys. Mighty conquerors, in their grandiose schemes to extend their sway over other lands, were forced to scale its mountains and negotiate its narrow passes. Sitting as it does at the crossroads of trade between Central and South Asia, it was fought over time and again by invading armies who were almost always resisted and ultimately expelled by the Afghans.
The term “Afghan” has been used for at least a thousand years in Farsi. Al Baruni mentions it in his book Tareek e Hind (1031CE). The celebrated world traveler Ibn Batuta who passed through Afghanistan circa 1332 CE uses the term Afghan in his Rehla to refer to the people around Kabul. Although different explanations are offered to explain the term, the word probably has its origin in “fughan” meaning echo, or wailing. It perhaps connotes the multiple echoes that resound from the valleys that are surrounded by mountains.
The song of a farmer, the ballad of a mendicant or the adhan of a muezzin echoes many times over and come back to you in degrees of amplification and subsidence. In modern times the term “fughan” most aptly describes the wailing of its women and children caught in the gristmill of invasions from Russia and the United States, and its unending and brutal civil wars. In any case, the term Afghan is a matter of identity. The Pashtun-speaking people refer to themselves as Afghan. Today, it connotes a nationality within the broadly agreed upon boundaries of the modern nation of Afghanistan.
The strategic location of Afghanistan, its isolation and its checkered and turbulent history have subjected its people to multiple tensions. The mountainous and harsh terrain has fostered a culture where the tribe and family provide cohesion and support for survival. Over the centuries, invading armies have intermingled with the local populations and have left their traces on the ethnic makeup of different tribes who are often at loggerheads with each other for turf and booty.
The constant threat of invasion has made the people tough and resilient who value valor and courage and has molded the men and women of Hindu Kush into warriors who value valor and courage. Sandwiched between mighty empires, Afghanistan has been squeezed from all sides and perforce must accommodate or fight off the foreign pressures.
The story of Afghanistan is one of continuous resistance to foreigners. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Timurlane, Safavid Iran, Mogul India, Czarist Russia, the British Empire, the Soviet Union and now the United States all had a taste of Afghan resistance. In modern times, its strategic location has increased as it sits astride potential oil and gas pipelines from the Asian heartland to the ports of the Arabian Sea. The mad rush for energy resources puts Afghanistan squarely in the midst of the strategic competition between the United States and China.
Afghanistan has also been an ideational caldron. Traditional Islam flourished for a thousand years. More recently, fundamentalism and extremism, part home grown, part imported from Saudi Arabia, have taken hold. Hence, a modern Afghan is torn apart between tribalism, traditional Islam, fundamentalism, modernism, ethnic discord, and great power rivalry. The tensions induced by these multiple pulls have made it impossible for these valiant people to seek their own soul and renew themselves from within.
The invasions and the ideas have left their traces on the land. The present boundaries of Afghanistan were carved out in the nineteenth century between the British and Soviet empires who were competing for political and economic advantage in Central Asia. The modern history of Afghanistan is a search for a transcendental idea which supersedes the ethnical, linguistic and national pulls. The task would be difficult under any circumstances. But the interference of the neighboring countries and of the global powers has made the task well neigh impossible. Monarchy, communism and Islam have been tried as the transcendent ideas to cement together a modern nation, but each has proven to be inadequate in a matrix largely dominated by feudalism and tribalism.
Afghanistan was one of the earliest lands to attract human settlement and civilized habitation. Between 2000 CE and 3000 CE the Aryans, migrating out of Central Asia, settled the land. The kingdom of Aryana (land of Aryans) straddled the plateau between the Indus and Amu Darya and included Afghanistan, Tadzhikistan, eastern Iran and western Pakistan. The Indus Valley Civilization thrived between the lower Indus delta and the Hindu Kush Mountains between 2500 CE and 1900 CE. The Rig Veda, one of the Hindu classics, was composed in Afghanistan (2500-1500 BC). Some scholars maintain that the Sanskrit language may have been born in this region. (To be continued)
