The Afghanistan

As we all know the situation in Kabul capital of Afghanistan. Let’s not waste time and directly get into the matter . USA(united states of America ) has spent around $2 Trillion dollars on the Afghan wars. For 20 years , The us army was stationed in Afghanistan.

Now since the US army is leaving Afghanistan Taliban are gaining strong control over the country. The situation turned out in such a way that less than 50% area in Afghanistan is actually under the control of the Afghan government.

It may happen that the Afghan government is overthrown by the Taliban.

This crisis has moved many people’s hearts and also made an impact on India, Because India is not very far from Afghanistan but to understand this geopolitical crisis properly, we’ll need to dive into the history.

To understand the situation and crisis properly we need to know about Afghanistan properly first. Afghanistan is known as the Graveyard of Empires . Because many super countries enter Afghanistan but return by humiliating themselves.

The Britishers came in 19th century they had to bear a very heartbreaking defeat.

In the 20th century the Union Of Soviets came to Afghanistan and returned to their country after 9 years with a lot of humiliations.

And in the 21st century, the USA came to Afghanistan and now is returning.It is not that Afghanistan is never conquered , if we further go researching we will find several instances of this Macedonian rule of Alexander, The Arab, The Mongol ruler, The Mughal ruler and the Sikh king.

But it is believed that the Afghan warriors make it really difficult to any other rule from foreign countries.

So lets not dive to the ancient history lets start from 1800 of the Afghan history as it is relevant to today’s situation.

At that time the north was occupied by the Russian Empire and th British Empire in the south that is India and there was a buffer region .

Now Russia and Britain are wary of each other they would doubt each other that the opposite country occupying Afghan would create problems to them. Initially, The western countries didn’t know much about Afghanistan.

When a Scottish Explorer, Alexander Burne went there and safely returned.

He wrote a book called “Travels into Bokhara” became the bestseller.

In 1838, the British Emperor started feeling motivated enough and was very confident on occupying the Afghanistan territory.

They were very confident that they would definitely win but the king of Afghan his name was Emir Dost Mohammed of the Barakzai Dynasty and British have overthrown is thrown and placed their puppet Shah Shujah on the thrown .

At that time in Afghan there wasn’t any army but there were thousands of small and isolated villages and every village has its chief and those chief’s would led some of the boys from their village to fight on behalf of the Emir in return for some money this money was dwindled down in the rule of Emir Shah Shujah so the chief’s of the villages were united under the leadership of chief Akbar Khan and all these villages have started fight against British this war lasted 3 years .

Obviously Britishers have more advanced weapons but despite that, they were defeated the Emir was murdered and Emir Dost Mohammed was placed on the thrown again. This war was known as first Anglo-Afghan war that was followed by second Anglo-Afghan war in 1878 .

British again attacked Afghan again this time the win was on the British side and occupied an area of Afghan but they intend to settle in the entire AFGHAN.

They supported a new Emir his name was Emir Abdur Rahman he later was known as Iron Emir the British let the internal rule in the Afghan because they wanted to merely have influence over the buffer zone with the Russian Empire .

To establish friendly relations and also maintained stability with Afghans,in year 1893 an international border was drawn between Afghan and British India which is known as DURAND LINE.

In year 1907 there was an agreement was made between the British and Russian Empires were in Russia recognized that Afghan lied under the sphere of British Influence and Russia promised to stay away from Afghan, around this time in 1918 communist revolution took over in Russia and Lenin comes into power and this had an impact on Afghan and only year after that in 1919 the third Anglo-Afghan war took place.

This war is known as the war of independence in Afghan because Afghan fought against the British for full Independence,till then Afghan had a title of “BRITISH PROTECTED STATE” where the British focused on foreign relations of Afghan but Afghan gained full independence from this war and the British recognizes Afghan’s independence on 19th august that is tomorrow.

The ruler of Afghan ,Emir Amanullah Khan had won the war against the British. Some state that the British willingly lost the war for strategic reasons so that the Durand line becomes a clear border between Afghan and British India.

Till today the Durand line is the actual border between Afghan and Pakistan the question comes here how are these Anglo-Afghan wars related to today’s Afghan and Taliban the earlier invasions of Afghan by the British and later invasions of America and recently are done by Soviet Union all had similar causes and concerns these superpowers have given similar excuses for their decision to invade Afghanistan, is to teach them manners and governance. Afghan people were told to be uneducated and don’t know how to lead a civilized life and all these countries who invaded Afghan had their own selfish political reasons .

Amanullah Khan was a very progressive and Liberal man in 1926, he made Afghan into a constitutional monarchy. He was known as king and Afghan were known as kingdom of Afghanistan his wife Soraya Tarzi was given the title of queen in 1926.

And she ushered a new revolution for women the king and queen together campaigned against polygamy together( multiple marriages) started schools for Girls education. Worked for equal rights for women, right to divorce for women and pushed for secular courts and secular education.

The strict dress code for women in Afghan were also removed, so the gradians of religion claimed that it is an attack against Islam. There was a rebellion against the king in 1923 (Alizai rebellion)and the same happened in 1924(Khost rebellion) the both rebellions were crushed.

But in 1929 the rebellion was successful (Afghan civil war) the king and queen fled to British India. 1929, India was still under British rule, they had a daughter and named after India, now she’s 92 years old.

Some people say that the British weren’t happy to see progress in Afghan so they secretly shared morphed photos of queen in masses to instigate people against the king and the queen the extremist who replaced the king was overthrown within a year.

The First,Nadir shah became the new ruler of Afghan, and in the year 1933 his son became the king of the country.

For the next 40 years, he led an amazing modernization in Afghan and had improved the relations between the foreign countries in the year 1947 when India and Pakistan gained independence the Durand line between Pakistan and Afghanistan was made the permanent border.

Afghanistan wasn’t happy with it.

It wanted more area from Pakistan and the reason for it was that majority of people in Afghan are of the ethnicity Pashtuns (around 38%) and among the people in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa district of Pakistan an equal number of Pashtuns for this cause Afghan supported the separatist movement in Pakistan especially the prime minister of King Zahir Shah, Daoud Khan greatly supported this.

Because of this Pakistan closed the border between Afghan and Pak, leading to loss of trade between them.

So Zahir Shah made his prime minister Daoud Khan to resign in 1963. A new constitution was made in 1964 that introduced parliamentary elections to elect the prime minister in Afghan.

Elections were held in 1965 rule was made in a way that no member of the royal family could hold political office. The purpose was to prevent Daoud Khan from becoming prime minister.

In these elections, women could vote and contest. Around this time two ideologies were seen in Afghan ISLAMIC PARTY and communist ideology.

1973 Zahir shah was on a foreign trip with some country Daoud khan with help of the army and his friends carried out a coup. He was the new ruler. After taking over the country with help of the army, he didn’t call himself king. But the president of Afghanistan and made Afghanistan a republic country.

At a glance, this seems like a good step, but he disbanded the judiciary and parliament of the country, he made it a dictator country.

Zahir Shah who accepted that went to Exile Italy. But Daoud made the country into very peaceful place in 1960’s. The non-aligned movement was started by Nehru and was supported by Afghan it no longer wanted to be a dependent country on Russia so it established relations with USA and India and Russia wasn’t pleased by that.

Many changes happened in the political forms of Afghan and Russia tries to take over the control to start a war against the Mujahideen.

So America decided to fund the ideology of Islam and supported it at that time Islamists and Mujahedeen were against communist America give them funding and support them to avoid the Cold War. So how are these social changes related to the Taliban, let’s see them in part 2