Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0000/00008.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 22KB | 376 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00008}
$Pretitle{265}
$Title{Afghanistan
Chapter 2A.   The Society and Its Environment}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Laurie Krieger}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{population
afghanistan
country
hindu
meters
kush
mountains
million
pakistan
kilometers}
$Date{1986}
$Log{Tent-pegging*0000801.scf
Valley in central Afghanistan*0000802.scf
Figure 4.*0000804.scf
Badminton Anyone?*0000806.scf
Karate*0000807.scf
}
Country:     Afghanistan
Book:        Afghanistan, A Country Study
Author:      Laurie Krieger
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1986

Chapter 2A.   The Society and Its Environment

[See Tent-pegging: Tent-pegging, a popular equestrian sport, especially among
Pashtuns]

     The reactions of the Afghans to the invasion of their country by Soviet
military forces in December 1979 were in keeping with Afghan responses to
numerous earlier invasions. The almost universal resentment of the populace
has been expressed in widespread, bitter, and costly guerrilla warfare against
the Soviets and the Afghan government.

     Although the cultures of Afghanistan are varied, complex, and often
poorly understood, perhaps the most interesting question about the country in
the mid-1980s was why the population responded to the invasion with
determination, tenacity, and pugnaciousness. The answers to this question lie
in many aspects of the country; its physical environment, population
structure, religious traditions, tribes, and ethnicity; the nature of the
Afghan family and kin groups; and gender roles.

     The people of Afghanistan have adapted to an arid, rugged terrain,
extreme climatic conditions, periodic droughts, and successive invasions.
Afghans have coped with these difficulties by showing diversity,
ingeniousness, and flexibility in subsistence strategies, technology, and
religious and social organization. As they may move from one subsistence
strategy to another to meet changing environmental and economic conditions, so
they may change from one religious sect to another or expand or contract the
boundaries of ethnic group, tribe, or lineage to adapt to the changing social
environment. Despite this plasticity, certain values and shared identities
endure. These include membership in the patrilineal family, with strong family
loyalties and squabbles; gender separation, with bellicose males and secluded
women; and membership in the Muslim community (umma), with reliance on
charismatic religious figures, such as Sufi shaykhs, pirs, and miyans.

     The Afghans' guerrilla war affected not only their own country but the
entire region as well. By late 1985 the country was severely depopulated;
about one-third of the population had departed, and the war had claimed many
lives. The dramatic drop in population within Afghanistan, coupled with the
influx of Afghan refugees to Iran and Pakistan (where they reportedly had one
of the highest birth rates in the world), had created a tremendous labor
shortage within the country and a potentially volatile situation in the entire
region.

The Natural Environment

[See Valley in central Afghanistan: Courtesy Embassy of Afghanistan,
Washington DC]

     Historically and contemporarily, Afghanistan's rugged terrain and often
harsh climate have impeded but not deterred foreign invaders. Afghanistan is
an extremely mountainous country with dramatic and often spectacular scenery.
Yet the land is not generally lush, and a dearth of water has been and
continues to be one of Afghanistan's most pressing problems (see Agriculture,
ch 3). Afghans have adapted ingeniously to the land, only 22 percent of which
is arable. For example, through the millennia they have developed elaborate
underground irrigation systems in many areas. This technology has had the
added benefit of being relatively inaccessible to hostile invaders until the
recent invasion; intensive bombing reportedly has damaged many of the
underground irrigation systems in some regions.

     On the map, the country resembles an irregularly shaped leaf hanging from
the Wakhan Corridor at its stem. It encompasses approximately 637,397 square
kilometers and is completely landlocked, surrounded by the Soviet Union, Iran,
and Pakistan (see fig. 1). China also shares a bit of border with
Afghanistan's Wakhan Corridor. The nearest seaport is Karachi, Pakistan,
almost 1,170 kilometers away. The country's extreme length from west to east
is about 1,240 kilometers, including Wakhan. Its greatest width from north to
south is approximately 565 kilometers.

     Mountains traverse the center of the country, running generally in a
northeast-southwest direction. Of the total land area, over 49 percent lies
above 2,000 meters. Geographers disagree on the division of these mountains
into systems. They are in accord, however, that the Hindu Kush, the most
important of the mountain systems, is probably an extension of the Himalayas.
Louis Dupree, an American anthropologist whose experience in Afghanistan spans
decades, describes Hindu Kush as "young rugged ranges . . . with sharp peaks,
deep valleys, and many almost impenetrable barriers." The point of origin of
the Hindu Kush is a matter of some dispute. Scholar Mohammad Ali and
geographers Ramamoorthy Gopalakrishnan and W.B. Fisher describe the point of
origin of the Hindu Kush as the Pamir Knot, which implies that the Hindu Kush
runs from east to west. Conversely, in 1959 geographer Johannes Humlum fixed
the point of origin in Iran.

     The origin of the unusual term Hindu Kush (which translates as "Hindu
Killer") is also a point of contention. Dupree discusses three possibilities:
that the mountains are a memorial to the Indian slaves who perished in the
mountains while being transported to Central Asian slave markets; that the
name is merely a corruption of Hindu Koh, the pre-Islamic name of the
mountains that at the time divided Hindu southern Afghanistan from non-Hindu
northern Afghanistan; and finally, that the name is a posited Avestan
appellation meaning "water mountains."

     The highest peaks are over 7,000 meters above sea level and are found in
the eastern part of the country. In comparison, Mount Everest, which has the
highest elevation in the world, stands 8,853.5 meters above sea level. The
mountains of the Hindu Kush diminish in height as they stretch westward.
Toward the middle of the range, near Kabul, they extend from 4,500 to 6,000
meters above sea level. In the western portion of the range they attain
heights of 3,500 to 4,500 meters and at the extreme western border are lower
still. The average altitude of the Hindu Kush is 4,500 meters (see fig. 4).
The Hindu Kush runs about 966 kilometers laterally, and its median
north-south measurement is about 240 kilometers.

     Other mountain ranges, usually considered to be offshoots of the Hindu
Kush system, from part of the central highland's westward thrust but spread
out from the central core. These mountain ranges include the Koh-i-Baba,
Salang, Paghman, Safed Koh, Salt, Suleiman, Khwaja Amran, Siah Koh, Doshak,
and Paropamisus (also referred to as Safid Kuh). Also included are the Hindu
Kush range proper; only a portion of the Hindu Kush system is included in the
Hindu range, while the rest of the mountain system is classified as part of
these other ranges.

     Afghanistan's mountains are transected by a number of passes that have
been, and continue to be, of great strategic importance. These include the
Kowtal-e Shebar, where the Hindu Kush range proper merges with the Koh-i-Baba
northwest of Kabul; eight to 10 passes in the eastern part of the Hindu Kush,
such as the Killik (4,755 meters) and Wakhjir (4,923 meters); and the
Baroghil (3,798 meters) and Kachin (5,639 meters) passes that join Chitral,
Pakistan, to the Wakhan Corridor. Other passes leading from Afghanistan to
Chitral are the Dorah (4,511 meters), Sad Eshtragh (5,319 meters), Agram An
(5,069 meters), and Afsik (3,749 meters). Several important passes are located
farther west-the Molla Khak (3,5