Afghanistan

Afghans derive cash revenue from trade routes to India and Pakistan. India is walled off from the rest of the world by nearly impassable mountain ranges. Two gates pierce through this wall, the Khyber and Bolan passes, both in Afghanistan and both occupied by Pashtun tribesmen. With only a threadbare economy of their own, Afghans exact tolls from travel and trade from Persia and Central Asia to India. Today, this takes the form of men armed with assault rifles blocking the road.

Afghanistan is too dry to grow crops. The mountains pull rain and snow from the sky and water the valleys, where farming is possible. The herdsmen in the hills and farmers in the valleys are two different cultures. A Pashtun proverb, “Honor ate up the mountains; taxes ate up the plains,” refers to costly vendettas in the hills and debt to Khans in the valleys. Occupying powers have always found the valleys compliant and the hill tribes intractable. If Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan, the British Empire, and the Red Army could not pacify the hill tribes, maybe we shouldn’t try.

Four big towns, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Kandahar, and Kabul, bracket the country. They are connected by a circular road built half by the Soviets, half by the United States in the 1960s. Like jealous suitors giving courtship gifts to the same woman, the super powers refused to connect the roads. The four cities are separated by the Hindu Kush Mountain Range, which makes it almost natural for the country to fall into autonomous kingdoms.

Three major ethnic groups dominate the country. The Pashtuns in the east founded the nation. Hundreds of years ago the king resettled Pashtuns in the other areas to establish control, so they can be found all over Afghanistan. Pashtuns, a warlike and libertarian people, consider Afghanistan to be a Pashtun kingdom and refuse to accept national leadership from other ethnic groups. Various ethnic groups of Persian descent and speaking Persian dialects form the next largest portion of the population. The Tajiks in the northeast are the largest and best organized of these groups. Third in numbers are Mongol-Turkish peoples in the northwest of the country, mostly Uzbeks and Turkmen, many of which descended from people who fled the Russian advance in Central Asia. Like the Hindu Kush Mountains, ethnic divisions make it easy for Afghanistan to break apart.