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History and Geography

Before beginning the women’s stories, this brief review of some highlights of Afghan history is intended to provide a contextual framework for their modern-day accounts. Many Americans may be familiar with recent Afghan history, but not its roots. For Afghans, both ancient and modern history inform their world view.

The history of Afghanistan is indeed a "his"-tory in that the historical record largely concerns men’s actions and achievements. Much of the record is a history of invasion, conquest, resistance, feuds, and war. However, a few shining female examples stand out.

The first is Rabia Balkhi,¹ a legendary poet who lived in the 10th century CE. Of royal birth, she fell in love with her brother’s slave. When her brother found out, he imprisoned her in a bathroom and cut her throat. She wrote her final poems on the bathroom wall with her own blood. The poems seen here and many others describe an idealized romance with love itself that permeates the Afghan character even today.

Another notable woman in Afghan history, Queen Goharshad, lived in Herat and commissioned a mosque and university complex there in the 13th century. During the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880), a commoner, Malalai of Maiwand, won fame by taking up the Afghan flag and leading discouraged soldiers back into battle.²

Rabia Qozdari, also known as Rabia Balkhi after the place of her birth, was the first female poet of the Islamic world. She was bilingual and wrote her poems in Arabic and Persian.

Two Poems by Rabia Balkhi

Love I am caught in Love's Web so deceitful None of my endeavors turn fruitful. I knew not when I rode the high-Blooded steed The harder I pulled its reins the less it would heed. Love is an ocean with such a vast space No wise man can swim it in any place. A true lover should be faithful till the end And face life's reprobated trend. When you see things hideous, fancy them neat; Eat poison but taste sugar sweet.

Love Your love caused me to be imprisoned again My effort to keep this love as a secret was in vain Love is a sea with the shores you cannot see And a wise [one] can never swim in such a sea.

Afghanistan’s location between Eastern and Western worlds, as well as Central and South Asia, factors into its turbulent history; both as an object of conquest and a buffer between rival empires and nations. In newsrooms, stories about the country are routed to the South Asia desk, to be grouped with India and Pakistan. Afghans are not Arabs, but descended from Aryans (the ancient peoples of India), Turkish tribes, and Central Asians. The ancestors of the Hazara are said to have come from the Xinjiang region of northwestern China and to be descendants of Genghis Khan and his followers.³

Pashtuns make up more than half the population. Tajiks, the same ethnicity as people of the independent nation and former Soviet state of Tajikistan, make up about one quarter, and the Hazaras and Uzbeks are each nine percent. Relatives of the Uzbeks inhabit the independent nation and former Soviet state of Uzbekistan.

Successive waves of invaders – Persians, Greeks, Huns, Turks, and Russians – have rolled across what is now known as Afghanistan throughout history, and its borders have fluctuated with such invasions.⁴ For convenience, I will refer to the modern area of Afghanistan as "Afghanistan" when describing its earlier history, although it did not gain its national identity until the mid-1700s.

In 628 BCE, Zoroaster⁵ introduced monotheism in Bactria (Balkh), an area in today’s northern Afghanistan. Alexander the Great conquered and ruled Afghanistan from 330-323 BCE. When Alexander’s armies moved on, some Greeks stayed behind to administer the territory. However, the Afghans were not subdued, and bloody revolts became commonplace. The city of Kandahar is named after a form of Alexander’s Greek name, "Iskandar."

Nomadic Kushans wrested control of Bactria from the Greeks in about 135 BCE, but adopted local customs and kept the Greek alphabet and coins. Buddhism was introduced around this time as well. In Bamyan, two giant Buddha statues, one 115 feet tall, and the second 180 feet, were carved between the second and third centuries CE. Arab Muslims captured the western city of Herat in 642 CE, and by 870 CE had conquered the rest of Afghanistan. It wasn’t until the 11th century, though, that the region completed its conversion to Islam.

After Mohammad died in 632 CE, Islam split into Sunni and Shia factions with the Sunnis more numerous throughout the Islamic world. Persia, our modern-day Iran, (which then included the western part of Afghanistan) under the Safavid empire formally adopted Shíism in 1501. Currently, 10-20% of Afghans are Shia.

Genghis Khan led Mongol invasions from 1219 to 1221, scorching the earth in various regions of Afghanistan including Bamyan, Herat, and Balkh.

Many Afghans are proud to claim the mystical Sufi poet, Mowlana Jalal ad-Din Mohammad ar Rumi⁶ (1207-1273) as one of their own. Known in the West as "Rumi" – actually a reference to the Turkish area where he lived and wrote – in Afghanistan he is sometimes called Al Balkhi, for his birthplace. At age nine, Rumi fled Balkh with his father because of the political and religious climate, and rumors of the coming Mongol invaders.

The Mogul Empire (1526-1707) was founded by Babur, a Turkicized prince descended from Genghis Khan. In its prime, the Empire controlled the eastern half of Afghanistan and most of India. Later, Moguls coming back westward from India brought an all-encompassing garment for women that eventually evolved into the modern-day burqa.⁷

By the early 1700s, the Persian Safavid empire (1501-1722) controlled much of western Afghanistan. In 1708, Mirwais Hotak (also called Mirwais Neeka and considered Afghanistan’s Grandfather) led Kandahari warriors to wrest control from the declining Persians and establish himself as prince of most of today’s southwestern Afghanistan.

In the mid-1700s, Ahmad Shah Durrani, aka Ahmad Shah Abdali, Ahmad Shah Baba, and the "Father of Afghanistan," gave birth to his country by conquering cities from Mashhad (in present day Iran) to Herat to Kabul, and down to Lahore (Pakistan) and Delhi (India). He used the fortunes he amassed to bind rival chiefs to his cause by giving them large shares of land and booty. His country became known as Yagestan, which means "Land of the Unruly." It was also called Khohistan, the "Land of Mountains," and later Afghanistan, the "Land of Afghans."

In 1813, the Russians and British began playing what Rudyard Kipling would call the "Great Game." The Russians, ruled by Catherine the Great of the Romanov dynasty, were expanding their empire southward. The British, concerned that the Russians would also expand into Persia (now Iran), thereby coming within striking distance of the British Indian Raj, the so-called "Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire," pushed northward. This struggle for control was not a war. "Occasional battles broke out, and a few massacres, an atrocity here and there, but the Great Game consisted mostly of plotting, pushing, conspiring, maneuvering, manipulating, politicking, bribing and corrupting people in the region mentioned."⁸

To balance the competing influences of the British, Soviets, and Germans in Afghanistan, King Habibullah Khan maintained a policy of neutrality during World War I, as did his successor, Zahir Shah, during World War II. Zahir Shah also signed a non-aggression treaty with Turkey, Iran, and Iraq in 1937.

Afghanistan’s current borders encompass about a quarter million square miles, 12-15% of it suitable for farming. Its western border abuts Iran. Its northern boundary follows the Amu Darya River, also known as the Oxus, opposite Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. The Wakhan Corridor, a "panhandle" extending to the east, dates from 1873, when Great Britain and the Russian Empire established it as a buffer between their opposing spheres. The corridor is roughly 140 miles (227 kilometers) east-to-west and between 10 and 40 miles (16-32 km) north-to-south. China lies along its eastern edge. South and east of Afghanistan is Pakistan, itself part of British-dominated India until 1947.

Afghanistan lies between the 38th and 27th parallels, as does the land between Washington, DC, and Key West, Florida, but altitude determines its climate to a greater extent. Kabul, at roughly 6000 feet (1829 meters) above sea level, has hot dry summers and cold snowy winters. In Kandahar and Herat, at elevations hovering around 3000 feet (914 m), average summer temperatures are over 100° F (38° C). Mazar-e Sharif, the lowest of the large provincial cities at 1240 feet (378 m), averages 102° F (39° C) in July. In Bamyan, not the coldest place in Afghanistan, winter temperatures have been recorded as low as -22° F (-30° C).

Before the series of wars that began in 1979, forests covered about 4.5% of Afghanistan, mostly in the east and southeast. By 2010, those forests of evergreens, oaks, poplars, hazelnuts, almonds, and pistachios had declined to 2.0%. The northern plains, with the country’s most fertile soil and rich crops of grain and fruit, fed the region and the nation before the wars.⁹ Ancient underground canals, or kariz, provide irrigation in the southwestern deserts for melons, wheat, grapes, and orchards of pomegranates and apricots. Dug by ancient peoples, karizha are cooperatively maintained by surrounding villages.

The steppes of the Wakhan Corridor are home to several endangered species,¹⁰ including snow leopards and the Argali sheep, more widely known in the West as Marco Polo Sheep, named by Europeans for the Great Explorer, who described them after he crossed into the country in 1273.¹¹ In 2008, breeding grounds of the rare large-billed reed warbler were discovered in the Corridor by researchers of the World Conservation Society.¹²

The 1950s and 1960s were a golden era for urban Afghan women. Photographs from that era¹³ show women with knee length skirts and uncovered heads, female professionals, as well as men and women talking together in public and going to movie theaters. Some women I interviewed remember these times.

By the mid-1950s, the Soviet-American rivalry known as the Cold War was in full swing and the US and the USSR were playing their own version of the "Great Game," as each tried to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. For example, both superpowers constructed road systems. In the mid-1960s, the Soviets built the mile-long Salang Tunnel at an altitude of over 10,000 feet (3048 m). The tunnel eliminated about 125 miles (201 km) from the very dangerous mountainous route between the Soviet border and Kabul. Soviet roads mostly connected their own border towns in the north with Kabul. American-built roads connected Kabul to Pakistan in the south and Iran in the west. The Soviets built a nitrogen fertilizer plant, an automobile repair facility, assorted factories, and a gas pipeline from the Afghan Shibarghan fields in the north to the Soviet border, and both sides were working to improve agriculture.

The US contracted with the Morrison-Knudsen¹⁴ company and the Afghan government to build the ill-fated Helmand Valley Project. Their plan was to "kindle economic development and bolster the Afghan-US bilateral relationship"¹⁵ by building two dams to control the flow of the Helmand River. They also built hydro-powered electrical plants and a system of canals to distribute water for agriculture.

Because of skyrocketing costs, the planned intensive ground water surveys were scrapped and the project rushed to completion. As a result, the two dams caused underground water to rise, bringing underground salt to the surface,¹⁶ ruining the already poor soil for farming. From 1946 through 1963, the project consumed 19% of the Afghan government’s budget, drained brains from other parts of the country, and slowed down economic growth overall. Its failure soured US-Afghan relations.

The USSR began to gain more political influence, and on July 17, 1973, while King Zahir Shah was in Italy, his cousin Daoud Khan seized power with Soviet backing and declared himself President and Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

The land reforms that followed (taking land from the rich and powerful and distributing it among the poor) along with modernization (forcing women out from under their burqas, forcing girls and boys to leave their villages to attend schools in the provincial cities) precipitated revolts and clashes throughout the country. The Marxists’ professed atheism added fuel to the fire and contributed to conservative backlash. What had been intended to help the poor was badly implemented, and the feudal order remained strong enough that people followed tribal leaders into rebellion against the government.

The Cold War competition dominated American foreign policy, and six months before the Soviet invasion, the US began covertly urging the mujahidin to rebel, intending to provoke the Soviets to invade and give them their own version of our Vietnam war.¹⁷

Kabulis and other educated people around the country, many of whom had jobs under the Soviet-backed regimes, supported the communists because they saw the programs addressing what they viewed as backwardness and inequities in their own society.¹⁸ But the Afghan communists, especially in Kabul, split into competing factions that imprisoned and murdered each other along with their rivals’ families and supporters. Between 1978 and 1992, several successive Soviet-backed presidents were assassinated at the behest of their successors. When the mujahidin took over Kabul in 1992, the last president standing, Mohammad Najibullah, fled to sanctuary in the UN compound. He lived there until 1996. The Taliban killed him that same year when they took Kabul.

To keep the Cold War cold, the Americans needed their support for the anti-communist partisans to be surreptitious. Once the Soviets invaded, American collaboration with Pakistan to arm the mujahidin began in earnest.¹⁹ Commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a fanatical Islamist and one of the world’s largest heroin dealers, received the lion’s share of US money and weapons.²⁰ Others of the strongest and most repressive warlords received funding as well, leaving moderate tribal leaders to fend for themselves.

Between one and two million Afghans were killed and thousands more imprisoned during the horrific Soviet occupation from 1979 to 1989. Soviet bombing raids demolished entire villages in retaliation for being, or based on the supposition of being, mujahidin hideouts. Most of the destruction occurred in rural areas and provincial cities.

In 1989, the Soviet Army withdrew and the US cut off military aid to its erstwhile Afghan allies. This left a power vacuum. Mujahidin who had worked together to fight the Soviets now went at each other’s throats over control of the country. A power-sharing agreement was reached, but soon fell apart, engulfing the country in civil war.

This war was concentrated in Kabul. The capital sits on a flat plain surrounded by hills. In effect, Burhanuddin Rabbani would station himself on one hill, Hekmatyar on another, and they would fire rockets at each other over the city. The majority of the missiles landed randomly in Kabul, but Hekmatyar also purposely targeted areas populated by Afghans who had worked for the Soviets. In addition, groups of fighters roamed the city, killing each other and anyone who got in their way. Women were routinely captured and raped or forced into marriage.

One story²¹ about the origins of the Taliban tells of an incident near Kandahar. Neighbors told Mullah Omar²², at the time a village mullah who ran a madrassa, that a nearby militia commander had abducted and raped two teenage girls. He led 30 talibs in an attack on the warlord’s base and captured a large supply of arms in addition to freeing the girls. A few months later, they rescued a young boy who was being fought over by two lusty commanders. However, their role of protecting women and children against evil-doers was short-lived.

In 1994, chaos reigned throughout the country while mujahidin rockets fell mostly on Kabul. By the end of that year, factions led by rival warlords had divided Kandahar. They stripped the city of anything of value, including copper wire and machinery; they stole anything that could be sold. The warlords seized homes and farms, robbed merchants, and kidnapped girls and boys to use for sex. Checkpoints operated by various factions, as well as independent bandits, lined the roads to shake down travelers.

This anarchy, and especially the roadblocks, became intolerable to the transport cartel that brought goods between foreign markets and those in Kandahar and Herat. The cartel paid Mullah Omar to rid them of the bandit plague that was shaking down truckers and other travelers. As a result, Mullah Omar’s Taliban attacked Hekmatyar’s base in the border town of Spin Baldak in October, 1994, and transferred control of that important truckstop to the cartel.

A medical supply convoy from Pakistan was robbed by other militia commanders later that month. Pakistan invited the Taliban to come to the rescue. After defeating the hijackers, the Taliban moved on to Kandahar, and within two days won control of the entire city. Among their spoils were tanks, transport helicopters, and several MIG aircraft left over from the Soviet occupation. The local people were very grateful to the "Robin Hoods" who rescued them from the feuding warlords’ rapacious grip. By December, 1994, 12,000 Afghan and Pakistani students had joined the Taliban, and within three months they had taken control in 12 of Afghanistan’s 31 provinces and seized the attention of the world.²³

Who were these talibs? In the beginning they were all children of the jihad. Some had lost their entire families and been invited to the madrassas²⁴ to study. Others had been born in refugee camps along the border. Madrassa representatives came to the camps, offering free schooling and room and board to young boys, pleasing parents whose sons then had a chance at education, while they had one less mouth to feed. From a very young age, talibs were sequestered from women and taught the Quran and Islamic law by fundamentalist teachers. Students learned that women are a temptation, a distraction from service to God. In many schools, boys were "educated" without having ever studied math, science, geography, or history. As a result, even as adults, their thinking was simplistic and puritanical, and they had no acquired trades or skills except for those who had learned how to fight.

The Taliban enjoyed popular support in the beginning. They brought peace and security to the war-drained citizens and imposed what they saw as the true Islam. In 1994, the people in the places they controlled were relieved to have the fighting end and order restored. Once the Taliban had captured a city, they left "good Muslims" behind to enforce their rules and moved on. They made decisions by consensus, sometimes after long debates. By 1996, however, as they neared their goal of controlling the entire country, they became increasingly dictatorial and inaccessible. As Mullah Omar’s power grew, he became more introverted and secretive, and his organization more ruthless and autocratic, like the communists, warlords, and mujahidin before them.

For the next several years, the Taliban fought different mujahidin commanders across the country. In September, 1996, the Taliban took Kabul. Eight months later, Pakistan recognized the Taliban government, even though it was still struggling to control parts of Afghanistan. In fact, while the Taliban were in power, they never controlled the entire nation. At their peak, only about 80-90% of Afghanistan was under their purview. Some areas never stopped fighting against them, especially where the Northern Alliance held sway.

When the Taliban took over Kabul, all girls’ schools were shut down and female teachers at boys’ schools were fired, resulting in the closure of many boys’ schools for lack of instructors. Men were given a mere six weeks to grow full beards. All festivities were restricted, including weddings and even Islamic feasts. Repressive, brutally enforced edicts were issued, banning women from most civic and public life and restricting them personally by disallowing the use of fashionable clothes, makeup, and even noisy shoes. The only country to stand up against the Taliban at that time was Iran.²⁵

Afghanistan’s annual production of opium from 1992-1995 ranged between 2000-3400 metric tons, according to the UN Drugs Control Program (UNDCP). By 1996, when the Taliban controlled most of the country, it was projected to be 2200 metric tons. It rose by 400 tons in 1997 and reached 4600 metric tons by 1999.²⁶

Initially, the Taliban proclaimed Islamic approval for opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) production, rationalizing that it was used by infidel foreigners and not by Muslim Afghans. Following this logic, they then banned marijuana (Cannabis sativa) cultivation; marijuana-derived hashish was a traditional intoxicant. Such intoxication, along with other festivities, was no longer permitted in the belief that it would distract Muslims from God. The 20% tax the Taliban levied on opium dealers helped fund their own expansion. By the end of 1997, opium-filled cargo planes were heading for Arabian Gulf ports. When Pakistan cracked down on heroin production on their side of the border, the labs moved into Afghanistan.²⁷

Once the Taliban controlled Kabul, they hungered for international recognition. Mullah Omar petitioned the UN and the US for recognition of the Taliban government in exchange for ending poppy cultivation. He was ignored.

The Northern Alliance held Afghanistan’s seat at the UN General Assembly. In a bid to strengthen their own claim of legitimacy, in July, 2000, the Taliban began to vigorously enforce a poppy ban. Pressure from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both heavy Taliban supporters, played a critical role as well in the decision to stop poppy cultivation.

The ban was amazingly successful. Within one season and with no outside help, opium production fell by 99%. Close local monitoring and eradication, as well as threats and the actual public punishment of both farmers and village elders who allowed poppy cultivation, all worked together to stop production.

However, only poppy cultivation was banned. Due to a glut on the market, the price of opium had dropped so low that huge amounts were stockpiled, awaiting the better price that was quickly generated by the ban. The Taliban taxed the transport of opium, not production, so trafficking continued to provide the bulk of their income.

The Taliban were also interested in making money from a proposed oil pipeline to run from Turkmenistan down the western edge of Afghanistan, through Pakistan, and on to the Arabian Gulf. Unocal, a California oil company, and an Argentine company, Bridas, competed for the concession. Unocal had the advantage because US and international recognition of the Taliban government, necessary for pipeline funding, would accompany its contract. US President Bill Clinton was about to grant that recognition until American feminists, moved by Afghan activists speaking out in America about the Taliban’s harshly misogynistic rule, cut him short.

However, the Taliban didn’t become America’s enemy until late 1997, when al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden met with the Taliban leadership and persuaded them of his world view. In 1998, the Taliban expressed a willingness to expel bin Laden in exchange for US recognition, but by 1999 that window had closed.

On October 7, 2001, the US and the "Coalition of the Willing" began to drive the majority of the Taliban into Pakistan, partly in retaliation for the infamous 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center and US Pentagon. The allies oversaw the establishment of a new civilian government. However, fighting continued in the southwest, and slowly the Taliban has re-infiltrated the country and is making a comeback. They are not the unified group they once were. In addition to new factions within the Taliban, independent but allied groups such as the Haqqani Network have gained prominence.

On December 5, 2001, Hamid Karzai became the US-backed president of the Afghan Transitional Administration. Karzai was welcomed by many Afghans because he didn’t have blood on his hands from the civil war. Urbane, fluent in six languages, and well-educated, he came from a prominent Pashtun family. His popularity eroded as he brought human rights-abusing former warlords into the government, was unable to control increasingly widespread corruption, and began to backpedal on women’s issues. He won two popular elections, although the second was contested due to irregularities. Karzai is still President as this book is being readied for publication in the summer of 2012.

When the history of twenty-first century Afghanistan is written, women will be seen to play a much bigger role. But perhaps the most important Afghan heroes will be the many unheralded mothers who bring up their children to respect women and value their importance.