The Republic of Afghanistan is a country situated between the Indian subcontinent, Soviet Central Asia, and the nations of the Middle East. Although it has no access to the sea, its location was central to the wars, migrations, and trade that dominated inner Asia until early modern times. It is bordered by Pakistan on the east and south, the \TUSSR\t on the north, Iran on the west and China in the extreme northeast. The \TUSSR\t occupied the country in 1979 on behalf of its Marxist government, which had seized power in a violent coup the previous year. The last Soviet forces withdrew in 1989, but Afghanistan remained in a state of civil war. LAND AND RESOURCES Afghanistan is dominated by rugged mountains and arid plains. Its central and eastern regions are covered by high mountain ranges centering on the \THindu Kush\t. The system spurs off from the Himalayas; many peaks in the extreme northeast reach more than 6,100 m (20,000 ft). Barren plains flank the mountain core to the north, west, and south. In the southwest the plains become deserts. Climate Afghanistan's dry, continental climate produces four distinct seasons and sharp contrasts in temperatures by day, by season, and by elevation. Winters bring snow followed by early spring rains. Summers are hot and dry. Autumns are moderate and also dry. Average annual rainfall is about 180 mm (7 in) and is rarely more than 380 mm (15 in) anywhere in the country. Drainage Afghanistan's major internal rivers rise in the central mountain core and flow outward generally in the four cardinal directions. Only the Kabul River, flowing east to join the Indus in Pakistan, reaches the sea. The largest is the Helmand, which runs south-southwest past \TKandahar\t to the swamps of Sistan on the Iranian border. The Hari Rud flows west past Herat, and the Kunduz north to meet the navigable \TAmu Darya\t (Oxus), which forms the northern border. After a heavy spate in the spring, the runoff of all the internal river is irregular and low. Vegetable and Animal Life Thin soil and a harsh climate limit natural life to the sturdiest strains. Tree cover is concentrated in the east where pine forests are common. Pistachio grows wild on the slopes of the hills of the north and northwest. Thin grasses briefly provide mountain grazing for nomadic herds in the spring and summer. Wildlife includes wolves, hyenas, foxes, leopards, gazelles, bears, and ibex. Resources Incompletely surveyed and only marginally exploited, Afghanistan's mineral resources offer considerable potential for development. There are major deposits of iron, chrome, copper, natural gas, and possibly of uranium. Soft coal is available at numerous sites, and recent surveys suggest that the country may have exploitable oil reserves. Lapis lazuli continues to be taken from ancient mines in the northeast. Timber harvest is restricted to the eastern mountains. There is considerable hydroelectric potential. PEOPLE Afghan society is a composite of primary family, village, and tribal units scattered within a mosaic of ethnic, linguistic, and regional communities. Millennia of conquests and folk movements have left remnants of all the peoples who have roamed inner Asia. The \TPathan\t (Pashtun) people form the dominant ethnic and linguistic community, accounting for just over half the population. Tribally organized, the Pathan are concentrated in the east and the south. As they gained control over the rest of the country in the 19th century, however, many of them settled in other areas too. The Dari- (Persian-) speaking \TTadzhik\t (Tajik) are the second largest community, accounting for approximately 20% of the population. They are strongly identified with sedentary farming and town life, mostly in the fertile eastern valleys north and south of the Hindu Kush. Some 11% of the population are Turkic, mostly \TUzbek\t and \TTurkmen\t, who live in the northern plains as farmers and herders. The central mountains yield a meager living to some 1.3 million Hazaras, a Mongoloid people who mostly speak Persian. There are many smaller communities, the most important of which are the Nuristanis of the high mountains of the east and the \TBaluch\t of the desert south. Virtually all Afghans are Muslim, and four-fifths of them are Sunni. A few thousand Hindus and Sikhs live as traders in the cities. Demography Population data are imprecise and incomplete; there has never been a census. The pre-1980 population was at least 90% rural. Most farmers lived in settled villages in the best watered valleys where the major rivers intersect the plains. Various forms of nomadic herding are practiced by as much as 20 percent of the population. The warfare that disrupted the country during the Soviet occupation forced some 5 million Afghans to become international refugees, mostly in Pakistan and Iran. Large tracts of the best agricultural land were systemically depopulated, and perhaps 1 million Afghans were killed. The major cities were also swollen with internal refugees fleeing from the fighting in the countryside. It is estimated that Kabul, the capital, doubled in size. The other major cities--Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-e-Sharif, Jalalabad, and Kunduz--also experienced sudden increases. The resettlement of the refugees, who began to return home in 1988, is to be coordinated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The massive task is complicated by continued civil war. Health Whereas endemic diseases such as malaria and cholera have been recently brought under control, effective medical care and public health services have been largely limited to the cities. The situation has been aggravated by warfare and the breakdown of central government control. The population is growing slowly, the high birth rate offset by very high infant and child mortality. Education Great expansion in education was accomplished between 1950 and 1973. Primary schools became accessible to more than half the school-age children, secondary schools were functioning in nearly all provincial towns, and the national university at Kabul offered increasingly sophisticated graduate-level programs. Despite this progress, made possible largely by assistance from many countries, 90% of the population remained illiterate. Following the Soviet invasion in 1979, education, especially in the rural areas, was devastated by the war; government schools and teachers were principal targets of the anti-Soviet resistance. THE ARTS Afghanistan has been a center of Persian, Indo-Greek, Buddhist, and Islamic cultures. Numerous archaeological sites of great potential significance await excavation. Among the architectural remains that have been excavated are the Buddhist monasteries at \TBamian\t and Hadda, the Ghaznavid palace complexes at Ghazni, and the Greek city at ai-Khanum. Herat was a major center of Persian culture from the 11th to the 16th centuries, renowned especially for the exquisite miniature painting patronized by the \TTimurids\t in the late 15th century. Carpet making remains the primary folk art. ECONOMIC ACTIVITY Modern economic change began in Afghanistan early in the 20th century with superficial efforts to expand trade, begin manufacture, improve transportation, and generate greater government revenue. Substantial development was initiated in the 1950s, mostly through foreign aid from the United States and the \TUSSR\t and, later, from Iran and the Persian Gulf states. After 1979 war destroyed much of the fruits of this development. Agriculture Afghanistan's economy is essentially agrarian. Wheat, the primary food grain, is grown mostly as an irrigated winter crop. Cotton is a major cash crop. Fruits, especially grapes and melons, are important seasonally. Skins, hides, and the fur of the karakul lamb are also exported. Agricultural output declined more than 50% between 1979 and 1988, however, and revival of the farming sector has been complicated by the destruction of irrigation canals and the presence of large numbers of unexploded land mines. Industry and Transportation Industrial development remains rudimentary and is largely restricted to agricultural processing. All-weather paved roads connect all major cities and the principal border points, and a network of airports connects nearly all of the provinces. Power production near Kabul has outrun industrial needs; parts of northern Afghanistan have been linked to the Soviet power grid. Substantial natural-gas exports to the \TUSSR\t largely ended before the Soviet withdrawal for fear of sabotage. HISTORY AND GOVERNMENT Afghanistan's crossroads position in Central Asia has subjected it to constant invasion and conquest throughout its long recorded history. The parade of conquerors in historic times includes \TDarius I\t of Persia in the 6th century BC; \TAlexander the Great\t in 328 BC; the Sakas (\TScythians\t), Parthians, and the Buddhist Kushans in the 2d and 1st centuries BC; and the Hephthalites, or White Huns, in the 5th and 6th centuries AD. The Arabs introduced \TIslam\t in the 7th century, and the Turks under \TMahmud of Ghazni\t briefly made Afghanistan the center of Islamic power and civilization at the beginning of the 11th century. The \TMongols\t invaded Afghanistan early in the 13th century, and \TTimur\t added it to his empire at the end of the 14th century. In the early 16th century, Timur's descendant \TBabur\t, first of the \TMoguls\t, founded an empire in India from his base at Kabul. During the 16th and 17th centuries some parts of the country owed allegiance to the Moguls, and others to the \TSafavids\t of Persia. In 1747 the Pathan, having thrown off the Persian yoke, established a dynasty of their own under Ahmad Shah Sadozai, the leader of a tribal confederation. Pathan strength was consolidated by Dost Muhammad Khan (r. 1826-63) who founded a second dynasty early in the 19th century. Effective physical control over all of the country, however, was first achieved by Dost Muhammad's grandson, Abdur Rahman Khan (r. 1880-1901); Abdur Rahman's diplomacy also prevented either the British or the Russian empires from gaining internal control over Afghanistan. Frustrated by their failure to subdue the country in the Anglo-Afghan wars of 1839-42 and 1878-80, the British agreed to subsidize an Afghan ruler strong enough to serve as a buffer between the empires. Abdur Rahman's grandson, Amanullah Shah (r. 1919-29), ended (1921) British involvement in Afghan affairs. He also initiated a series of ambitious efforts at social and political modernization, but tribal opposition forced him to flee the country. Zahir Shah ruled Afghanistan from 1933 to 1973. In 1964 he sponsored a serious attempt at liberal, Islamic constitutionalism including free elections and partial parliamentary democracy. When the experiment foundered, the king's cousin Mohammad Daud Khan seized power in a nearly bloodless coup and ruled as a republican president from 1973 to 1978. Zahir Shah went into exile in Europe. Daud was killed in a Marxist coup in April 1978. This brought the semiclandestine Marxist PDPA (People's Democratic party of Afghanistan) to sudden power under Nur Mohammad Taraki. Its brutal methods and impractically radical reforms in education and land and family law fomented a popular backlash, especially in the rural areas. Despite growing Soviet support, the regime was increasingly threatened by general revolt late in 1979. Its link with Moscow was weakened in September when Taraki was removed (and later killed) by his lieutenant, Hafizullah Amin. The \TUSSR\t intervened militarily in December 1979. Amin was executed and replaced by Babrak \TKarmal\t, who had been a long-time Marxist rival of Taraki and Amin. The Afghan government attempted to establish control over the country with the help of Soviet air and land forces and several thousand Soviet civilian advisors. After the Soviet invasion, popular opposition became a national resistance movement active throughout the whole of Afghanistan. After several years of fighting, the poorly-equipped mujahadin (Islamic warriors), aided by the United States and Pakistan, controlled most of the countryside. The movement remained, however, politically divided between rival claimants to leadership based in Pakistan. In 1986, with no end to the war in sight, Karmal stepped down and was replaced by Sayid Mohammad Najibullah, former head of the Afghan secret police. A United Nations human rights report in November 1986 reported that 10,000 to 12,000 Afghan civilians had been killed in the previous nine months by Soviet and Afghan government forces, and that children had been killed by the indiscriminate use of explosives disguised as toys. The "continuation of the military solution," the report said, "will lead to a situation approaching genocide." The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution in November 1986, by a vote of 122 to 20, calling for a negotiated settlement to the war. In January 1987, an international Islamic conference called on the Soviet Union to remove its troops from Afghanistan. Najibullah announced plans for a cease-fire on Jan. 1, 1987, and called on the mujahadin Moslem resistance forces to adhere to the armistice. But the seven associated mujahadin rebel groups rejected the cease-fire, saying they would negotiate only with the Soviet government--not with the Soviet "puppet government" in Kabul--for a complete withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan. During 1987, rebel forces were having increasing success in battle, partly because of substantial arms aid--such as ground-to-air Stinger missiles from the United States--and prospects for a military solution by the Soviets grew dimmer. In November 1987 Najibullah convened a nationwide gathering of tribal leaders that approved a new constitution and elected Najibullah president. Elections were held in April 1988 for a two-chamber National Assembly to replace the PDPA Revolutionary Committee that had governed the country since 1978. On Feb. 19, 1989, however, Najibullah declared a nationwide state of emergency and named a military council to rule until it was lifted. Accords signed in Geneva, Switzerland, in April 1988 set a timetable for the withdrawal of Soviet forces. Pakistan and Afghanistan agreed not to interfere in each other's affairs and to allow the return of millions of refugees. The \TUSSR\t and the United States were to serve as guarantors of the accords, and a United Nations negotiator was given a mandate to help the Afghans form a broad-based government. Half of the Soviet forces were withdrawn by Aug. 15, 1988, and the remainder left the country by Feb. 15, 1989. The politically divided mujahadin, who had not signed the accords, controlled the countryside but were unable to overthrow Najibullah, who ruled under a state of emergency from February 1989 to May 1990, when the constitution was amended to provide for multiple political parties. In June the PDPA was renamed the Homeland party. In September 1991 the United States and the Soviet Union reached an agreement on ending outside military aid to the warring factions, which nevertheless continued fighting into 1992. Richard S. Newell Bibliography: American University, Afghanistan: A Country Study, 5th ed. (1988); Arnold, Anthony, Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Perspective, 2d ed. (1985); Bonner, A., Among the Afghans (1987); Bradsher, Henry, Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, 2d rev. ed. (1985); Dupree, Louis, Afghanistan (1973); Giradet, Edward, Afghanistan: The Soviet War (1985); Goodwin, Jan, Caught in the Crossfire (1987); Gregorian, Vartan, The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan (1969); Gupta, B. S., Afghanistan (1986); Klass, R., ed., Afghanistan (1988); Laber, J., and Rubin, B. R., A Nation Is Dying (1988); Newell, Nancy P. and Richard S., The Struggle for Afghanistan (1981); Poullada, Leon, Reform and Rebellion in Afghanistan, 1919-1929 (1973); Saikal, A., and Maley, W., eds., The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan (1989); Urban, M., War in Afghanistan, (1988); Yengst, W. C., Afghan Retribution (1990).