RUSSIA’S WAR IN AFGHANISTAN pdf download

Russia’s War in Afghanistan

RUSSIA’S WAR IN AFGHANISTAN

No one since Alexander the Great has conquered Afghanistan. No conqueror could ever extract enough advantage from its occupation, either strategically or economically, to make it worth having to defeat the Afghans.

 There were about 15.5 million Afghans before the 1979 invasion. The population is divided between the Pashto-speaking Pathans of the east and south (42 per cent of the population) and the Dari-speaking Tadjiks of the north and west (23 per cent), as well as Mongol- descended Hazaras, Kuchi and Aimaq nomads, Persians, Baluchis, Turkic-speaking Uzbeks and Turkomen, many of them refugees or children of refugees from Stalin’s Russia, and the Nuristanis— an ancient people of unknown origin.

While these peoples have cultures many centuries old, Afghanistan as a nation is young, established in the capital of Kabul only in 1747 by the first Pathan king, Ahmad Shah Durrani.

Yet Afghanistan was always politically decentralized, due both to its predominantly mountainous or desert terrain, poor communications (in 1979, there were no railroads and a limited paved road network), and to the wishes of its people.

Traditional authority— decision-making by meeting (jirga), and the local khan, malik, or mullah (headman, chief, or religious teacher)—remains strong outside the cities.