Afghanistan Become a Disney Travel Agent Near Me

This Central Asian country has started to rebuild after the fall of the repressive Taliban regime in November 2001. It is redefining its politics and alliances, and re-creating its physical infrastructure and society. But it still has a long way to go. Although little girls are once again allowed to attend school, many parts of the country remain lawless and outside central government control. Taliban and al-Qaida loyalists continue to kidnap and attack Westerners, though such instances are getting rarer. For now, most visitors to the country are likely to be soldiers, journalists and aid workers, but a few hardy tourists, and even a few tour groups, have ventured into the country.

More visitors are sure to follow, because Afghanistan has always been intriguing: It has a colorful history, rugged scenery, fascinating markets and a fiercely independent people. But with only a few lulls, war has raged there since the late 1970s. Always a remote destination, Afghanistan has become a desolate land struggling to find its place in the modern world.

Geography

History

From earliest recorded history, this part of Central Asia (which was known as Bactria in ancient times and as Khorasan in the Middle Ages) has been the target of migrating civilizations and cultures. A succession of invaders tried to rule the Bactrians, including Alexander the Great and armies of Buddhists and Muslims. Each conquering force left its mark on the land and its people, but each outside ruler was ultimately driven out. Afghanistan was later part of Persia but was split off by the British in 1857 as a buffer state against the southward expansion of the Russian Empire. But Britain, too, was unable to keep Afghanistan under its influence.

In the 20th century, it was the Soviets' turn. Although they used as many as 150,000 troops and all the tools of modern warfare, they ran into the brick-wall tenacity of Afghan guerrilla fighters (known as mujahideen) and the country's uncompromising terrain (mountain ranges soar as high as 25,000 ft/7,600 m; the average elevation is 5,000 ft/1,525 m).

After the pullout of the Red Army, the conflict turned into a bloody civil war when the many mujahideen factions turned on each other. After the fall of President Najibullah in 1992, two primary alliances battled for control of the country, one ethnically Tajik, one ethnically Pashtun and Uzbek. It was a third group, however—an armed militia known as the Taliban—that began turning the tide in its direction by 1996. (Taliban is Farsi for "students" or "seekers of the truth.") Ostensibly a group of Sunni Islamic students from religious schools in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban quickly captured large parts of the country, leading to a widespread belief that it received substantial support from Pakistan's government. By 2001, it controlled most of the country, though pockets of resistance, mostly in the ethnically Tajik Panshir valley, remained.

The Taliban's ultraconservative interpretation of Islam shocked many, both inside and outside the country. Following the Taliban's rise to power, public amputations and executions became commonplace, and women's rights became virtually nonexistent. The govenment's suspected support for terrorist groups—Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, in particular—brought about the current crisis. The terrorist attacks in the U.S. on 11 September 2001 have been linked to bin Laden's operatives. When the Taliban refused to hand over the radical leader and take other actions against bin Laden's group, the U.S. and a coalition of other nations began bombing targets inside Afghanistan. The Taliban surrendered within months. Now, following nationwide elections, Afghanistan has an elected president, Hamid Karzai, and a loya jirga(a Pashto phrase meaning "grand council"), which includes Afghanistan's long-deposed King Mohammad Zahir Shah. Meanwhile, U.S. antiterrorism forces continue to comb the country for al-Qaida operatives, who remain especially active in the southeast of the country.

Snapshot

Afghanistan's foremost attractions are mountainous scenery, nomadic culture, ancient ruins, the Khyber Pass and shopping. Add to those the often poignant debris of two decades of war.

Even in peacetime, Afghanistan is only for those who have traveled extensively in developing countries, who enjoy history, anthropology and archaeology, and who can tolerate high elevations. It has never been a place for those who expect punctuality, require deluxe accommodations or who abhor dusty or primitive conditions.

Potpourri

Buzkashi is a pololike sport played by dozens of players on horseback (primarily in the north, especially around Kunduz and Mazar-i-Sharif). It's fast-moving and somewhat dangerous. Originally, the head of an enemy was used in place of a ball—today, a goat's carcass serves the purpose.

Afghanistan is one of the largest opium-producing countries in the world. Most is refined and sold as heroin throughout the world.

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the U.S., Pakistan, Iran and Saudi Arabia armed and trained the mujaheddin insurgents and encouraged thousands of radical young men from all over the Islamic world to join the jihad, or holy war, against the Russians. These foreign rebels later became the basis of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, as well as many terror groups around the world, from Indonesia to Morocco.

Modern realities have shaped some of the nation's oldest traditions. Many of Afghanistan's new woven carpets include images of tanks, fighter planes and helicopters.

The trout fishing is excellent at the Salang Pass, north of Kabul. The pass also has one of the world's highest tunnels (11,000 ft/3,350 m), built by the Soviets to facilitate their control over the country.

Officially, more than 13,000 Soviet troops died in Afghanistan, and 35,000 were wounded. Recently released figures confirm that the death toll was exactly twice as high, at 26,000.

Zoroastrianism, whose central tenet is the belief in an eternal struggle between good and evil, was once one of the world's great religions. Based in the Afghan city of Balkh, the religion has influenced Hinduism, Judaism and Christianity.

Afghanistan has three main languages—Pashtun, spoken by the majority Pashtun people of south and east Afghanistan; Dari, a variant of Persian (Farsi) spoken by ethnic Tajiks in the northeast of the country; and Uzbek, a Turkic language spoken by the Uzbek minority in the west and north. The lingua franca is Dari, spoken by all educated Afghans.