Afghanistan 2003

Abstract

Afghanistan is a vast, predominantly mountainous country with an area of 647,500 km², approximately 12 times the size of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The archaeologist and anthropologist Louis Dupree called it ‘a harsh, brutal, beautiful land, dominated by the disembodied mountainous core of the Hindu Kush, the westernmost extension of the Karakorum Mountains, and the Himalayas, which push from the Pamir Knot into central Afghanistan in a general northeast-south-westerly trend to within one hundred miles of the Iranian border’ (1973: 1). Landlocked, it is bordered by Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China. (See Map 7.1) Because of its geo-strategic position, it has throughout its history been subject to violent attempts by both European and Asian powers to rule it. Moreover, because of its myriad tribes and ethnic groups, it has also suffered internal conflict.