Afghanistan Maps - From the Net
- Afghanistan - National Geographic
- Afghanistan Road Map French
- Afghanistan and Central Asia Ethnic Groups - Le Monde Diplomatique
- Afghanistan Ethnic Groups - BBC News
- Afghanistan and Pashtunistan - Afghanistan Online
- Arc of Instability - How the Gulf states line up (The Times, London)
- Afghanistan & Region - CNN
- Afghan Refugees - CNN
- The Battle for Kabul - London Times
Since Alexander The Great
- Afghanistan's Central Role In World History
( Franz Schurmann ) Since the time of Alexander the Great, Afghanistan has been the incubator of global visions. Throughout history, swarms of armed nomads have migrated south and west, mostly to move their herds, but sometimes for conquest as well.
In the mid-1950s, I spent a year-and-a-half roaming around Afghanistan with Japanese anthropologist Iwamura Shinobu in search of Afghanistan's "lost" Mongol tribe, descendants of Genghis Khan's armies. We not only found the tribe; we discovered that the force defining and energizing this remote and impoverished region was the long-distance migrating nomads. Full Article
Powerful cross-border bonds
( Daniel Lak ) Few borders in the world are more rugged than the Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It is not just the terrain - the people on either side are among the hardiest and fiercest warriors on the planet.
The border is named after Sir Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat who arbitrarily drew his pencil along a map in 1893, dividing British Indian territory from fiercely independent Afghanistan to the north and west.
To this day, neither Afghanistan nor the Pushtoon tribespeople on both sides of Durand's border recognise its existence. Full Article
A Brief History of Afghanistan
( Adib Rashad ) The struggles of 's peoples for social, political and conomic advancement has consistently been impaired by external and internal domination. Throughout Afghan history, every attempt to uplift the country and its people out of economic and social underdevelopment, to spread literacy and social reform, and to achieve genuine national independence has met with external and internal opposition.
The Indo-Aryans were the first people to have invaded the region around the seventeenth century B. C. They were followed by the Persians, who conquered the region in the sixth century B. C. Two centuries later, Alexander the Great invaded leaving several colonies which were under the control of his Greek soldiers. Their descendants built a semi-Greek culture in Bactria. Shortly afterwards, they were overwhelmed by a series of invaders from the central Asian steppes. Among these, the Kushans left the deepest mark. Their empire which included most northern India and Central Asia lasted close to 400 years. Full Article
