{"id":367,"date":"2022-01-21T20:08:01","date_gmt":"2022-01-22T01:08:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/?p=367"},"modified":"2022-01-21T20:08:04","modified_gmt":"2022-01-22T01:08:04","slug":"the-history-of-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/21\/the-history-of-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"The History of … Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The drama of the Afghanistan exit is behind us but there seems to be so many competing tribes and government factions still there.  Perhaps this is because of the many empires that have ruled this land over the millennia and its location at the crossroads of east and west. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The earliest civilization in Afghanistan consisted of the ancestors of the Pashtun people who today live in the south of Afghanistan.  The first empire to conquer and rule Afghanistan was the Persians from about the 6th<\/sup> century BC to the 4th<\/sup> century.  They brought the religion of Zoroastrianism which introduced the concept of one god to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alexander the Great of Greece came through next in the 4th<\/sup> century.  He built a city named after himself which is probably the current city of Kandahar.  He also built a fort at Bagram the site of the former US airbase.  The Greeks introduced their system of writing to the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Alexander died at the young age of 32, his empire slowly broke up.  Eventually, a more Greek-like empire called Bactria ruled in the north while Indian rulers came to power in the south.  They introduced Buddhism to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kushans from the north united the country by combining a Greek form of government with a type of Buddhism religion.  They ruled from about the 1st<\/sup> to the 3rd<\/sup> centuries during the height of wealth creation in Afghanistan through trade along the Silk Road. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time that Arabs arrived in the 7th<\/sup> century the Persians and Huns had both gained ground.  Eventually the Arabic alphabet became favored over the Greek and Islam gained a stronghold as the most favored religion.  Control shifted back locally quickly, given how far away the caliphate capital was in Baghdad.  For a brief period the Turks took control but fell to the Mongols who tore through the country killing an estimated million people in a week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mughals were the last Central Asian empire to rule Afghanistan before a tribal council, referred to as a Loya Jirga, was held by Pashtun elders in the mid-1700s.  They agreed to create a kingdom of Afghans which was another name for the Pashtuns.  They drove the last of the foreign rulers out of Afghanistan and fought against British invaders in the 1800s and early 1900s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the rest of the 1900s, part of Afghanistan was given to the new country of Pakistan, the Soviets invaded and fought for control of Afghanistan for a decade and the Taliban took hold in the south and spread.  The rest most of us know.  The Taliban let in other terrorists which eventually led to 911 and the US invasion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A long history of conflict, conquest and instability runs through Afghanistan.  If \u201cthe history of\u201d holds true there will be more in their future. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The drama of the Afghanistan exit is behind us but there seems to be so many competing tribes and government factions still there.  Perhaps this is because of the many empires that have ruled this land over the millennia and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p29EPY-5V","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":368,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.katecooch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}