Facts on File, 2007. - 320 pages.
Explores the history and culture of Afghanistan from prehistoric times through its current events, covering the political, cultural, and economic changes the country has undergone over the years.
By the late 20th century, the world agreed on a simple standard to judge whether a territorial unit was a country: full membership in the United Nations. Afghanistan easily passes that bar; it is almost a charter member, having joined in 1946, a scant year after the world body was formed. By that standard, it has remained independent ever since, despite periods of foreign control.
A more difficult question is whether the lands enclosed by Afghanistan’s borders now constitute, or can soon develop into, a viable, unified state. In some ways, the country just does not make
sense.
Afghanistan is not unified in any ethnic or linguistic sense, like Italy or Japan is. Many of its dozens of ethnic groups have long histories of conflict and enmity with one another. Many, in fact, had more in common up to the recent past with their fellow ethnics across inteational borders than with their fellow Afghans across the country — or across the street in the major cities.
Explores the history and culture of Afghanistan from prehistoric times through its current events, covering the political, cultural, and economic changes the country has undergone over the years.
By the late 20th century, the world agreed on a simple standard to judge whether a territorial unit was a country: full membership in the United Nations. Afghanistan easily passes that bar; it is almost a charter member, having joined in 1946, a scant year after the world body was formed. By that standard, it has remained independent ever since, despite periods of foreign control.
A more difficult question is whether the lands enclosed by Afghanistan’s borders now constitute, or can soon develop into, a viable, unified state. In some ways, the country just does not make
sense.
Afghanistan is not unified in any ethnic or linguistic sense, like Italy or Japan is. Many of its dozens of ethnic groups have long histories of conflict and enmity with one another. Many, in fact, had more in common up to the recent past with their fellow ethnics across inteational borders than with their fellow Afghans across the country — or across the street in the major cities.