Country Profile: Afghanistan

Official name: Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

Land area: 251,773 sq mi/652,090 sq km

Population: 34,443,000

Official language: Pashto and Dari

Dominant religion: Islam

Capital: Kabul

Current leader: Hamid Karzai

Afghanistan is a landlocked country located in southwestern Asia. Its landscape is mostly defined by towering mountains, scorching deserts, fertile valleys, and rolling plains. It is bordered by Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan to the north, China to the far northeast, Pakistan to the east and south, and Iran to the west.

Due mostly to centuries of nearly non-stop warfare and political instability, Afghanistan is one of the world’s least developed countries. Nearly 80 percent of the country’s 34.4 million people live in rural areas, using old-fashioned farming tools and methods to work farms. Most of the population, especially in rural areas, continues to live in traditional mud-brick dwellings.

Kabul is the capital and, with a population of roughly 2.6 million, the largest city.

Afghanistan is home to some 20 ethnic groups, most of which are further divided into several tribes with their own distinct languages and culture. Many of the country’s tribes, especially those residing deep in the countryside faraway from Kabul, live with little or no intervention or overseeing by the central government and have their own laws completely independent of government authority. Most Afghans feel greater loyalty to their ethnic group or tribe than to their own country and deep ethnic divisions are another factor in the difficulty Afghanistan has had becoming a unified, modern nation.

The Pashtuns and Tajiks are the largest ethnic groups, making up over 60 percent of the population. Most Pashtuns live in the southeast, along the Pakistan border and generally have greater loyalty to Pakistan than to their own country. Most Tajiks live the northeastern part of the country.

Afghanistan is made up of three main land regions, the Northern Plains, the Central Plains and the Southwestern Lowlands.

Afghanistan’s history is plagued by political instability, warfare and foreign interference. The Persians, Greeks and Mongols have occupied the region at one time or another while the British and the former Soviet Union have both tried to occupy the country. The period from its independence in August 1919 to the 1990’s were marked constant political turmoil and assassinations as well as a long and bloody war with the Soviet Union, which sought to make Afghanistan a communist puppet.

But the country experienced perhaps its darkest moment in the 20th Century under Taliban rule. With its very strict and rigid interpretation of Islam, the Taliban imposed harsh rule over the country. Women were denied almost all basic human rights and were subject to the death penalty for even the most minor infractions such as being outside the home without a male relative. The Taliban’s harsh rule brought Afghanistan near-isolation. Only three countries – Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia – recognized the Taliban’s rule in Afghanistan. The Taliban allowed many terrorist groups, including Al Qaida, to use the country as headquarters and training. In 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States, assistance by the Northern Alliance which had already been locked in a long campaign against the Taliban, drove the Taliban from power. Although no longer holding power, the Taliban continues to carry out terrorist attacks the government and U.S. troops based in the country.

In October 2004, under a new constitution, the country held its first democratic election in which Hamid Karzai, who had already served two years as interim president following the removal of the Taliban from power, won a full term as president.