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Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan to the northeast, and China to the northeast and east. Occupying 652,864 square kilometers (252,072 sq mi) of land, the country is predominantly mountainous with plains in the north and the southwest, which are separated by the Hindu Kush mountain range. Kabul is the country's largest city and serves as its capital. According to the World Population review, as of 2023, Afghanistan's population is 43 million. The National Statistics Information Authority of Afghanistan estimated the population to be 32.9 million as of 2020.
Ahmad Shah Massoud was an Afghan military leader and politician. He was a guerrilla commander during the resistance against the Soviet occupation during the Soviet–Afghan War from 1979 to 1989. In the 1990s, he led the government's military wing against rival militias; after the Taliban takeover, he was the leading opposition commander against their regime until his assassination in 2001.
The history of Afghanistan, preceding the establishment of the Emirate of Afghanistan in 1823 is shared with that of neighbouring Iran, Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The Sadozai monarchy ruled the Afghan Durrani Empire, considered the founding state of modern Afghanistan.
The music of Afghanistan comprises many varieties of classical music, folk music, and modern popular music. Afghanistan has a rich musical heritage and features a mix of Persian melodies, Indian compositional principles, and sounds from ethnic groups such as the Pashtuns, Tajiks and Hazaras. Instruments used range from Indian tablas to long-necked lutes. Afghanistan's classical music is closely related to Hindustani classical music while sourcing much of its lyrics directly from classical Persian poetry such as Mawlana Balkhi (Rumi) and the Iranian tradition indigenous to central Asia. Lyrics throughout most of Afghanistan are typically in Dari (Persian) and Pashto. The multi-ethnic city of Kabul has long been the regional cultural capital, but outsiders have tended to focus on the city of Herat, which is home to traditions more closely related to Iranian music than in the rest of the country.
Mohammad Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai is an Afghan former politician, academic, and economist who served as the president of Afghanistan from September 2014 until August 2021, when his government was overthrown by the Taliban.
Kabul University is one of the major and oldest institutions of higher education in Afghanistan. It is in the 3rd District of the capital Kabul, near the Ministry of Higher Education. It was founded in 1931 by King Mohammed Nadir Shah, whose prime minister at the time was his younger brother, Sardar Mohammad Hashim Khan.
Ahmad Zahir was an Afghan singer, songwriter and composer. Dubbed the "Elvis of Afghanistan", he is widely considered the all-time greatest singer of Afghanistan. The majority of his songs were in Dari followed by Pashto, with a few in Russian, Hindi and English.
Jamayat-E-Islami, sometimes shortened to Jamiat, is a predominantly Tajik political party and former paramilitary organisation in Afghanistan. It is the oldest and largest functioning political party in Afghanistan, and was originally formed as a student political society at Kabul University. It has a communitarian ideology based on Islamic law. During the Soviet–Afghan War and the following Afghan Civil War against the communist government, Jamiat-e Islami was one of the most powerful of the Afghan mujahideen groups. Burhanuddin Rabbani led the party from 1968 to 2011, and served as President of the Islamic State of Afghanistan from 1992 to 2001, in exile from 1996.
The Northern Alliance, officially known as the United Islamic National Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, was a military alliance of groups that operated between early 1992 and 2001 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. At that time, many non-Pashtun Northerners originally with the Republic of Afghanistan led by Mohammad Najibullah became disaffected with Pashtun Khalqist Afghan Army officers holding control over non-Pashtun militias in the North. Defectors such as Rashid Dostum and Abdul Momim allied with Ahmad Shah Massoud and Ali Mazari forming the Northern Alliance. The alliance's capture of Mazar-i-Sharif and more importantly the supplies kept there crippled the Afghan military and began the end of Najibullah's government. Following the collapse of Najibullah's government the Alliance would fall with a Second Civil War breaking out however following the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan's (Taliban) takeover of Kabul, The United Front was reassembled.
Ahmad Zia Massoud is an Afghan politician who was the vice president of Afghanistan in the first elected administration of President Hamid Karzai, from December 2004 to November 2009. He is a younger brother of the late Ahmad Shah Massoud, the resistance leader against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and against the Taliban. In late 2011, Ahmad Zia Massoud joined hands with major leaders in the National Front of Afghanistan, which strongly opposed a return of the Taliban to power. The National Front was generally regarded as a reformation of the United Front which with U.S. air support temporarily removed the Taliban from power in late 2001.
TOLO is a commercial television station operated by MOBY Group in Afghanistan. Launched in 2004, it became one of the first commercial stations in the country and laid the foundation for an accessible media outlet by offering a large library of shows. It is one of the most popular television channels in Afghanistan and broadcasts shows in both Dari-Persian and Pashto.
The 1996–2001 Afghan Civil War, also known as the Third Afghan Civil War, took place between the Taliban's conquest of Kabul and their establishing of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan on 27 September 1996, and the US and UK invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001: a period that was part of the Afghan Civil War that had started in 1989, and also part of the war in Afghanistan that had started in 1978.
Abdullah Abdullah is a Pashtun Afghan politician who led the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR) from May 2020 until August 2021, when the Afghan government was overthrown by the Taliban. The council had been established to facilitate peace talks between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taliban insurgents. Abdullah served as the Chief Executive of Afghanistan from September 2014 to March 2020, and as Minister of Foreign Affairs from December 2001 to April 2005. Prior to that, he was a senior member of the Northern Alliance, working as an adviser to Ahmad Shah Massoud. He worked as an ophthalmologist and medical doctor in the 1980s.
The Afghan Youth Orchestra is a youth orchestra, that was based in Afghanistan. It was founded by the Afghanistan National Institute of Music under the Ministry of Education. In 2013, the orchestra travelled to Carnegie Hall to perform for an American audience with the aim of spreading peace. After the Taliban takeover in 2021, the Afghan Youth Orchestra and its parent institute is relocated to Portugal.
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The Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) is a school of music in Kabul, Afghanistan. It was founded in 2010 by the Afghan-Australian ethnomusicologist Dr. Ahmad Naser Sarmast, and offers a curriculum combining the tuition of both Afghan and Western music. ANIM is a co-educational institute.
Negin Khpalwak is a female conductor leading the Zohra - the first all-female orchestra in Afghanistan from Afghanistan National Institute for Music. On February, 2017, the orchestra played at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The Zohra Orchestra, also known as the Afghan Women's Orchestra and Ensemble Zohra, is Afghanistan's first all-female orchestra, named after the music goddess in Persian writings. Founded in 2015, it has been in exile since the 2021 seizure of Kabul by the Taliban.
The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was a presidential republic that ruled Afghanistan from 2004 to 2021. The state was established to replace the Afghan interim (2001–2002) and transitional (2002–2004) administrations, which were formed after the 2001 United States invasion of Afghanistan that had toppled the partially recognized Taliban-ruled Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. However, on 15 August 2021, the country was recaptured by the Taliban, which marked the end of the 2001–2021 war, the longest war in US history. This led to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, led by President Ashraf Ghani, and the reinstatement of the Islamic Emirate under the control of the Taliban. While the United Nations still recognizes the Islamic Republic as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, this toppled regime controls no portion of the country today, nor does it operate in exile; it effectively no longer exists. The Islamic Emirate is the de facto ruling government. The US–Taliban deal, signed on 29 February 2020 in Qatar, was one of the critical events that caused the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Following the deal, the US dramatically reduced the number of air attacks and deprived the ANSF of a critical edge in fighting the Taliban insurgency, leading to the Taliban takeover of Kabul.
References
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 " "Music making comeback in Afghanistan". Arab News. 27 January 2013.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Rasmussen 2015.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Gallagher.
- 1 2 3 Nakano 2012.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Scherer 2013.
- ↑ "Dr Sarmast's Music School". Al Jazeera. 17 January 2013.
- 1 2 3 4 5 6 Bezhan 2015.
- 1 2 3 Ross 2013.
- ↑ Ryan 2015.
- ↑ Coren 2012.
- ↑ Khalil 2015.
- 1 2 "The Afghanistan National Institute of Music". Polar Music Prize. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
