Bijan Omrani | |
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 Bijan Omrani | |
| Born | 1979 York, England |
| Occupation | Writer, scholar, teacher |
| Nationality | British |
| Subject | Travel, Classical History, Afghanistan and Central Asia, Middle Eastern Current Affairs |
| Spouse | Samantha Knights KC |
| Website | |
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Bijan Omrani is a British historian, journalist, teacher, barrister and author of Persian descent. His work ranges from Classical scholarship to cultural and religious history, as well as current affairs across Asia.
Omrani was born in York, England, in 1979. He studied at the Wellington College, Berkshire before reading Classics and English Literature at Lincoln College, Oxford. He later studied at King's College London. He has a doctorate in Classics and Ancient History from the University of Exeter. [1]
Omrani is related to one of the British Army officers responsible for demarcating the northern boundary of Afghanistan in 1885 and surveying Afghan tribal territories in the North West Frontier Province, the artist and surveyor Lt Richard Eyles Galindo. [2]
His paternal family is from north-western Iran, and his maternal one from England, though with the British Empire in India in the 18th–19th century.
He is married to Samantha Knights KC, a barrister at Matrix Chambers.
Omrani taught Classics at Eton College and Westminster School where he contributed new Latin verse to school ceremonies. He was editor of the Asian Affairs journal from 2014-2022. He was called to the Bar in 2018. [3] He is an Honorary Associate Research Fellow in the department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Exeter. [4] He also lectures at the British Museum, Royal Society for Asian Affairs, SOAS, King's College London, and the Pakistan Society. He was a trustee (2018-23) of the Royal Society for Asian Affairs.
He is the author of several books, as well as a frequent contributor for specialised articles pertaining the Afghanistan-Pakistan border problems. His 2005 book on Afghanistan, co-authored with Matthew Leeming, was described in The Telegraph in 2022 as "one of the best books of any genre ever written about the country". [5] He has previously questioned the legal basis of the Durand Agreement but now he considers it to be valid but unsatisfactory, and that there is an urgent need for a wider regional solution to the problem perhaps based on a recognition of the line but combined with shared sovereignty in the neighbouring tribal areas.
Omrani was interviewed by France 24 in 2011 about the Afghan-Pakistani border problems, [6] and was also featured in The New York Times in 2011, after an incident on the Pakistani border. [7]
His 2017 book, Caesar's Footprints: Journeys to Roman Gaul, has the distinction of being endorsed both by the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, [8] as well as the French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe, who took the book to read whilst on the road campaigning during the European Elections in May 2019. [9] Omrani was interviewed about the book on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme after its UK launch in June 2017. [10] The book was shortlisted in 2018 for the American Library in Paris Book Award, for "the most distinguished book of the year, written and published in English, about France or the French."
He is a regular contributor to the Literary Review, [11] The Critic, [12] and The Oldie. [13] In public debates has critiqued the notion of cultural appropriation. [14] [15]
In 2021, Omrani led a successful campaign to keep the National Trust property Shute Barton open to the public. [16] [17]
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South 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 capital and largest city. Afghanistan's population is about 35 million.
Abdur Rahman Khan also known by his epithet, The Iron Amir, was Amir of Afghanistan from 1880 to his death in 1901. He is known for perpetrating the Hazara Genocide, but also uniting the country after years of internal fighting and negotiation of the Durand Line Agreement with British India.
The history of Afghanistan includes the complete history of the modern-day nation of Afghanistan, from prehistory up to the establishment of the Emirate of Afghanistan in 1823 and to the present time. This history is largely shared with that of Central Asia, Persia, and the Indian subcontinent.
The Islamic Republic of Pakistan emerged as an independent country through the partition of India in August 1947 and was admitted as a United Nations member state in September 1947. It is currently the second-largest country within the Muslim world in terms of population, and is also the only Muslim-majority country in possession of nuclear weapons. De facto, the country shares direct land borders with India, Iran, Afghanistan, and China.
Pashtunistan or Pakhtunistan is a historical region on the crossroads of Central and South Asia, located on the Iranian Plateau, inhabited by the Pashtun people of southern and eastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, wherein Pashtun culture, the Pashto language, and identity have been based. Alternative names historically used for the region include Pashtūnkhwā or Pakhtūnkhwā (پښتونخوا), Pathānistān, or simply the Pashtun Belt.
The Soviet–Afghan War took place in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from December 1979 to February 1989. Marking the beginning of the protracted Afghan conflict, it saw the Soviet Union and the Afghan military fight against the rebelling Afghan mujahideen. While they were backed by various countries and organizations, the majority of the mujahideen's support came from Pakistan, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Iran, and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, in addition to a large influx of foreign fighters known as the Afghan Arabs. American and British involvement on the side of the mujahideen escalated the Cold War, ending a short period of relaxed Soviet Union–United States relations. Combat took place throughout the 1980s, mostly in the Afghan countryside, as most of the country's cities remained under Soviet control. The conflict resulted in the deaths of one to three million Afghans, while millions more fled from the country as refugees; most externally displaced Afghans sought refuge in Pakistan and in Iran. Between 6.5 and 11.5% of Afghanistan's erstwhile population of 13.5 million people is estimated to have been killed over the course of the Soviet–Afghan War. The decade-long confrontation between the mujahideen and the Soviet and Afghan militaries inflicted grave destruction throughout Afghanistan and has also been cited by scholars as a significant factor that contributed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991; it is for this reason that the conflict is sometimes referred to as "the Soviet Union's Vietnam" in retrospective analyses.
The Great Game was a rivalry between the 19th-century British and Russian empires over influence in Central Asia, primarily in Afghanistan, Persia, and Tibet. The two colonial empires used military interventions and diplomatic negotiations to acquire and redefine territories in Central and South Asia. Russia conquered Turkestan, and Britain expanded and set the borders of British India. By the early 20th century, a line of independent states, tribes, and monarchies from the shore of the Caspian Sea to the Eastern Himalayas were made into protectorates and territories of the two empires.
The Durand Line, also known as the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, is a 2,640-kilometre (1,640 mi) international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in South Asia. The western end runs to the border with Iran and the eastern end to the border with China.
Strategic depth is a term in military literature that broadly refers to the distances between the front lines or battle sectors and the combatants' industrial core areas, capital cities, heartlands, and other key centers of population or military production.
Sir Henry Mortimer Durand, was a British diplomat and member of the Indian Civil Service. He is best-known as the namesake for the Durand Line, which serves as the international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Islam is the largest religion practiced in Kazakhstan, with estimates of about 74% of the country's population being Muslim. Ethnic Kazakhs are predominantly Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school. There are also small numbers of Shias. Geographically speaking, Kazakhstan is the northernmost Muslim-majority country in the world, and the largest in terms of land area. Kazakhs make up over half of the total population, and other ethnic groups of Muslim background include Uzbeks, Uyghurs and Tatars. Islam first arrived on the southern edges of the region in the 8th century from Arabs. According to the Constitution, The Republic of Kazakhstan proclaims itself as a democratic, secular, legal and social state whose highest values are a person, his life, rights, and freedoms.
In the late 1990s, some journalists used the expression "New Great Game" to describe what they proposed was a renewed geopolitical interest in Central Asia based on the mineral wealth of the region.
A series of occasional armed skirmishes and firefights have occurred along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border between the Afghan Armed Forces and the Pakistan Armed Forces since 1949. The latest round of hostilities between the two countries began in April 2007. Militants belonging to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar also use Afghanistan's territory to target Pakistani security personnel deployed along the border. The Diplomat says that the presence of terrorists belonging to Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan on Taliban Afghanistan and Pakistan soil is the reason for sporadic shelling of Afghanistan's territory by Pakistani security forces.
The Emirate of Afghanistan, known as the Emirate of Kabul until 1855, was an emirate in Central Asia and South Asia that encompassed present-day Afghanistan and parts of present-day Pakistan. The emirate emerged from the Durrani Empire, when Dost Mohammad Khan, the founder of the Barakzai dynasty in Kabul, prevailed.
Afghanistan and Pakistan are neighboring countries. In August 1947, the partition of British India led to the emergence of Pakistan along Afghanistan's eastern frontier; Afghanistan was the sole country to vote against Pakistan's admission into the United Nations following the latter's independence. Territorial disputes along the widely known "Durand Line" and conflicting claims prevented the normalization of bilateral ties between the countries throughout the mid-20th century. Afghan territorial claims over Pashtun-majority areas that are in Pakistan were coupled with discontent over the permanency of the Durand Line which has long been considered the international border by every nation other than Afghanistan, and for which Afghanistan demanded a renegotiation, with the aim of having it shifted eastward to the Indus River. During the Taliban insurgency, the Taliban has received substantial financial and logistical backing from Pakistan, which remains a significant source of support. Nonetheless, Pakistan's support for the Taliban is not without risks, as it involves playing a precarious and delicate game. Further Afghanistan–Pakistan tensions have arisen concerning a variety of issues, including the Afghan conflict and Afghan refugees in Pakistan and water-sharing rights but most of all the Taliban government in Afghanistan providing sanctuary and safe havens to Pakistani Taliban terrorists to attack Pakistani territory. Border tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan have escalated to an unprecedented degree following recent instances of violence along the border. The Durand Line witnesses frequent occurrences of suicide bombings, airstrikes, or street battles on an almost daily basis. The Taliban-led Afghan government has also accused Pakistan of undermining relations between Afghanistan and China and creating discord between the neighbouring countries.
Relations between Afghanistan and Russia first emerged in the 19th century. At the time they were placed in the context of "The Great Game", Russian–British confrontations over Afghanistan from 1840 to 1907. The Soviet Union was the first country to establish diplomatic relations with Afghanistan following the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919. On 28 February 1921, Afghanistan and the Soviet Russia signed a Friendship Treaty. The Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan against the Basmachi movement in 1929 and 1930.
Karl Winfrid Eikenberry is a retired United States Army lieutenant general who served as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from April 2009 to July 2011. From 2011 to 2019, he was the director of the U.S. Asia Security Initiative at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and a Stanford University professor of the practice; a member of the core faculty at the Center for International Security and Cooperation; and an affiliated faculty member at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, and the Europe Center.
Florentia Sale, Lady Sale was an Englishwoman who travelled the world while married to her husband, Sir Robert Henry Sale, a British army officer. She was dubbed "the Grenadier in Petticoats" for her travels with the army, which took her to regions such as Mauritius, Burma, Afghanistan, India, and various other areas under the control of the British Empire.
This is a list of books in the English language which deal with Afghanistan and its geography, history, inhabitants, culture, biota, etc.
Hassan Abbas is a Pakistani-American scholar and academic in the field of South Asian and Middle Eastern studies. His research focuses have been on security issues pertaining to governance, law enforcement and counterterrorism. Abbas worked in the governments of Benazir Bhutto (1994–1996) and Musharraf (1999–2001). He currently resides in the US.
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