Afghanistan: From Zahir to Taliban

 Here in America, where countries ending in -stan are associated with terror, depravity, sexism, and most of all, violence, any sort of culture and history beyond this is hard to fathom.  Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner helps us move past our pre-conceived notions about a country which was not even formally recognized by the United States until 1934, yet unearthing the historical context of the novel might enrich our understanding of both The Kite Runner and contemporary Afghanistan.           

For nearly half a century, Afghanistan was ruled by Zahir Shah.  Zahir Shah assumed power after his father was assassinated by a high school student in 1933.  He ruled until 1973, when power was wrested away by his brother-in-law, Mohammad Daoud, in a military coup.  The first half of Zahir Shah's reign was relatively peaceful.  Afghanistan remained neutral during World War II, and though both Coalition and Axis forces threatened to invade Afghanistan if the Afghans didn't co-operate, the Afghanis settled on a pragmatic solution when they expelled the non-diplomatic personnel of both belligerent nations.             

It was in the second half of Zahir's reign that his rule became complicated.  After the Second World War, while Great Britain was withdrawing from India, the lands of Pakistan were carved from both Indian and Afghani lands.  This land, called Pashtunistan, was considered by the Afghanis as occupied territory, and it became such a huge issue that it was used by Daoud later to garner support.  In an effort to reclaim its territory, Afghanistan asked for economic and military assistance from the United States in 1954, but was declined on the grounds that extending military aid to Afghanistan would create problems not offset by the strength it would generate.  Daoud, who had become Afghanistan's prime minister in 1953, was infuriated by the U.S.'s response and turned instead to the Soviet Union for aid.  The Russians were happy to oblige.

This left the door open for complications with the Soviet Union.  After Daoud seized power, conditions in the country started to deteriorate.  Then, in 1978, a scant five years after Daoud had seized power, his term as president of Afghanistan came to a bloody end as various communist members of his party organized a dangerous military coup de tat.  Nur Muhammad Taraki assumed control and signed a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union.

Over the next two years, there were mass killings all over Afghanistan as power changed hands between three different leaders, one only managing to hold onto it for three months.  Then, in December of 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.  Having given the Afghanis aid, the Russians decided a much more direct approach to helping the country was needed.  This is the Afghanistan of the middle part of the novel, when Amir and his father are fleeing from their country.

With the coming of the Soviets, the Mujahideen, or guerilla Afghanis, were born. These nationalist patriots didn’t want their country to be run by the Soviets.  Over the next ten years, violence and strife reigned as the Soviets and Mujahideen battled for the future of Afghanistan.  The UN watched impotently as atrocities were committed against the Afghani people, and when the Mujahideen finally defeated the Soviet Union in 1988, it was estimated that well over 40,000 people lost their lives on the Soviet side alone.  Peace accords were signed in Geneva, but the Mujahideen continued to fight the "puppet" government that was put in place by the Communists.  This is the Afghanistan that Hassan lived in after Amir and his father fled the country.

By 1992, the Mujahideen had taken Kabul by force, and although the UN protected the leader of the old government, the Mujahideen erected their own Islamic state, the Islamic Jihad Council, and held elections, in which Professor Burhannudin Rabbani was elected president.  Two years later, the Taliban militia was born, and two years after that, in 1996, Rabbani's government was ousted.  The Taliban began a fourteen year reign in which they have severely violated human rights, killed thousands of people, and committed atrocities against the world-community. Men were required wear beards, women were prohibited from working and forced to fully cover their faces with burkhas.  Religious minorities were forced to wear badges proclaiming that they were not Muslim.  This is the world that the character Amir must enter at the end of The Kite Runner. 

Is it right to denounce an entire country for the actions of one faction of radical religious zealots, even if those actions have led to some of the worse atrocities in the twenty-first century?  Khaled Hosseini obviously does not think so.  What The Kite Runner offers is a different perspective from which to view what has happened in Afghanistan and, more importantly, from which to understand the plight of the Afghani people.  

Sources

Quzi, A.  "Afghanistan History Parts Three and Four." Afghanistan Online. 1996-2008. http://www.afghan-web.com/history/

 Nojumi, Neamatollah.  The Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. New York: Palgrave, 2002.

 Bradsher, Henry S. Afghanistan and the Soviet Union. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 1983.

 Rasanayagam, Angelo.  Afghanistan: A Modern History. New York: Palgrave, 2003

--Bobby White