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Malachi Smith's List: AFGHANISTAN

US to take over Afghan mission 2009 - Times Online

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barry-mccaffrey report pentagon nato afghanistan unified-command american-surge us-military combat-brigades 2009 reinforcements canada british dutch troops taliban on 2008-08-18 and saved by 2 people
- From The Sunday Times
- August 17, 2008
- 12 more annotations...
- - US to take over Afghan mission
  - Michael Smith and Sarah Baxter
  - The United States is planning to take control of all military operations in
    Afghanistan next year with an Iraq-style troop surge after becoming
    frustrated at Nato’s failure to defeat the Taliban.
  - Plans are being drawn up to send as many as 15,000 extra troops to Afghanistan
    with a single US general always in command, as in Iraq, defence sources said.
  - The Pentagon is also pushing for a permanent “unified command” in the south of
    the country that would sideline the Dutch and the Canadians.
  - At present, control of the south is rotated between the British, Dutch and
    Canadians, the three countries that provide the bulk of the troops.
  - From October next year, when the UK will take over from the Dutch, command of
    the south is expected to alternate between the British and the Americans.
  - Although final decisions cannot be made until the new US administration takes
    over in January, plans are being drawn up to send two to three US combat
    brigades – a total of between 8,000 and 12,000 men, the sources said.
  - Lawrence Korb, a defence expert at the Centre for American Progress, a
    Democratic think tank in Washington, said: “There is no doubt that the US
    wants to change the command structure as things have deteriorated in
    Afghanistan.”
  - Both Barack Obama, the Democrat presidential candidate, and John McCain, his
    Republican opponent, have spoken of using “two to three [combat] brigades
    for the surge, amounting to 8,000-12,000 troops”, Korb said. “There will be
    a US general and the forces will be under US command.”
  - The surge will also see US and other coalition special forces, which operate
    separately from the Nato command, absorbed into a single US command for the
    whole of Afghanistan.
  - A report written by Barry McCaffrey, a retired US general, that is highly
    critical of the command structure in Afghanistan is circulating at senior
    levels within the Pentagon. “There is no unity of command in Afghanistan,”
    it says.
RussiaToday : News : US to invade Iran any day now?

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evgeny-belenkiy iran afghanistan russia georgia usa american-troops us-military battle-tanks pakistan izvestia antonov-124 ruslan cargo-planes delivery george-bush saakashvili on 2008-09-13
- September 12, 2008, 9:50
- US to invade Iran any day now?
- 19 more annotations...
- - A few weeks ago the Russian newspaper Izvestia, a well-known and authoritive daily published nationwide and abroad, came forward with something that would have been looked upon as a conspiracy theory if published by a tabloid.
  - The paper suggested that by attacking South Ossetia, the Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili had badly damaged a planned U.S. military operation against Iran.
  - In the newspaper's opinion Georgia was supposed to play the role of another "unsinkable aircraft carrier" for the U.S., i.e. an operational and tactical base for U.S.
    
    aircraft that would be making bombing raids into Iran. Something akin to what Thailand was in the Vietnam war.
  - Thailand certainly benefited from the arrangement, and Georgia would have too, insists the paper, if its President hadn't put his ambitions above the US national interest and ended up beaten, disarmed, chewing on his neckties and totally incapable of providing whatever the U.S. needs from him.
  - That's why, according to Izvestia in yet another article on the matter, the U.S. response to the Russian retaliation was harsh in words but very mild in action.
  - The latest on the issue suggests that Mikhail Saakashvili may be replaced any day now by direct order from Washington.
  - Having read the story in Izvestia I decided to try to figure out the extent of improbability and impossibility of the assumptions.
  - As I was doing that, I remembered that early in August CNN had started showing U.S. generals who cried for more troops and hardware for Afghanistan which, in their opinion, was rapidly becoming a more intensive conflict than Iraq.
  - Shortly after that, a phone call came from a college friend who had just come back from Kandahar in Afghanistan, where he had seen American battle tanks being unloaded from a Ukrainian-registered Antonov-124 "Ruslan", the heaviest and largest cargo airplane in the world.
    
    Add Sticky Note
  - The friend asked if I had any idea what tanks would be good for in Afghanistan, and I said I didn't.
  - It's an established fact from the Soviet war in Afghanistan that tanks are no good for most of the country's mountainous territory. They are good for flatlands, and the main body of flat land in the region is right across the border in Iran.
    
    Add Sticky Note
  - Later in August there was another bit of unofficial information from a Russian military source: more than a thousand American tanks and armored vehicles had been shipped to Eastern Afghanistan by Ukrainian "Ruslans" flying in three to five shipments a day, and more flights were expected.
    
    Add Sticky Note
  - Somehow all this, together with the series of articles in Izvestia, the information that all U.S. troops in Afghanistan are going to be reassigned and regrouped under unified command, the arrival of NATO naval ships in the Black Sea, the appointment of a man used to command troops in a combat environment as the new commander of the US Central Command and other bits and pieces.
  - To my total astonishment, when they all fell together the Izvestia story started looking slightly more credible than before.
  - Today the U.S. media reported that there had been a leak from the Pentagon about a secret Presidential order in which President Bush authorized his military (most of which is currently on Afghan soil) to conduct operations in Pakistan without the necessity for informing the Pakistani government.
  - The U.S. military in Afghanistan - or shall we say in the whole region neighboring Iran - is getting a freer hand by the day. And it is getting more and more hardware to play with.
  - Of course it's quite clear now that Georgia has lost its immediate potential as a nearby airfield, but after all, the aircraft carriers in the Gulf are not so far away.
  - Believe me I'm not saying that the U.S. is going to start an all-out war against Iran tomorrow. But aren't there indications that it may happen the day after tomorrow, a month from now, or on any date before the official handover of Presidency in the U.S.? Or, as some suggest, before the election?
  - I'm just asking the questions. But there are some people, like those working for Izvestia, for instance, who answer them with a "yes".
    
    Evgeny Belenkiy, RT.
Former Canadian soldier speaks out against 'disgusting' child rape in Afghanistan

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canadian military travis-schouten afghanistan security-forces boys child-rape indemic cultural islam complaint cover-up afghan-security thursdays middle-east muslim-men on 2009-10-03 and saved by 2 people
- Former Canadian soldier speaks out against 'disgusting' child rape in Afghanistan
- By David Pugliese, Ottawa CitizenSeptember 21, 2009
- 30 more annotations...
- - Former Cpl. Travis Schouten claims he witnessed an Afghan boy being sexually assualted by Afghan security personnel at Canada's Forward Operating Base Wilson in Afghanistan in 2006.
    Photograph by: Handout, Travis Schouten
  - Every day, Travis Schouten lives with the image of the rape of an Afghan boy at a Canadian Forces base.
  - Witnessing two men, one armed with a knife, sodomize the child during an incident in late 2006 helped drive the 26-year-old to the brink of mental collapse.
  - But the former corporal said the assault is just the tip of an iceberg and underneath lies the systemic sexual abuse of boys at the hands of Afghanistan’s police and army. It’s something he said the Canadian Forces has turned a blind eye to.
  - “It’s disgusting,” said Schouten, now retired after eight years in the military. “We’re telling people that we’re trying to build a nation there and we let this happen?”
  - “We allow rampant abuse of young boys at the hands of what is supposed to be their finest police officers and army officers, then what does that say?”
  - Schouten’s allegations that Afghans were sexually abusing children at a Canadian base near Kandahar made headlines in 2008 but earlier this year, military investigators dismissed the claims as unfounded.
  - He is, however, not alone in voicing his concerns. Defence Department records show military police were upset about such incidents but were told not to interfere.
  - Army officers also met in 2007 to discuss the issue of Afghan security personnel “having anal sex with young boys” but their main concern was the media would somehow find out.
  - Others in the military note they were told such practices were an age-old part of Afghan culture.
  - One soldier who e-mailed Canwest News Service stated he served at the same base at another time and troops had orders to stop any rapes.
  - But he also noted they were told the practise of “Man Love Thursdays,” as it was called, involved consenting Afghans and no one was raped by older men. The children involved were given small gifts or money in return for sex, soldiers said.
  - Schouten, however, questions whether a five- or six-year old child, or even an 11-year-old, can consent.
  - “The Canadian Forces wants people to think it’s a cultural thing, that everyone is doing it, because it takes the onus of responsibility off them to stop it,” he said.
  - In July 2008, a UN special representative spoke out against the Afghan practise. “What I found was nobody talks about it; everyone says, ‘Well, you know, it’s been there for 1,000 years, so why do we want to raise this now?’ ” said Radhika Coomaraswamy. “But somebody has to raise it and it has to be dealt with.”
  - The United Nations has also questioned arguments that sex with children is a cultural issue.
  - And not all Afghans are so accepting of what some claim is tradition. Afghan villagers this summer complained to British troops in Helmand province that Afghan police were abducting children to be used for sex.
  - Last year also saw an extremely rare event; three Afghan police officers who gang-raped a 12-year-old boy and his father were sent to prison.
  - Although reports in a Toronto newspaper noted that Schouten saw the aftermath of the attack on a young boy, he said that is not accurate. He actually entered the headquarters and witnessed two Afghan security personnel sodomizing the child. “I walked in and they were raping a kid,” he recalled. “The kid was bleeding. They guy with the camo fatigues had a knife in his hand.”
  - He left the headquarters shaken. The Canadian unit already had been dealing with other problems with the Afghans and his immediate options were limited. “I wasn’t going to start doing something at the scene,” he said. “I’m in the middle of the ANP headquarters. What do I do? Start shooting Afghan police? I’d get myself shot.”
  - Afterward, he was approached by an Afghan interpreter who worked with troops. The man had with him a couple of five-year-old boys who had also been allowed on the Canadian base. “He brought up the fact he likes to rape little boys,” Schouten said. “He’s telling me how he likes to use a knife on them.”
  - Schouten said after the incident, his life fell apart. He began drinking heavily. After returning from Afghanistan, he was involved in a car accident which injured one of his passengers. He went absent without leave when he was supposed to be at a psychiatrist’s appointment.
  - The army’s reaction was to try to dishonourably discharge him but Schouten successfully fought that. In August, he was honourably discharged on medical grounds.
  - Schouten wasn’t surprised the military investigation concluded his allegations were unfounded and his chain of command had not been informed of any such incidents.
  - Back in Canada, he told a lieutenant colonel and Defence Department officials of the incident, who in turn, informed others in the army’s leadership. However, since none of those people was in Schouten’s direct chain of command, the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service could conclude nothing was reported, he explained.
  - Other soldiers also were reluctant to come forward. “Guys have mortgages, they have kids," said Schouten. “If they go and get involved in this their careers will be stopped. Look what the army did to me.”
  - Schouten isn’t expecting anything different from an army board of inquiry launched last year. Although soldiers know Afghan security forces are having sex with kids, the issue is too explosive to deal with, he added.
  - Schouten said the rape and its aftermath shook his faith in the military. “In my mind, when I signed up, it was a brotherhood to me,” he explained. “I thought I was there for an established set of values and I loved that. I was wrong.”
  - Schouten is now rebuilding his life and is going to university. “I’m putting myself back together,” he said.
  - “But at the same time, I do feel people should be held accountable and people should know this is what is going on over there.”
    © Copyright (c) Canwest News Service
History of Afghanistan: Aryans and Achaemenids

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afghanistan bactria aryans charioteers invaders oxus zoroaster vedic-aryans kandahar persian-empire royal-road nomads horsemen on 2009-10-05
- Aryans & Achaemenids
  
  (c. 1500 B.C. - 330 B.C.)
- Afghanistan History
- 16 more annotations...
- - A pastoral, cityless, people led by heroic warriors riding two-horsed chariots came out of the north to shatter the great Cities of the Indus Valley.
  - In the sacerdotal writings of the Vedic Aryans, the Rigveda, we read of the Kubha (Kabul) River and know of their passage through Afghanistan sometime around 1500 B.C.
  - In the related Persian hymns of the Avesta, we read of Bakhdi (Balkh) "the beautiful, crowned with banners" and of Zarathustra Spitama (Zoroaster), the great politico-religious leader who lived in Balkh sometime between 1000 and 600 B.C.
  - Many settled here and prospered. As the years passed, however, the various Aryan tribes frequently fought among themselves, encouraging the subjugated indigenous tribes to rise in revolt.
  - The Aryans found the northern plains ideal for their flocks of sheep and goats.
  - Predatory raids by bands of horse-riding nomads from across the Oxus added to the turmoil. Keeping the Aryan herdsmen from their grazing lands, the nomads demanded, and began to receive, tribute for grazing rights.
  - Aryan independence seemed doomed. It was then that Zoroaster came forth to exhort the people to unite, in the name of the god Ahuramazda.
  - Victorious, Zoroaster then advised his followers to develop agriculture in addition to herding if they wished to remain inde-pendent and grow strong. The fertile plains of Bactria blossomed and the land prospered.
  - Successive waves of Aryan migrations from Trans-Oxiana, find-ing the Afghan area occupied by the Vedic Aryans, moved west, onto the Iranian Plateau, where they evolved from a semi-nomadic state into an extensive empire which eventually stretched from the borders of Greece to the Indus River.
  - The Achaemenid Kings conquered in the name of Ahuramazda and Zoroastrianism was their religion.
  - Achaemenid campaigns into the Afghan area were undertaken by Darius I (522-486 B.C.), builder of the famous palaces of Susa and Persepolis, and are recorded on his tombstone.
  - To facilitate trade, an imperial highway passed through Afghanistan, along virtually the same route modern highway builders have but re-cently paved.
  - The excavations at Shahr-i-Kona, the old city of Kandahar, undertaken by the British Institute of Afghan Studies in 1974 (D. Whitehouse) and 1975 (A. McNicoll) indicate that by 500 B.C. Kandahar had replaced Mundigak as the major city of the south.
  - In the north, Soviet excavations at a series of mounds given the general designation of (A)ltyn, not far from the Dashli group above Balkh, revealed a large principal administrative town and a monumental private residence in the Achaemenid style with a central court dominated by a pool or fountain.
  - Outside the re- sidence there was a large columned courtyard divided into two equal sections by a line of rooms possibly used for public audiences by some grandee or noble.
  - There is evidence of a great conflagra-tion which burned the wooden superstructure of the portico sur-rounding these courtyards. Curiously, it seems to have been set just about the time of Alexander of Macedon's sojourn in northern Afghanistan. (V. Sariandi, 1972)
History of Afghanistan: Prehistory

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prehistoric afghanistan neanderthal child burial stone-tools river-valleys terraces modern-man caves paleolithic Ur indus-valley turkey greece on 2009-10-05
- Afghanistan History
- Prehistory
- 68 more annotations...
- - Countless stone tools scattered about the countryside attest to this and each year archaeological excavations add substance to the picture of life in the Afghan area during the distant past.
  - Early man in Afghanistan lived on river terraces and inhabited caves and rock shelters.
  - Lower Palaeolithic tools made more than 100,000 years ago were collected from terraces to the east of the perennial brackish lake called Dasht-i-Nawur west of Ghazni (L. Dupree, 1974).
  - They consist mainly of quartzite tools of the following types: large flake cores, cleavers, side scrapers, choppers, adzes, hand axes and "proto-hand axes". These are the first Lower Palaeolithic tools to be identified in Afghanistan.
  - Earlier, in 1966, a team of American archaeologists searching for evidence to support the theory that "Neanderthaloids possibly developed out of the East Asian strains of Java and Peking Man, and, during the lush Third Interglacial Period, spread along the foothills of the Eurasian mountains into Europe," excavated hundreds of stone tools of classic Middle Palaeolithic types from a rock shelter called Darra-i-Kur near the village of Baba Darwesh not far from Kishm, in Badakhshan. (L. Dupree, director)
  - These represent the first tools of this early period to be scientifically excavated in Afghanistan. They date ca. 50,000 years ago.
  - Continuing their search, the team moved west during the sum-mer of 1969 and found additional evidence in the foothills near Gurziwan, southeast of Maimana.
  - During the 1974 season Middle Palaeolithic tool types closely resembling those found at Darra-i-Kur were also recovered from terraces north of Dasht-i-Nawur. They in-clude Levallois flakes, side and round scrapers, points and possible burins.
  - The tools from Ghar-i-Gusfand Mordeh (Cave of the Dead Sheep) may be even older than those from Darra-i-Kur.
  - Indeed, less than 150 miles to the north, at Teshik Tash in Uzbakistan, Soviet archaeologists found the skeleton of a Neanderthal child with such tools.
  - What manner of man made these tools?
  - Ordinarily, skeletons of Neanderthal Man are found in association with the type of tools found at Darra-i-Kur.
  - At Darra-i-Kur, however, a massive temporal bone has been pronounced by experts to be essentially modern with certain Neanderthaloid char-acteristics.
  - Additional evidence is needed and continued excavations are planned, but it may be that Darra-i-Kur will necessitate a reappraisal of the development of contemporary man. "North Afghanistan may well be the zone where modern Homo sapiens, or at least a variety of modern man, developed physically and began to revolutionize Stone Age technology," says Dupree.
  - As man ceased to be an animal chasing other animals, he began to manufacture a greater variety of more sophisticated stone tools. Upper Palaeolithic sites in Afghanistan dating from about 34,000 to 12,000 years ago illustrate this.
  - Kara Kamar, a rock shelter 23 kin; 14 mi. north of Samangan, the first Stone Age site to be scientifically excavated in Afghanistan, produced tools dating ca. 30,000 B.c. (C. Coon, 1954).
  - Evidence of Upper Palaeolithic man was subsequently expanded when other American archaeologists excavated over 20,000 stone tools from several rock shelters beside the Balkh River at Aq Kupruk in the hills some 120 kin; 75 mi. south of Balkh (Dupree, 1962, 1965).
  - The tools in this assemblage are so beautifully worked that one eminent specialist in palaeolithic technology has dubbed the tool makers of Aq Kupruk "the Michelangelos of the Upper Palaeolithic."
  - They represent a cultural phase which endured for about 5000 years at Aq Kupruk, from ca. 20,000 to 15,000 years ago, during which someone, a man or a woman, carved the face of a man, or is it a woman?, on a small limestone pebble.
  - This work of art is one of the earliest representations of man by man.
  - Other representations made from bone and pottery found in Czechoslovakia are of comparable age or even older; a carved stone piece found in France is possibly comparable in age.
  - The face from Aq Kupruk smugly retains the secret of why it was carved. Does it perhaps represent an early ritual object? It was found in a hearth. (On display, National Museum, Kabul).
  - North of Balkh, Russian archaeologists found an extremely rich concentration of high quality Mesolithic implements on the sand dunes south of the Amu Darya (classical Oxus River) dating Ca. 10,000 B.C. (A. Vinegradov, 1969-present).
  - Here the basic in-dustry is microlithic with geometrics.
  - From dunes north of Khulm, a French archaeologist collected flints including microburins char-acteristic of the Epipalaeolithic, Ca. 7-6500 B.C. (Ph. Gouin, 1968).
  - The great revolution which launched man onto the path of civilization-and eventually into the Atomic Age-took place dur-ing the Neolithic period when he learned to plant crops and domesticate animals and thus began to control his food supply.
    
    Sculptured Head from
    
    Aq Kupruk, circa 20,000 B.C.
  - This revolution took place at Aq Kupruk about 9000 years ago which indicates that northern Afghanistan may indeed have been one of the early centers for the domestication of plants and animals.
  - The evidence also supports another Dupree theory that the revolutionary ideas of agriculture and herding germinated within a zone bordered by the 34th and 40th parallels of north latitude, at an altitude of about 750 m; 2461 ft. extending from Central Afghani-stan through Anatolia to mainland Greece.
  - Most Middle East Neolithic sites are found within this zone and Aq Kupruk is now added to the list.
  - A much later Neolithic at Darra-i-Kur, dating about 4000 years ago, ties in with sites in South Siberia and Kashmir, rather than with the much earlier Middle East sites to which Aq Kupruk relates.
  - The Dupree Line, following the 76th longitude through Afghanistan, divides the mixed farming-herding Neolithic of the Middle East from the highland semi-nomadic Neolithic of South Siberia and Northeast Afghanistan, and emphasizes again the pre-historic significance of northern Afghanistan.
  - Three intentional burials of domesticated goats, one in association with fragments from two or three children's skulls, were uncovered. Here must be evidence of ritual; of a concern for the mysteries of death and what follows.
  - Another extremely interesting phenomenon was encountered in the Darra-i-Kur Neolithic.
  - It was not a unique find for Darra-i-Kur. The Neanderthal child of Teshik Tash in the Soviet Union only 150 miles to the north was encircled by seven pairs of goat horns.
  - Nor is it a phenomenon related solely to the prehistoric. Countless shrines and graves in Afghanistan today are adorned with goat horns, symbols of strength, virility and grace.
  - As man gained proficiency in agriculture, he moved down from mountain caves onto the plains where planting was easier and water more plentiful. Villages emerged; cities followed.
  - Deh Morasi Ghundai, the first prehistoric site to be excavated in Afghanistan, lies 27km; 17 mi. southwest of Kandahar (Dupree, 1951).
  - Early peasant farming villages came into existence in Afghanistan ca. 5000 B.c., or 7000 years ago.
  - Another Bronze Age vil-lage mound site with multiroomed mud-brick buildings dating from the same period sits nearby at Said Qala (I. Shaffer, 1970).
  - Second millennium B.C. Bronze Age pottery, copper and bronze horse trappings and stone seals were found in the lowermost levels in the nearby cave called Shamshir Ghar (Dupree, 1950).
  - In the Seistan, southwest of these Kandahar sites, two teams of American archaeologists discovered sites relating to the 2nd millennium B.C. (G. Dales, University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, 1969, 1971; W. Trousdale, Smithsonian Institution, 1971-76).
  - Stylistically the finds from Deh Morasi and Said Qala tie in with those of pre-Indus Valley sites and with those of com-parable age on the Iranian Plateau and in Central Asia, indicating cultural contacts during this very early age.
  - Striking correlations also indicate the parallel development of Deh Morasi with Mun-digak, 51 kin; 32 mi. to the north of Deh Morasi, which was excavated by French archaeologists under the direction of Jean-Marie Casal, from 1951-1958.
  - Mundigak is a huge mound 9 m; 30 ft. high; an urban center compared to the seminomadic villages of Deh Morasi and Said Qala.
  - As the great cities of the Indus Valley, such as Mohenjo-daro and Harrapa, grew, specialization necessitated the develop-ment of a complex economic base to supply them. The villages supplied the towns and the towns supplied the cities.
  - The ex-cavations at Deh Morasi, Said Qala and Mundigak provide much needed information regarding early economic supply networks and the beginnings of an urban civilization in the Afghan area.
  - Evidence that trade was not limited regionally, but extended as far afield as Ur (in modern Iraq), was recovered accidently in 1966 from the valley of Sai Hazara in northern Afghanistan.
  - The Khosh Tapa (Happy Mound) Hoard consists of several gold and silver goblets, now broken into 19 fragments weighing a total of almost eight pounds, stunningly ornamented with raised geomet-rical designs and vigorous figures of bulls, boars and snakes.
  - These animal motifs bear tantalizing similarities stylistically with domin-ant Mesopotamian, Iranian, Indus Valley and Central Asian styles.
  - Khosh Tapa lies in Baghlan Province, north of the Khawak Pass, on a once popular route linking the Middle East with Central Asia and Central Asia with the southern provinces in India.
  - One of the more popular luxury items carried along this route was lapis lazuli from the mines of Badakhshan which are still being worked today.
  - The two main periods of intensive lapis trade date from ca. 2300 B.c. and 1350 B.c.; the probable date of the hoard is ca. 2300 B.c. (on display, National Museum, Kabul).
  - Three small mounds near Daulatabad in Faryab Province ex-cavated by Soviet archaeologists produced fine, well-fired Bronze Age clay vases and footed vessels dating ca. 2000 B.c. (V. Sarianidi, 1969).
  - A series of Bronze Age mounds given the general designa-tion of (D)ashli greatly expanded the picture of Bronze Age life ca. 1500 B.c. north-west of Balkh. Dl is a large plastered mud-brick fort-qala surrounded by farming settlements.
    
    Mother goddess figurines, right, from Mundigak, left, from Deh Morasi Ghundai, 3rd Millennium B.C. (h. 5cm)
  - Here utilitaiian pottery, fine ceramics and imported wares from Iran were found together with jewelry and stone and bronze compartmented seals.
  - Weaponry included sling balls as well as bronze and copper weapons. In an intrusive burial during the end of this period goat skeletons were found surrounded by many delicate ceramic vessels of high quality.
  - D3 was a much larger complex in two sections. A circular temple building 150 m; 492 ft. in diameter had an inner wall and an outer wall with nine projecting towers.
  - Across from this temple there was a monumental palace with stepped pilasters on its outer façade surrounded by massive walls and a moat 10 m; 33 ft. wide and 3 m; 10 ft. deep.
  - Not far away several extensive Bronze Age graveyards are being systematically looted by illegal diggers.
  - Bronze seals, pins, mirrors, weaponry, unguent jars and various styles of jewelry grace the sidewalks of Kabul; graceful paper-thin pottery of elegant shapes bespeaking great sophistication lie abandoned by the ravished pits.
  - Another three-period farming settlement (ca. 1300-500 n.c.) was excavated at Till Tepe near Shibarghan (V. Sarianidi, 1969, 1971). Fortifications are conspicuous and numerous clay missiles and bronze projectile points were found.
  - Deh Morasi and Mundigak also provide tantalizing evidence regarding early religious developments.
  - Casal suggests a religious use for a large white-washed, pillared building, its doorway out-lined with red, dating from the 3rd Millennium B.C. at Mundigak.
  - At Deh Morasi there is evidence of a possible altar. Built of fire-burned bricks, the shrine complex contained several objects sug-gesting religious ritual: goat horns, goat scapula, a goblet, a copper seal, hollow copper tubing, a small alabaster cup, and a pottery figurine of classic Zhob Valley style.
  - These pottery figurines are generally considered to represent the mother-goddess, being at once voluptous in form, to symbolize her power over life and fertility, and, terrifyingly ugly, to symbolize equal power over death and the horrors of the dark, mysterious unknown. (On display, National Museum, Kabul)
  - Mundigak continued to survive and to suffer two invasions before it was abandoned about 500 years later after an existence of 2000 years.
  - Deh Morasi was abandoned about 1500 B.C., perhaps because of the westward shift of the river.
  - The caves of Aq Kupruk and Darra-i-Kur, however, contain evidence of continuous occupation. Indeed, retaining walls and hearths belonging to modern nomadic groups occupy the attention of the excavators as each prehistoric cave site is opened. Some men never took to a sedentary life, and still don't. Nomads have always been a part of the Afghan scene.
The Toronto Times - Greeks in ancient Afghanistan

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afghanistan pakistan british alexander greeks colonies kalash hindu-kush nuristan dionysos indus-river india arabs on 2009-10-05
- Wednesday, 15 October 2008
- The Ancient Greeks in Afghanistan and Their Probable Descendants Today in Nuristan, Afghanistan and in the Kalash People, Pakistan
- 52 more annotations...
- - By Michael Issigonis
  - Today, the region called Nuristan is one in a chain of ethnic refuge areas along the Hindu Kush, or the Indian Caucasus, named as such by Alexander the Great, located in northeast Afghanistan.
  - This is the home of a unique group of mixed European-Indian tribal peoples now called Nuristanis, people of the only Afghanistan province to have resisted Islam for centuries.
  - The British established the "Durand Line" in 1893, a boundary creating the new countries of the British Protectorate (India) and Afghanistan. Nuristan was originally meant to be included in India.
  - When the Islamic rulers declared war on the Nuristanis, the British provided all necessary weapons to the Afghan army, thus contributing to the annihilation of Nuristanis and their subsequent forced conversion to Islam.
  - The male survivors were taken as prisoners to Kabul, a city whose ancient Greek name was Kofin, meaning the place were bees accumulate, or the place of honey, or a place rich in food supplies. Here, the men were forced to join the army. The women that survived were taken into the harems.¹
  - After the occupying armies left, the more isolated Nuristanis reverted to their old religions and customs because they did not find in their invaders' qualities worth imitating.
  - The other Nuristanis who submitted to Islam are such devout Moslems that they were the first citizens of the country to successfully revolt against the Soviet occupation. It is unknown how many of them have joined the Taliban.
  - Alexander the Great
  - The expedition of Alexander the Great (327-325 B.C.) into what is now Afghanistan has been well documented. He laid the foundations of many cities, some bearing his own name.
  - With the passage of time, some names were changed by newcomers to the area who could not pronounce Greek names.
  - In this way, Kandahar is Alexander's name, Herat is Alexandria Areion, and Ganzhni is Alexandria Gazhaka, among others.
  - However, Alexander was not the first Greek coming to India. Legends hold that Dionysos, the god of wine, led an expedition into India several thousand years earlier.
  - He and his companions were so amazed at the size of the then unnamed Indus river that he named it the Son of God (In-Dios).
  - He established a settlement at Nyssa (Jalalabad) where he found Mediterranean plants growing such as ivy and grapes, possibly the only place in Asia where these plants grow.
  - According to legends, Dionysus and his companions continued the journey eastwards and it is possible they reached the Yunnan province in China.
  - In Yunnan today the numerous minorities who are unlike the Chinese in appearance have preserved religion and customs, including wine-making, similar to the customs of the ancient Greeks.²
  - Indo-Greek Kingdoms
  - After Alexander, several Greek Kingdoms were created covering most of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of India that lasted for 3 centuries.
  - The inhabitants were called Indo-Greeks. Only one ancient city has been excavated so far and it lies on the shores of the Amu Darya River.
  - The city exhibits temples, a gymnasium, a palace, numerous buildings, and a huge theatre sculpted on the side of a hill with a superb view of the river valley and the tall mountains of what is now Tajikistan across.
  - These kingdoms ventured into India and expanded as far as the eastern parts of the Indian peninsula. Place names are still preserved today.
  - However, the legacy of these kingdoms outlasted the kings in culture and art that are still admired.
  - Greek techniques of stone and metalworking began to be used in India, Greek coins began to appear in the bazaars, and settlements of Greek type were found as urban islands in the sea of Indian native villages.
  - The most important example of Greek influence in India is the upsurge of Buddhist art in Gandhara during the early Christian era, since called the Gandhara Art.
  - This Greco-Indian school of art played a catalytic role in the development of Asian art. By creating the image of Buddha with the features of Apollo and wearing an ancient Greek tunic, the artists established an art religious in its meaning, but naturalistic and humanistic in its forms.
  - Examples can be admired today in the museums of Taxila, Peshawar, Swat, and Lahore, in the giant Buddha statues that were recently blown apart by the Taliban without a vigorous opposition from the civilized world.
  - One important piece of ancient art that is still "alive" today is the amazing over-abundance of coins of the Indo-Greek kings which are continually being unearthed by Afghan farmers and provide sometimes their only source of income after they are sold in the bazaars of Pakistan.
  - These coins represent some of the finest coin-making of all time. They depict the kings on one side with some ancient Greek god or goddess on the other.
  - The abundance of gold supplies from Central Asia for several centuries before the arrival of the Greeks resulted in the minting of numerous coins as well as some enormous coins.
  - In Afghanistan, one can find the largest gold and the largest silver coins ever minted. The silver coins had a diameter of 65 mm.! In some of the coins they incorporated nickel with a technique only known to the Chinese at that time.
  - Precious Stones
  - Northeastern Afghanistan has been a supplier of precious stones since at least 5,000 B.C., and its ancient name was simply " the vault" or Valaskia.
  - The precious cargo was making its way through the so-called "Silk Route" to ancient Persia, Greece, and Rome, and later to the Byzantines, Europeans and now mostly to the Americans.
  - In fact, the name Kalash is the ancient Greek name for lapis lazuli, possibly the only place on earth where it exists in abundance.
  - The area is also rich in emeralds, rubies, spinel and others that provide a substantial share of the world production even during years of war, when the income from these stones becomes essential for the survival of the Afghan people.
  - The Kalash People
  - The Kalash people of northwestern Pakistan are unique in their customs and religion.
  - Although surrounded by Moslems in all directions (Pakistan is essentially a Moslem state), they believe in ancient Greek gods and goddessess such as Zeus, Aphrodite, Hestia, and Apollo.
  - Their language is principally a mixture of Sanskrit and Greek.
  - They grow grapes and make wine (an illegal action in an Islamic country) and their diet is rich in fruits, vegetables and nuts.
  - Unlike their neighbors who sit on the ground, they use stools and chairs and their carpentry is decorated with Macedonian stars and "suns".
  - However, the Kalash do not depend on tourism for survival; it is quite the opposite. The building of infrastructure to accommodate all those tourist "invaders" has brought an unprecedented pollution that the Kalash did not have to face during the 2000 years of isolation.
  - The Kalash people are virtually the only tourist attraction in Pakistan.
  - Recently, a group of Greek teachers have been raising money and spending their summer vacations among the Kalash for the last 7 years in an attempt to improve their standard of living.
  - Some of the projects that the teacher volunteers have accomplished include the following: a primary school at an elevation of some 3 km, which is regarded the largest primary school building in Pakistan; water pipes for the supply of running water; a house for new mothers; landscaping and providing resource materials and pharmaceutical supplies. In this way the volunteers have contributed immensely to the preservation of the Kalash.
  - In the 19th century the British officers and scholars in India kept a romantic belief that, like the lost tribes of Israel, also a lost tribe of Europe of Alexander's Greeks may have survived somewhere in Afghanistan. The popular movie entitled "The Man Who Would Be King" starring Sean Connery was based upon that legend.
  - Other Greek Influences
  - Other remnants of the ancient Greek influence in the area are the characteristic "double-hat" or kausia, the ancient Macedonian hat, the Macedonian cloak or sari as worn by most women today and the polo on horseback, Pakistan's national sport.
  - It was practiced by the Macedonian troops in the days of Alexander due to an unusual "present" given to Alexander by the great Persian king Darius.
  - When Alexander invaded the outlining areas of the Persian Empire and demanded taxes from Darius, the king refused, so Alexander threatened to invade. The king then sent him a bat with a ball so that the young Alexander can play !
  - "Those would be more appropriate to a novice than the arms of battle," thought the King. Alexander replied : "The ball is the Earth and I am the bat". A year later, Darius lost the battle and he was dead the following year.
Sims-Williams --- Bactrian

www.gengo.l.u-tokyo.ac.jp/...bactrian.html - Preview

ancient-afghanistan bactria bactrian-language afghanistan persian white-huns turks arabs pashtoon language greek sogdiana india aryan indo-aryan on 2009-10-05 and saved by 3 people
- A crucial moment in the history of this language was the decision
  of the Kushan ruler Kanishka to adopt Bactrian
  as the language of his coinage.
- After the first issues of Kanishka, Greek
  disappears from the coinage once and for all, to be replaced by Bactrian.
- 99 more annotations...
- - During the first centuries of the Christian era, Bactrian could legitimately
    have been ranked amongst the world's most important languages.
  - As the language
    of the Kushan kings, Bactrian must have been widely known throughout a great
    empire, in Afghanistan, Northern India and part of Central Asia.
  - Even after
    the collapse of the Kushan empire, Bactrian continued in use for at least six centuries,
    as is shown by the ninth-century inscriptions from the Tochi valley in Pakistan
    [Slide 1 9KB] and the remnants of Buddhist and Manichean manuscripts
    found as far away as the Turfan oasis in western
    China.
  - The career of Bactrian as a language
    of culture thus lasted for close to a thousand years.
  - Until forty years ago virtually nothing was known of the Bactrian
    language except for the legends on the coins of the Kushans and their successors.
  - The Kushan coins are inscribed in Greek letters of an angular type, apparently
    imitating a style of writing used for monumental inscriptions. In principle
    these legends are not particularly difficult to read, but their content
    is limited to the names and titles of kings and deities.
  - The coins of the
    later rulers of Bactria --- Kushano-Sasanians,
    Kidarites, Hephthalites,
    Turks, and so on --- are written in a cursive
    script, imitating manuscript styles, which has proved much more difficult
    to decipher. Some tiny scraps of manuscripts in a similar cursive script
    were also known, but they were too few and too incomplete to offer any realistic
    prospect of interpretation.
  - The
    text, written in the monumental script already known from the Kushan coins,
    could be read without much difficulty; its interpretation was much more
    problematic, since the names and titles known from the coins provided only
    a minimal vocabulary and hardly a hint of the grammatical structure of the
    language.
  - These prospects were transformed in 1957 by the discovery at Surkh Kotal near Baghlan
    of the first substantial Bactrian inscription
  - Nevertheless, the essential points were immediately recognized
    by W. B. Henning: the text refers to the foundation
    of a sanctuary by the emperor Kanishka, its abandonment as a result of problems
    with the water-supply, and its re-establishment by a high official named
    Nukunzuk in the year 31 of the era of Kanishka,
    that is, early in the reign of his successor Huvishka.
  - Several further Bactrian inscriptions have been discovered since that
    of Surkh Kotal, but most of them are too poorly preserved to add significantly
    to our knowledge of the language. However, in 1993 a new inscription of
    fundamental importance was discovered by chance at a site named Rabatak,
    not far from Surkh Kotal [Slide 4 18KB]. The inscription
    of Rabatak describes events of the first year of Kanishka in words strikingly
    reminiscent of those of Darius the Great in
    the inscription of Bisitun.
  - The opening lines refer to Kanishka as "the great salvation,
    the righteous, just autocrat, worthy of divine worship, who has obtained
    the kingship from Nana and from all the gods,
    who has inaugurated the year one as the gods pleased".
  - In principle, any of the Indo-European
    languages of Iran or India could be called "Aryan"; but when Kanishka
    refers to "the Aryan language" he surely means Bactrian, the language
    of this inscription, just as Darius meant Old Persian, the language of his
    inscription, when he wrote: "By the grace of Auramazda, I made another
    text in Aryan, which previously did not exist".
  - Then comes the
    significant statement: "He issued(?) an edict(?) in Greek and then
    he put it into the Aryan language".
  - It is difficult not
    to associate Kanishka's emphasis here on the use of the "Aryan language"
    with the replacement of Greek by Bactrian on his coinage. The numismatic
    evidence shows that this must have taken place very early in Kanishka's
    reign, quite possibly in his very first year.
  - Lines 4-7 of the Rabatak inscription give a list of the chief cities
    of north India which were controlled by Kanishka. Four of the five names
    can be identified: Saketa, Kausambi,
    Pataliputra, and Champa.
    [Slide 5 12KB] The wording of the inscription does not make it
    clear whether Champa is mentioned as belonging to the area ruled by Kanishka
    or as the first city beyond his eastern border. Even in the latter case,
    the statement that he ruled northern India as far as Pataliputra is sufficiently
    striking.
  - The major part of the inscription concerns the foundation of a temple,
    perhaps at Rabatak itself, which seems to have been an extensive site. Lines
    9 and 10 name the divinities who are to be worshipped in the temple.
  - This
    list is very intriguing. On the one hand it includes two Zoroastrian deities
    who are never portrayed on the Kushan coinage. On the other hand, it omits
    many names which are well attested on these same coins, such as Ma,
    the moon, and Ardukhsh, the goddess of plenty. Above the list of Iranian divinities
    some words have been added in smaller letters [Slide
    6 22KB],
    which seem to identify some or all of them with Indian equivalents such
    as Mahasena and Visakha.
  - Apparently the temple was intended to contain statues of kings as
    well as gods. Kanishka lists four kings: Kujula Kadphises
    his great- grandfather, Vima Taktu his grandfather,
    Vima Kadphises his father, and himself, Kanishka.
    This list is extremely informative. In the first place, it bears witness to the existence of two kings named
    Vima, rather than one. Several inscriptions previously attributed to Vima
    Kadphises, notably the Bactrian inscription of Dasht-e
    Nawur [Slide 7 9KB], can now be ascribed to his father Vima Taktu.
  - In all probability the coins of the anonymous king Soter
    Megas "the great saviour", which come between Kujula and
    Vima Kadphises in the numismatic sequence, should also be attributed to
    this newly-discovered Vima the First.
  - Moreover, the indication that Kujula
    Kadphises was the great-grandfather of Kanishka evidently has a bearing
    on the oft-debated issue of the date of Kanishka. The fact that Kanishka
    belongs to the third generation after Kujula clearly imposes certain limits
    on the manner in which the early chronology of the Kushans may be reconstructed.
    Although I would not go so far as to say that the new facts are only compatible
    with a single chronological system, it is clear that the solutions previously
    proposed will now have to be reconsidered.
  - Lines 14-17 mention the officials charged with executing the orders
    of Kanishka. Amongst them is a certain Nukunzuk who is probably the same
    person who was later responsible for the works described in the Surkh Kotal
    inscription. At Rabatak, 30 years earlier, he does not yet bear the title
    karalrang "margrave" and seems to occupy a subordinate
    position.
  - The last part of the inscription in which a continuous text can
    be read contains a wish for Kanishka's health and happiness and perhaps
    also --- if my reading is correct --- expresses the hope that his reign
    may last for a thousand years.
  - It goes without saying that neither the reign of Kanishka nor that
    of the Kushan dynasty approached 1000 years. In about 2Z4 A.D. the Sasanians came to power in Iran [Slide
    8 9KB].
    Within
    a few years the Sasanians had also conquered Bactria, which they ruled during
    part of the following period through a viceroy known as the Kushan-shah
    'king of the Kushans", who was often a prince of the Sasanian royal
    family.
  - Subsequently Bactria was invaded several times by nomads from the
    north. At different times the invaders are referred to under various names
    --- Chionites, Kidarite
    Huns, Hephthalites --- though it is
    not entirely clear whether all these names refer to the same or to different
    peoples.
    
    Add Sticky Note
  - The next arrivals were the Turks,
    who in the middle of the sixth century allied themselves with the Sasanians
    to defeat the Hephthalites; and then finally all the local dynasties were
    swept aside by the coming of Islam and the Arabs.
  - The history of the period from the Sasanian Kushan-shahs to the arrival
    of the Arabs is illustrated by a second discovery. In December 1991, I was
    shown photographs of a newly discovered Bactrian document on leather. The
    document was inscribed on both sides with 28 lines in cursive
    Bactrian script, making it by far the most substantial example of
    cursive Bactrian so far known [Slide 9 12KB].
  - The document was
    clearly a letter, beginning with conventional phrases of address and greeting
    almost identical to those used in Sogdian letters: "To your lordship
    1,000 and 10,000 times greeting and homage from so-and-so your servant.
    Having heard that your lordship is healthy I am happy; but I should be still
    happier if I myself might see your lordship in good health and pay homage
    ...". To judge by personal names such as Ohrmuzd
    and Khwasraw, the document belonged to the
    Sasanian period.
  - Another striking name was Purlang-zin, evidently
    meaning "the man with the panther's skin" --- a clear reference
    to the zin-e palang of Rustam, one of
    the heroes of the Persian epic.
  - One such document was a revelation in itself. But it was as nothing
    compared to what was to come.
  - Within five years the corpus of Bactrian documents
    had grown to a hundred, most of which are now in London, in the collection
    of Dr David Khalili. These documents have passed
    through the hands of many different dealers and collectors. In most cases
    there is no record of their original provenance, though a couple of them
    are said, quite plausibly, to have been found in Samingan.
    From internal evidence, especially the recurrence of the same names in several
    documents, it seems clear that most if not all of them ultimately derive
    from a single source.
  - Many of
    the documents are letters, some of them still sealed and therefore perfectly
    preserved.
  - a letter sealed with a clay bulla, with
    a few words of address written on the outside;
  - the same
    letter after opening, from which you can see the standard layout of the
    text, with a wide left-hand margin, and the way the seal is attached to
    a strip of leather cut along the bottom edge of the letter without being
    completely detached from it.
  - This
    letter can hardly be later than the latter half of the fourth century, when
    the rule of the Kushan-shahs came to an end. The Kushan-shah here seems
    to be named as Warahran, though the reading
    of the name is not quite clear
  - One of the less well-preserved letters is particularly interesting
    because it mentions a Kushan-shah
  - Since Warahran
    (or Bahram) was the name of the last Kushan-shah --- or the last
    two Kushan-shahs --- known from the coins, the letter probably belongs to
    the very end of the Kushano-Sasanian period. The sender of the letter was
    the daughter of a princess named Dukht-anosh,
    a Middle Persian name which is attested on a seal in Paris.
  - The contents
    are not yet clear, but concern a eunuch with the remarkable name Dathsh-mareg
    "servant of the Creator" --- a compound of the Bactrian mareg
    "servant" and the Avestan genitive dathusho "of the
    Creator", which was probably used in the Zoroastrian calendar of Bactria
    to refer to a day dedicated to the Creator.
  - a representative of the Shahan-shah or "king of kings", the ruler
    of Iran,
  - It seems very likely that the era used here is the same as that of
    the Bactrian inscriptions of the Tochi valley
    in Pakistan
  - These
    inscriptions, written in Arabic, Sanskrit, and Bactrian, contain dates expressed
    in three different eras. The vital evidence for determining the starting-point
    of the Bactrian era is provided by two bilingual inscriptions, the first
    being in Arabic and Sanskrit
  - The Arabic text
    is naturally dated by means of the Hijri calendar, which is blessedly unambiguous
    and enables one to complete the date of the Sanskrit version, which is expressed
    in an abbreviated form omitting the thousands and hundreds. The second bilingual
    is in Sanskrit and Bactrian. Again the Sanskrit date is abbreviated; but,
    if one assumes that this inscription belongs to the same century as the
    Arabic-Sanskrit bilingual, the missing figures can be reconstructed, giving
    a date which can be computed as 863 A.D.
  - The
    Bactrian version is dated with Greek numerals. Helmut
    Humbach, the first editor of the Bactrian texts, read these numerals
    as 632. On the basis of newly-discovered materials I would interpret the
    last digit as 1 rather than 2, but a difference of one year is of minor
    significance. In either case, the Bactrian date indicates the existence
    of an era beginning early in the Sasanian period, in 232 (according to Humbach)
    or 233 A.D. (accord to me). I am inclined to
    follow Humbach in regarding this as a "Kushano-Sasanian"
    era, whose starting-point was probably the Sasanian conquest of the
    Kushan empire.
  - Let us return to the Bactrian letter, whose date can be read as 239.
    If this era began in 233 A.D., the year 239 will correspond to 471 A.D.,
    during the rule of Peroz, who spent much of
    his reign fighting the Hephthalites and who eventually perished in battle
    against them.
  - Is it a coincidence that the word preceding the title Shahan-shah
    in the letter is in fact Piroz? Unfortunately the Middle Persian
    word peroz is not only a personal name but also a common adjective
    meaning "victorious", so that it is difficult to decide whether
    one should translate "Peroz, the king of kings" or merely "the
    victorious king of kings".
  - Only two of the newly-discovered Bactrian documents seem to be religious
    in inspiration. Both of them are Buddhist texts containing invocations to
    Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and so on.
  - Unusually, it is written on cloth rather than
    leather. As you see, it is illustrated with two drawings, perhaps representing
    a Buddha and an ascetic. The text begins with homage to "all the Buddhas"
    and to five or six named Buddhas ending with the historical Buddha
    Shakyamuni. Then homage is paid to a series of six Bodhisattvas,
    followed by the kings of the yakshas, rakshasas, kinnaras,
    nagas, pishacas,
    etc. and finally Shakra, the king of the gods,
    and the "great Brahma".
  - I have not
    succeeded in deciphering all the names, but the outline of the text is quite
    clear up to this point. The last three lines are more obscure, but contain
    a reference to a Buddhist monastery (vihara} and a temple.
  - I suppose it
    to be a kind of votive offering, which would have been tied to a pole like
    a banner and fixed in a holy place, or perhaps an amulet.
  - One particularly interesting document --- in fact the earliest of the dated documents --- is
    a marriage contract, in which one woman engages
    herself to marry two brothers at the same time
  - After the letters, the largest group of texts consists of legal contracts
    and similar documents: deeds of sale, leases, guarantees, receipts, and
    deeds of gift.
  - The practice of polyandry, discussed by Prof.
    Enoki Kazuo in his well-known article "On
    the nationality of the Hephthalites"
    and here confirmed by first-hand evidence, was apparently typical of the
    region.
  - Another unusual document [Slide 19 20KB], which now
    belongs to the Institute of Silk-Road Studies here in Kamakura, is a deed of manumission, recording the freeing of a
    slave in return for the purchase of a substitute.
  - So far I know of more than twenty documents with dates
    ranging from 110 to 549, that is (if we assume that the Bactrian era began
    in 233 A.D.), from 342 to 781 A.D. This span of more than four centuries
    covers the Chionite, Kidarite, Hephthalite, and Turkish periods, and extends
    well into Islamic times.
  - For example, the next slide [Slide 20 12KB] shows a contract
    for the sale of land dated in the year 295,
    which I interpret as 527 A.D., during the period of Hephthalite domination.
    This agrees well with the statement of the text that the "Hephthalite
    tax" due on the property has been paid. The format of the document
    is typical, though this example is exceptionally well preserved.
  - There are
    two complete copies of the text. One copy is left open to be read. The other
    is tightly
    rolled, tied with string, and sealed with five bullae. The first two bear
    impressions of the fingernails of the vendors; the others are impressed
    with the seals of three witnesses.
  - Presumably it was intended that the sealed
    copy should be opened in the presence of a judge in case of a dispute. On
    the reverse of the document [Slide 21 5KB], the names
    of the vendors and witnesses are written beside the holes for the seal-strings.
  - In addition to dates, many of these legal documents contain place-names,
    including the names of the places where they were written
  - Several
    documents state that they were written in Samingan,
    Rob (modern Ruy),
    Malr or Madr,
    or Kah (modern Kah-mard).
    All four places are apparently within the jurisdiction of a ruler who is
    referred to in many documents as "the khar
    of Rob".
  - On the other hand, Tarmid (or
    Termez), to the north of the Oxus,
    and Bamiyan, which is separated from Kah and
    Madr by a considerable ridge of mountains, may well have been outside his
    kingdom.
  - The khar of Rob is no doubt to be identified with the Ru'b-khan, the ruler of Ru'b
    and Siminjan, who helped Qutayba
    b. Muslim to defeat the Hephthalite rebel Nezak
    Tarkhan in the year 91 of the Hijra (710 A.D.), as mentioned by the
    historian Tabari.
  - The true Bactrian form may be sher, which is mentioned by Muslim
    writers as the title of the rulers of Bamiyan,
    Gharchistan, and other places in the area around
    ancient Bactria.
  - I suspect that the title khar is an Iranian --- but not necessarily
    Bactrian --- dialect form derived from Old Iranian *xshathriya- "ruler"
  - The ruler of Rob may at times have controlled a wider area
    than is indicated by the place-names mentioned so far. For instance, in
    a letter which probably dates from about 480, the khar of Rob is
    addressed, somewhat bombastically, as the "Hephthalite yabghu, ...
    scribe of the Hephthalite lords, and judge of Tukharistan and Gharchistan".
  - Tukharistan is the land to the north of the
    Hindu-kush, including Rob and Samingan, but covering a considerably wider
    area; Gharchistan usually refers to the mountainous area to the west of
    Bamiyan, but since the Bactrian form of the name indicates that it means
    merely "the land of the mountaineers" it is possible that
    it refers more generally to the mountain areas to the south of Tukharistan.
  - Yet another document is written in a place named Warnu.
  - This is surely to be identified with the Aornos;
    mentioned by Arrian as one of the two chief
    cities of Bactria.
  - According to Paul Bernard
    and others, Aornos is to be located near Khulm
    or Tashkurgan, where the valley of the Khulm
    river, in which Rob and Samingan are situated, opens out into the plain.
    Since the whole collection of Bactrian documents almost certainly represents
    the royal archive of the kings of Rob, the mere presence of this document
    in the archive would suggest that Warnu too formed part of their dominions.
  - The next document which I would like to describe [Slide
    24 11KB] is a contract
    for the sale of a slave, which begins: "It was the year 446,
    the month Ab, the day Wahman,
    when this sealed document, this purchase contract, was written here in the
    district of Samingan, at Marogan, the court
    of the khar of Rob".
  - The year 446 should correspond to 678 A.D.
    By this time Turkish names and titles are common, as can be seen from the
    witness-list which follows: "Under the protection of the god Ram-set, the granter of favours, the granter of
    wishes, the wonderful, who is worshipped here at Marogan, at the court,
    under the protection of Zhun-lad son of Shabur, the successful, prosperous qaghan,
    the tapaghligh iltabir, the khar of Rob, and
    in the presence of Khusaru the tarkhan,
    and in the presence of Dev-raz, the brave chief
    justice of the khars of Rob, and also in the presence of the other noblemen
    who were present there amongst them and who bear witness concerning this
    matter".
  - This document too was originally sealed with five seals,
    whose owners are named on the back: remarkably, the seals of the witnesses
    include that of the god Ram-set, who was presumably
    represented by his priest. In the same way, other documents include the
    god Wakhsh, the deified River Oxus, amongst
    the witnesses.
  - The text continues: "Now, I, Yaskul,
    and I, Yezdgird, the sons of Kaw,
    inhabitants of Khwastu, who are now present
    here in the district of Samingan, and our brothers and sons, have sold to
    you, Fanz, and to you, Winamarg,
    and to you, Pusk, the sons of Bag-mareg,
    you whose estate is called Gabaliyan, and to
    your brothers, sons and descendants, a certain boy belonging to us as brothers,
    this same boy who is called Khalas, for three
    Persian drachmas, since we are unable to keep him in plenty and famine.
    So now, may the boy mentioned above belong properly and well to you, Fanz,
    and to you, Winamarg, with your brothers, sons and descendants hereafter,
    from now to eternity".
  - I hope that these quotations may give you a flavour of the legal terminology
    of these documents --- for which, incidentally, one can find many parallels
    both in documents written in other Central Asian languages such as Sogdian and Turkish,
    and in the 5th cent. B.C. Aramaic documents
    from Elephantine in Egypt.
  - The next document [Slide 25 11KB] is dated in
    the Bactrian year 478, that is, 710 A.D., in the month "Second New Year". The document
    is a deed recording a gift of land and of a slave
    girl to the god Kamird and his ked or priest, apparently in return for the healing
    of a member of the donor's family
  - Kamird
    means literally "head" or "chief"; it is perhaps the
    god's title rather than his name.
  - The word ked is almost certainly
    the source of the Chinese term, ji-duo, older kej-ta, mentioned
    by Xuanzang as the name of the worshippers
    of Zhun, the god of Zabulistan,
    to the south of the Hindu-kush. This god was also known in the kingdom of
    Rob, as we can see from the name of its ruler in the previous document:
    Zhun-lad, literally "given by Zhun".
  - In that case
    it is quite likely that Zhun is the god referred to by the title Kamird
    "the chief (god)". Perhaps he is the mysterious dedicatee of the
    cave-sanctuary of Nigar (Dukhtar-e
    Nushirvan) in the mountains south of Rob?
  - The donor in the present document, the queen of a ruler with the Turkish
    name Qutlugh Tapaghligh Bilga Savug "fortunate,
    possessing service, wise, beloved", is also referred to as "the
    princess of the Khalas". Khalas, which was also the name of the slave-boy
    in the previous document, probably represents the Turkish tribal name Khalach,
    of which this would be one of the earliest occurrences.
  - One of the very latest Bactrian documents is a deed of sale dated
    in the year 525, that is 757 A.D. [Slide 28 13KB] I just want to
    draw attention to a couple of passages in this contract. The first is the
    series of clauses which describe the rights of the new owners of the property:
    "to have and to hold it, to sell it, to give it away, to pawn it,
    to offer it for rent, to exchange it for another piece of land, to give
    it for a son's wedding or a daughter's dowry, to make a monastery or temple,
    to make a *cemetery or *crematorium ...".
  - Here the Indian term
    for a Buddhist monastery, vihara, is contrasted
    with the Bactrian word for a "temple", presumably referring to
    a non-Buddhist shrine.
  - A similar contrast can be seen between the following
    pair of nouns, both of which may refer to places for disposal of the dead:
    laxmig would correspond to the Avestan daxma-,
    Middle Persian daxmag, terms which usually
    refer to a structure used for the Zoroastrian rite of exposure, but sometimes
    also to a grave, while laxshatanig, if it derives from the root daxsh- "to burn", would necessarily
    refer to a non-Zoroastrian, perhaps Indian, rite of cremation.
  - These terms,
    together with the numerous theophoric personal names found in the documents,
    give us a glimpse of the variety of religious belief and practice in this
    area before the coming of Islam.
  - The independence of the kingdom of Rob was nearly at an end, however.
    While earlier contracts had expressed prices in gold diners or in Persian
    silver, the latest texts refer to "Arab silver dirhams", which
    seem to be specified as 'locally *current".
  - In addition, the present
    text refers, for the first and last time, to the payment of taxes to the Arabs. Soon afterwards,
    Arabic must have replaced Bactrian as the written language of the area;
    and indeed, a small number of Arabic documents
    have come to light, which appear to form a continuation of the same archive
  - Although I have only been able to describe a small part of an immense
    new body of material, I hope that I have said enough to show that it will
    throw new light on many aspects of the history and culture of ancient Afghanistan.
    But as yet I have hardly mentioned its importance for Iranian historical
    linguistics, though for me personally this is its chief fascination .
  - This slide
    [Slide 30 17KB] shows a small selection of forms which illustrate
    the position of Bactrian amongst the Iranian languages. In particular I
    have chosen forms which show the connection between Bactrian and the languages
    of the surrounding area: medieval Sogdian and
    Choresmian; modern Pashto,
    Yidgha-Munji, and Ishkashmi.
  - Such forms support the conclusion which Henning reached on first acquaintance
    with the new language that it is "in its natural and rightful place
    in Bactria" and justify his decision to name it Bactrian.
  - For instance, Gershevitch's
    controversial interpretation of lruh-minan in the Surkh Kotal inscription as
    the plural of a putative *lruh-min "enemy" receives strong
    support from the contexts in which the later form druh-min occurs.
    It is particularly impressive that the new texts provide examples of many
    previously unattested Bactrian words whose existence had already been postulated
    by Martin Schwartz on the basis of their occurrence
    as loanwords in other languages of Central Asia. [Slide
    31 17KB]
  - In many cases the new material confirms or contradicts views originally
    reached on the basis of limited evidence.
  - Of course the new texts also attest many forms for which there was
    previously no evidence at all.
  - For instance, the only verbs in the Surkh
    Kotal inscription are a few forms of the simple past
    tense and the present optative. Now
    one can quote almost complete paradigms not only of these tenses, but also
    of the present indicative, subjunctive
    and imperative, and even a few forms of the
    perfect subjunctive and optative.
  - Some features of Bactrian are quite unexpected, such as the existence of
    two types of infinitive as in
    Sogdian and Khotanese, or the tendency
    to fuse sequences of conjunctions, adverbs, prepositions, and pronouns into
    complex words such as o-ta-kald-men "and
    then when to us".
  - The fact that many texts are dated makes it possible
    to trace historical developments in the language. For instance, in texts
    of the 7th century and later, where an "l"
    and an "r" come into direct contact,
    the "l" changes to "d",
    as in the example quoted before: lruh-min "enemy",
    later druh-min.
  - Up to now, Bactrian has been the poor relation amongst the Iranian
    languages --- the one with nothing to give and everything to receive. Now
    that Bactrian is no longer so obscure, it can start to provide solutions
    as well as problems
  - For example, the traditional translation of Avestan
    axvareta- by Pahlavi agrift
    "not taken", which many scholars have regarded as a mistake, is
    justified by its Bactrian cognate. Similarly, the meaning of the much-debated
    Middle Persian term bun-xanag, literally "foundation-house",
    is clarified by the corresponding expression in Bactrian, which clearly
    implies "estate", that is, "house and lands".
  - A place-name
    mentioned by the great Muslim scholar al-Beruni,
    which modern scholars have emended out of existence, is shown to be correct
    as it stands. In the infinitive migd "to
    exchange", Bactrian even attests an Indo-European root which is apparently
    not found in any language more closely related than Greek.
  - The complete elucidation of the Bactrian documents and inscriptions
    will require many kinds of expertise: in palaeography and epigraphy, in
    history, historical geography, history of religions, numismatics, sphragistics,
    Arabic, Turkish, Chinese ... Since no one individual could possibly be competent
    in so many fields, such a task demands collaboration between scholars in
    several disciplines.
  - The starting-point for this collaboration must be the
    decipherment of the text and the drafting of a first, tentative translation.
    This is the business of the philologist, who employs his linguistic instinct
    and his knowledge of cognate languages to formulate hypotheses about the
    meanings of words and the grammatical structure of the language.
  - Without
    his preliminary work there is in fact nothing for anyone else to study.
    Philology is a branch of scholarship which some regard as old-fashioned;
    but I am proud to call myself a philologist and glad to have had this opportunity
    to describe to you a body of material which so well demonstrates both the
    necessity and the rewards of philological research.
    
    © N. Sims-Williams 1997
Pre-Islamic period of Afghanistan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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afghanistan pre-history tribes bactria indo-aryans sanskrit pashtoon swat-valley greeks persians hindus islam taliban ashoka on 2009-10-05
- Though predominantly pagan, some Pashtuns may have adopted Buddhist and Zoroastrian traditions, whereas other eastern Afghans remained pagans not unlike their neighbors the Kafirs of Nuristan as well as the Kalash.
- The Medes, a Western Persian people, arrived from what is today Kurdistan sometime around the 700s BCE and came to dominate most of ancient Afghanistan.
- 99 more annotations...
- - They were an early tribe that forged the first empire on the present Iranian plateau and were rivals of the Persians whom they initially dominated in the province of Fars to the south.
  - Median domination of Afghanistan would last until the Persians challenged and ultimately replaced them from their original base in Fars in southern Iran near ancient Elam.
  - Early Indo-Aryans prior to their move to India
  - In the region around what is today Kabul and eastern Afghanistan, an early Indo-Iranian or specifically some early Indo-Aryan culture may have emerged as eastern Afghanistan could possibly have been either the site of the Vedic civilization, that later came to influence and dominate the culture of northern India, or had links to it somewhere to the east either along the Indus or Ganges river valleys.^[4]
  - At some point that has yet to be determined, but possibly between 12th to 8th century BCE, Gandhara - which spans from Kandahar to some of the other Pashtoon provinces in Afghanistan and Pakistan and Kamboja, two of the sixteen Mahajanapadas (in Sanskrit 'Great Kingdoms') frequently referred to in Buddhist and Hindu religious texts are believed to have evolved as important political entities in what is today south-eastern Afghanistan.
  - Many scholars believe that while the Gandharans were early Indo-Aryan-speakers, the Kambojas were either Iranian or Indo-Iranian-speaking.
  - Both groups find frequent mention in numerous ancient Sanskrit and Pali texts, in particular the Mahabharata and numerous Puranic literature.
  - Alexander’s historians refer to the tribal population of Paropamisade as consisting of such clans as the Parsyetae (Parshu/Parshava), Aspasii (Aspasians), Asteknois (Hastiyanas), and Assakenois (Ashvakanas) and others.
  - This nomenclature possibly demonstrates that while most of this tribal population was, there were also some population segments which may have spoken early Indo-Aryan tongues prior to their movements to India.
  - This is because while the tribal name Parsyete implies Old Afghan affinities and the Aspasii (derived from Farsi-Dari also Pashtu word Aspa) also indicates an Aryanic horse culture,
  - the Assakenois (Sanskrit Ashvakan) of the Swat valley, on the other hand, were possibly an Indo-Aryan horsemen culture as their name derives from the Sanskrit Ashva (horse).
  - The Aspasian peoples are believed to be the western branch of the Ashvakas or Assakenians (Political history of Ancient India, 1996, p 216; Cambridge History of India, 352, n 3).
  - The Assakenois and Aspasios of the classical writings or the Ashvakas of the Sanskrit texts are believed by numerous scholars to have been sub-sections of the ancient Kambojas in reference to their equestrian nature.
  - The rock edict V of Emperor Ashoka found at Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra prominently refers to the Yonas (Ionian Greeks), Kambojas and Gandharas,
  - while rock edict XIII refers to the Greeks and Kambojas (Yonakambojesu) as people of the western frontiers.
  - It is noteworthy that Ashoka’s rock edicts/inscriptions written exclusively in Aramaic have been discovered only in the Paropamisade (region between river Kabol and Hindukush Mt), whereas those in Greek and Aramaic were discovered in Arachosia (south-east Afghanistan) and in Prakrit and Aramaic in Gandhara region (Peshawer to Rawalpindi).
  - Scholars believe that the Greek version of Ashokan inscriptions was intended for the Yonas (the Greeks or Aryans), the Prakrit version for the Indo-Aryan Gandharas, while the Aramaic version was directed at the Kambojas
  - This shows that Paropamisade region (an Aramaic territory) was inhabited by early Persian Kambojas as the Aramaic was an official language for the Persian tribes under Achaemenid rulers.
  - Moreover, as a Greco-Aramaic inscription (known as Shar-i-Kuna inscription) was discovered in 1957 in Kandhahar also, this, according to some scholars, may attest that a section of the Aramaic-knowing Kambojas (or other Iranian tribes) were also possibly located north of Kandhahar as neighbors to the Greeks.
  - Dr Michael Witzel identifies the region from Kabol valley to as far as Kandhahar as inhabited by the ancestors of Pashtoons, Persica-9, 1981, pp 86–123).
  - The compound expression Yonakambojesu of Ashoka’s Rock Edict XIII as well as of Buddhist Majjhima Nikaya (43.1.3), powerfully supports this view.
  - It is now generally accepted by many Indic scholars that the Kambojas were an early Pashtoon people who migrated to today's Iran who may have been partially absorbed into larger tribes in Afghanistan and/or else partially forced to move east where they were further absorbed into the populations of what is today northern Pakistan and India^[5].
  - Current minuscule population of Kamboj, Kamboh and Kamoz, the modern representatives of ancient Kambojas, in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan is estimated to be approximately around 1.5 millions.
  - The chronology of major events and corresponding archaeology remains highly sporadic as does the religious connotation which remains unverifiable.
  - Achaemenid Rule, and rise of Zoroastrianism ca. 550 BCE–331 BCE
  - The city of Bactria (which later became Balkh), is believed to have been the home of Zarathustra, who founded the Zoroastrian religion.
  - The Avesta refers to eastern Bactria as being the home of the Zoroastrian faith, but this can be a reference to either a region in modern Afghanistan or Border line of Afghan-Pakistan.
  - Regardless of the debate as to where Zoroaster was from, Zoroastrianism spread to become one of the world's most influential religions and became the main faith of the old Aryan people for centuries.
  - It also remained the official religion of Persia until the defeat of the Sassanian ruler Yazdegerd III—over a thousand years after its founding—by Muslim Arab.
  - In what is today southern Iran, the Persians emerged to challenge Median supremacy on the Iranian plateau.
  - By 550 BCE, the Persians had replaced Median rule with their own dominion and even began to expand past previous Median imperial borders. Both Gandhara and Kamboja Mahajanapadas of the Buddhist texts soon fell a prey to the Achaemenian Dynasty during the reign of Achaemenid, Cyrus the Great (558–530 BCE), or in the first year of Darius I.
  - According to Pliny's evidence, Cyrus II had destroyed Kapisa in Capiscene (Naturalis Historia, VI, 25, 92) which was a Kamboja city.
  - The former region of Gandhara and Kamboja (upper Indus) had constituted seventh satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire and annually contributed 170 talents of gold dust as a tribute to the Achaemenids.
  - Bactria had a special position in old Afghanistan, being the capital of a vice-kingdom.
  - By the fourth century BCE, Persian control of outlying areas and the internal cohesion of the empire had become somewhat tenuous.
  - Although distant provinces like Bactriana had often been restless under Achaemenid rule, Bactrian troops nevertheless fought in the decisive Battle of Gaugamela in 330 BCE against the advancing armies of Alexander the Great.
  - The Achaemenids were decisively defeated by Alexander and retreated from his advancing army of Greco-Macedonians and their Iranian allies.
  - Darius III, the last Achaemenid ruler, tried to flee to Bactria, but was assassinated by a subordinate lord, the Bactrian-born Bessus, who proclaimed himself the new ruler of Persia as Artaxerxes, but was unable to mount a successful resistance to the growing military might of Alexander's army.
  - Fleeing to his native Bactria, Bessus attempted to rally local Aryan tribes to his side, but was instead turned over to Alexander who proceeded to have him tortured and executed for having committed regicide.
  - Alexander the Great, Seleucid-Mauryan rivalry, and Greco-Bactrian Rule, 330 BCE–ca. 150 BCE
  - This article is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (March 2009)
  - It had taken Alexander only six months to conquer Iran, but it took him nearly three years (from about 330 BCE–327 BCE) to subdue the area that is now Afghanistan.
  - Moving eastward from the area of Herat, the Macedonian leader encountered fierce resistance from the local tribes of Aria (West Afghanistan), Drangiana (now part of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Eastern Iran), Arachosia (South and Central Afghanistan) and Bactria (North and Central Afghanistan).
  - In a letter to his mother, Alexander described his encounters with the western and northern tribes (Afghans) thus: "I am involved in the land of a 'Leonine' (lion-like) and brave people, where every foot of the ground is like a wall of steel, confronting my soldier. You have brought only one son into the world, but everyone in this land can be called an Alexander.”
    
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  - Local resistance and the difficult terrain made it difficult for Alexander's forces to subdue the region as many invaders have found the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan similar to a maze that often trapped outside invaders.
  - Alexander also met his Bactrian/Sogdian bride, Roxana—who was reportedly born in Balkh—while trying to consolidate his rule over ancient Afghanistan and adjacent regions in Central Asia.
  - Their union reportedly produced one sole heir, Alexander IV, who was later killed in Greece by Cassander.
  - Although Alexander's expedition through ancient Afghanistan was brief, he left behind a Hellenic cultural influence that lasted several centuries.
  - Upon Alexander's death in 323 BCE, his empire, which had never been politically consolidated, broke apart as his companions began to divide it amongst themselves. Alexander's cavalry commander, Seleucus, took nominal control of the eastern lands and founded the Seleucid dynasty.
  - Under the Seleucids, as under Alexander, Greek colonists and soldiers colonized Bactria, roughly corresponding to modern Afghanistan's borders.
  - However, the majority of Macedonian soldiers of Alexander the Great wanted to leave the east and return home to Greece.
  - Later, Seleucus sought to guard his eastern frontier and moved Ionian Greeks (also known as Yavanas to many local groups) to Bactria in the third century BCE.
  - Mauryan Period (305-180BCE)
  - While the Diadochi were warring amongst themselves, the Mauryan Empire was developing in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent.
  - The founder of the empire, Chandragupta Maurya, confronted a Macedonian invasion force led by Seleucus I in 305 BCE and following a brief conflict, an agreement was reached as Seleucus ceded Gandhara and Arachosia (centered around ancient Kandahar) and areas south of Bagram (corresponding to the extreme south-east of modern Afghanistan) to the Mauryans.
  - During the 120 years of the Mauryans in southern Afghanistan, Buddhism was introduced and eventually become a major religion alongside Zoroastrianism and local pagan beliefs.
  - The ancient Grand Trunk Road was built linking what is now Kabul to various cities in the Punjab and the Gangetic Plain.
  - Commerce, art, and architecture (seen especially in the construction of stupas) developed during this period. It reach its high point under Emperor Ashoka whose edicts, roads, and rest stops were found throughout the subcontinent.
  - Although the vast majority of them throughout the subcontinent were written in Prakrit, Afghanistan is notable for the inclusion of 2 Greek and Aramaic ones alongside the court language of the Mauryans.
  - Inscriptions made by the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka, a fragment of Edict 13 in Greek, as well as a full Edict, written in both Greek and Aramaic has been discovered in Kandahar.
  - It is said to be written in excellent Classical Greek, using sophisticated philosophical terms. In this Edict, Ashoka uses the word Eusebeia ("Piety") as the Greek translation for the ubiquitous "Dharma" of his other Edicts written in Prakrit:
  - "Ten years (of reign) having been completed, King Piodasses (Ashoka) made known (the doctrine of) Piety (εὐσέβεια, Eusebeia) to men; and from this moment he has made men more pious, and everything thrives throughout the whole world. And the king abstains from (killing) living beings, and other men and those who (are) huntsmen and fishermen of the king have desisted from hunting. And if some (were) intemperate, they have ceased from their intemperance as was in their power; and obedient to their father and mother and to the elders, in opposition to the past also in the future, by so acting on every occasion, they will live better and more happily." (Trans. by G.P. Carratelli^[6])
  - The last ruler in the region was probably Subhagasena (Sophagasenus of Polybius), who, in a ll probability, belonged to the Ashvaka (q.v.) background.
  - Greco-Bactrian rule
  - In the middle of the 3rd century BCE, an independent, Hellenistic state was declared in Bactria and eventually the control of the Seleucids and Mauryans was overthrown in western and southern Afghanistan.
  - Graeco-Bactrian rule spread until it included a large territory which stretched from northeastern Iran in the west to the Punjab in India in the east by about 170 BCE.
  - Graeco-Bactrian rule was eventually defeated by a combination of internecine disputes that plagued Greek and Hellenized rulers to the west, continual conflict with Indian kingdoms, as well as the pressure of two groups of nomadic invaders from Central Asia—the Parthians and Sakas.
  - The Kushan Empire, ca. 150 BCE–300 CE
  - The Parthians established control in most of what is Iran as early as the middle of the 3rd century BC;
  - In the third and second centuries BC, the Parthians, a nomadic Iranian people, arrived in ancient Afghanistan.
  - about 100 years later another Indo-European group from the north—the Tocharian Kushans (a subgroup of the tribe called the Yuezhi by the Chinese)—entered the region that is now Afghanistan and established an empire lasting almost four centuries.
  - The Kushan Empire spread from the Kabul River valley to defeat other Central Asian tribes that had previously conquered parts of the northern central Iranian Plateau once ruled by the Parthians.
  - By the middle of the 1st century BCE, the Kushans' base of control became Afghanistan and their empire spanned from the north of the Pamir mountains to the Ganges river valley in India.
  - Early in the 2nd century under Kanishka, the most powerful of the Kushan rulers, the empire reached its greatest geographic and cultural breadth to become a center of literature and art.
  - Kanishka extended Kushan control to the mouth of the Indus River on the Arabian Sea, into Kashmir, and into what is today the Chinese-controlled area north of Tibet.
  - Kanishka was a patron of religion and the arts. It was during his reign that Mahayana Buddhism^{[citation needed]} , imported to northern India earlier by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka (ca. 260 BCE–232 BCE), reached its zenith in Central Asia.
  - Though the Kushanas were predominantly Zoroastrian themselves^{[citation needed]}, they also supported local Buddhists and Hindus as well as the worship of various local
  - Sassanian Rule, ca. 300–650
  - In the 3rd century, Kushan control fragmented into semi-independent kingdoms that became easy targets for conquest by the rising Iranian dynasty, the Sassanians (ca. 224–561) which annexed Afghanistan by 300 CE.
  - Sassanian control was tenuous at times as numerous challenges from Central Asian tribes led to instability and constant warfare in the region.
  - The disunited Kushan and Sassanian kingdoms were in a poor position to meet the threat of a new wave of nomadic, Indo-European invaders from the north.
  - The Hephthalites (or White Huns) swept out of Central Asia around the fourth century into Bactria and to the south, overwhelming the last of the Kushan and Sassanian kingdoms.
  - Some have speculated that the name Afghanistan land of the Afghans derives from which could be an adjective such as brave, chivlarious, valour, which was to use for the people in today's Afghanistan. Historians believe that Hepthalite control continued for a century and was marked by constant warfare with the Sassanians to the west who exerted nominal control over the region.
  - By the middle of the sixth century the Hephthalites were defeated in the territories north of the Amu Darya (the Oxus River of antiquity) by another group of Central Asian nomads, the Göktürks, and by the resurgent Sassanians in the lands south of the Amu Darya.
  - It was the ruler of western Göktürks, Sijin (aka Sinjibu, Silzibul and Yandu Muchu Khan) who led the forces against the Hepthalites who were defeated at the Battle of Chach (Tashkent) and at the Battle of Bukhara.
  - The Shahi Kings
  - The Shahi dynasties ruled portions of the Kabul Valley (in eastern Afghanistan) and the old province of Gandhara (northern Pakistan and Kashmir) from the decline of the Kushan Empire in third century to the early ninth century.^[7]
  - They are split into two eras the Buddhist Turk-Shahis (also known as the Kushano-Hephthalites and the later Hindu-Shahis with the change-over occurring around 870, and ruled up until the Islamic conquest of Afghanistan.
  - When Xuanzang visited the region early in the 7th century CE, the Kabul valley region was ruled by a Kshatriya king, who is identified as the Shahi Khingal, and whose name has been found in an inscription found in Gardez.
  - The Turk Shahi regency was overthrown and replaced by a Mohyal Shahi dynasty of Brahmins who began the first phase of the Hindu Shahi dynasty.
  - These Hindu Shahi kings of Kabul and Gandhara may have had links to some ruling families in neighboring Kashmir and other areas to the east.
  - The Shahis, though Hindu, were rulers of a predominantly Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Hindu and Muslim populations and were thus patrons of numerous faiths, and various artifacts and coins from their rule have been found that display their multicultural domain.
  - In 964AD, the last Mohyal Hindu Shahi was succeeded by the Janjua overlord, Jayapala, of the Panduvanshi dynasty.
  - The last Shahi emperors Jayapala, Anandapala and Tirlochanpala fought invading Muslim Turks from Central Asia and were gradually defeated and eventually exiled from their domains into northern India.
  - Archaeological remnants from Afghanistan's pre-Islamic period
  - Along ancient trade routes, however, stone monuments of the once flourishing Buddhist culture did exist as reminders of the past. The two massive sandstone Buddhas of Bamyan, thirty-five and fifty-three meters high overlooked the ancient route through Bamyan to Balkh and dated from the third and fifth centuries.
  - Most of these early Zoroastrian, Greek, Hellenistic, Buddhist, and Hindu cultures were replaced by the coming of Islam and little influence remains in Afghanistan today.
  - They survived until 2001, when they were destroyed by the Taliban.
  - In this and other key places in Afghanistan, archaeologists have located frescoes, stucco decorations, statuary, and rare objects from as far away as China, Phoenicia, and Rome, which were crafted as early as the 2nd century and bear witness to the influence of these ancient civilizations upon Afghanistan.
History of Afghanistan: Islamic Conquest

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afghanistan islam conquest arabs sassanians qadisiya kushans turks samarkand abbasid shia iran scholarship learning on 2009-10-05
- Afghanistan History
- Islamic Conquest
- 13 more annotations...
- - In 637 A.D., only five years after the death of the Prophet
    Muhammad, the Arab Muslims shattered the might of the Iranian
    Sassanians at the battle of Qadisiya, and the invaders began
    to reach into the lands east of Iran.
  - Following the first Arab raid into Qandahar in about 700, local
    rulers, probably either Kushans or Western Turks, began to come under the control of Ummayid caliphs, who sent Arab
    military governors and tax collectors into the region.
  - The Muslim conquest
    was a prolonged struggle in the area that is now Afghanistan.
  - By the
    middle of the eighth century the rising Abbasid Dynasty was
    able to subdue the area.
  - There was a period of peace under the
    rule of the caliph, Harun al Rashid (7&S-809), and his son, in
    which learning fluorished in such Central Asian cities as Samarkand,
    located in what is now the Soviet Union.
  - Over the
    period of the seventh through the ninth centuries, most inhabitants
    of what is now Afghanistan, Pakistan, the southern parts
    of the Soviet Union, and some of northern India were converted
    to Sunni Islam, which replaced the Zorastrianism,
    Hinduism, Buddhism, and indigenous religions of previous
    empires.
  - During the eighth and ninth centuries, partly to obtain
    better grazing land, ancestors of many of the Turkic-speaking
    
    groups now identifiable in Afghanistan settled in the Hindu
    Kush area.
  - Some of these tribes settled in what are now Ghor,
    
    Ghazni, and Kabul provinces and began to assimilate much of
    the culture and language of the already present Pashtun tribes.
  - By the middle of the ninth century, Abbasid rule had
    faltered, and semi-independent states began to emerge
    throughout the empire.
  - In the Hindu Kush area three shortlived,
    local dynasties emerged. The best known of the three,
    the Sammanid, ruling out of Bukhara (in what is now the Soviet
    Union), extended its rule briefly as far east as India and west
    into Iran.
  - Although Arab Muslim
    intellectual life still centered on Baghdad, Iranian Muslim
    scholarship, i.e., Shia Islam, at this time
    predominated in the Sammanid areas.
  - Bukhara and neighboring Samarkand were centers of
    science, the arts, and Islamic studies.
  - By the mid-tenth century
    the Sammanid Dynasty crumbled in the face of attack from
    the Turkish tribes to the north and from a rising dynasty to the
    south, the Ghaznavids.
American troops in Afghanistan losing heart, say army chaplains - Times Online

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afghanistan US-military chaplains wardak-province soldiers morale casualties depression obama democrats pentagon gates on 2009-10-08 and saved by 8 people
- From The Times
  
  
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  October 8, 2009
- American troops in Afghanistan losing heart, say army chaplains
- 50 more annotations...
- - Martin Fletcher at Forward Operating Base in Wardak province
  - American soldiers serving in Afghanistan are depressed and deeply disillusioned, according to the chaplains of two US battalions that have spent nine months on the front line in the war against the Taleban.
  - Many feel that they are risking their lives — and that colleagues have died — for a futile mission and an Afghan population that does nothing to help them, the chaplains told The Times in their makeshift chapel on this fortress-like base in a dusty, brown valley southwest of Kabul.
  - “The many soldiers who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here.
  - They are really in a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families,” said Captain Jeff Masengale, of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2-87 Infantry Battalion.
  - “They feel they are risking their lives for progress that’s hard to discern,” said Captain Sam Rico, of the Division’s 4-25 Field Artillery Battalion.
  - “They are tired, strained, confused and just want to get through.” The chaplains said that they were speaking out because the men could not.
  - The base is not, it has to be said, obviously downcast, and many troops do not share the chaplains’ assessment.
  - The soldiers are, by nature and training, upbeat, driven by a strong sense of duty, and they do their jobs as best they can.
  - Re-enlistment rates are surprisingly good for the 2-87, though poor for the 4-25. Several men approached by The Times, however, readily admitted that their morale had slumped.
  - “We’re lost — that’s how I feel. I’m not exactly sure why we’re here,” said Specialist Raquime Mercer, 20, whose closest friend was shot dead by a renegade Afghan policeman last Friday.
  - “I need a clear-cut purpose if I’m going to get hurt out here or if I’m going to die.”
  - Sergeant Christopher Hughes, 37, from Detroit, has lost six colleagues and survived two roadside bombs.
  - Asked if the mission was worthwhile, he replied: “If I knew exactly what the mission was, probably so, but I don’t.”
  - The only soldiers who thought it was going well “work in an office, not on the ground”. In his opinion “the whole country is going to s***”.
  - The battalion’s 1,500 soldiers are nine months in to a year-long deployment that has proved extraordinarily tough.
  - Their goal was to secure the mountainous Wardak province and then to win the people’s allegiance through development and good governance. They have, instead, found themselves locked in an increasingly vicious battle with the Taleban.
  - They have been targeted by at least 300 roadside bombs, about 180 of which have exploded. Nineteen men have been killed in action, with another committing suicide.
  - About a hundred have been flown home with amputations, severe burns and other injuries likely to cause permanent disability, and many of those have not been replaced.
  - More than two dozen mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs) have been knocked out of action.
  - Living conditions are good — abundant food, air-conditioned tents, hot water, free internet — but most of the men are on their second, third or fourth tours of Afghanistan and Iraq, with barely a year between each.
  - Staff Sergeant Erika Cheney, Airborne’s mental health specialist, expressed concern about their mental state — especially those in scattered outposts — and believes that many have mild post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
  - “They’re tired, frustrated, scared. A lot of them are afraid to go out but will still go,” she said.
  - Lieutenant Peter Hjelmstad, 2-87’s Medical Platoon Leader, said sleeplessness and anger attacks were common.
  - A dozen men have been confined to desk jobs because they can no longer handle missions outside the base.
  - One long-serving officer who has lost three friends this tour said he sometimes returned to his room at night and cried, or played war games on his laptop. “It’s a release. It’s a method of coping.”
  - He has nightmares and sleeps little, and it does not help that the base is frequently shaken by outgoing artillery fire. He was briefly overcome as he recalled how, when a lorry backfired during his most recent home leave, he grabbed his young son and dived between two parked cars.
  - The chaplains said soldiers were seeking their help in unprecedented numbers.
  - “Everyone you meet is just down, and you meet them everywhere — in the weight room, dining facility, getting mail,” said Captain Rico. Even “hard men” were coming to their tent chapel and breaking down.
  - The men are frustrated by the lack of obvious purpose or progress. “The soldiers’ biggest question is: what can we do to make this war stop. Catch one person? Assault one objective? Soldiers want definite answers, other than to stop the Taleban, because that almost seems impossible. It’s hard to catch someone you can’t see,” said Specialist Mercer.
  - “It’s a very frustrating mission,” said Lieutenant Hjelmstad. “The average soldier sees a friend blown up and his instinct is to retaliate or believe it’s for something [worthwhile], but it’s not like other wars where your buddy died but they took the hill. There’s no tangible reward for the sacrifice. It’s hard to say Wardak is better than when we got here.”
  - Captain Masengale, a soldier for 12 years before he became a chaplain, said: “We want to believe in a cause but we don’t know what that cause is.”
  - The soldiers are angry that colleagues are losing their lives while trying to help a population that will not help them. “You give them all the humanitarian assistance that they want and they’re still going to lie to you. They’ll tell you there’s no Taleban anywhere in the area and as soon as you roll away, ten feet from their house, you get shot at again,” said Specialist Eric Petty, from Georgia.
  - Captain Rico told of the disgust of a medic who was asked to treat an insurgent shortly after pulling a colleague’s charred corpse from a bombed vehicle.
  - The soldiers complain that rules of engagement designed to minimise civilian casualties mean that they fight with one arm tied behind their backs.
  - “They’re a joke,” said one. “You get shot at but can do nothing about it. You have to see the person with the weapon. It’s not enough to know which house the shooting’s coming from.”
  - The soldiers joke that their Isaf arm badges stand not for International Security Assistance Force but “I Suck At Fighting” or “I Support Afghan Farmers”.
  - To compound matters, soldiers are mainly being killed not in combat but on routine journeys, by roadside bombs planted by an invisible enemy. “That’s very demoralising,” said Captain Masengale.
  - The constant deployments are, meanwhile, playing havoc with the soldiers’ private lives. “They’re killing families,” he said. “Divorces are skyrocketing. PTSD is off the scale. There have been hundreds of injuries that send soldiers home and affect families for the rest of their lives.”
  - The chaplains said that many soldiers had lost their desire to help Afghanistan.
  - “All they want to do is make it home alive and go back to their wives and children and visit the families who have lost husbands and fathers over here. It comes down to just surviving,” said Captain Masengale.
  - “If we make it back with ten toes and ten fingers the mission is successful,” Sergeant Hughes said.
  - “You carry on for the guys to your left or right,” added Specialist Mercer.
  - The chaplains have themselves struggled to cope with so much distress. “We have to encourage them, strengthen them and send them out again. No one comes in and says, ‘I’ve had a great day on a mission’. It’s all pain,” said Captain Masengale. “The only way we’ve been able to make it is having each other.”
  - Lieutenant-Colonel Kimo Gallahue, 2-87’s commanding officer, denied that his men were demoralised, and insisted they had achieved a great deal over the past nine months. A triathlete and former rugby player, he admitted pushing his men hard, but argued that taking the fight to the enemy was the best form of defence.
  - He said the security situation had worsened because the insurgents had chosen to fight in Wardak province, not abandon it.
  - He said, however, that the situation would have been catastrophic without his men. They had managed to keep open the key Kabul-to-Kandahar highway which dissects Wardak, and prevent the province becoming a launch pad for attacks on the capital, which is barely 20 miles from its border.
  - Above all, Colonel Gallahue argued that counter-insurgency — winning the allegiance of the indigenous population through security, development and good governance — was a long and laborious process that could not be completed in a year. “These 12 months have been, for me, laying the groundwork for future success,” he said.
  - At morning service on Sunday, the two chaplains sought to boost the spirits of their flock with uplifting hymns, accompanied by video footage of beautiful lakes, oceans and rivers.
  - Captain Rico offered a particularly apposite reading from Corinthians: “We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”
Army Officers Criticize Rebuke of Gen. McChrystal

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- Army Officers Criticize Rebuke of Gen. McChrystal
- By Ann Scott Tyson
  
  Washington Post Staff Writer
  
  Thursday, October 8, 2009
- 21 more annotations...
- - Army officers gathered at a convention in Washington this week said senior White House officials should not have rebuked Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, for saying publicly that a scaled-back war effort would not succeed.
  - The hallways at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center buzzed with sympathy for McChrystal, who has said the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan risks failure without a rapid infusion of additional forces. Obama and his advisers are now debating strategy in Afghanistan, with some officials arguing against additional deployments.
  - "It was definitely a hand slap," one Army officer said of the statement last weekend by national security adviser James L. Jones, a retired Marine general, that military officials should pass advice to President Obama through their chain of command.
  - The Army officer, like others attending the annual meeting of the Association of the United States Army, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the politically sensitive issue.
  - A number of senior Army officers compared McChrystal to Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, the Army chief of staff who warned before the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that it would take several hundred thousand troops to secure the country -- advice that was dismissed as "wildly off the mark" by then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz.
  - "You know what happened to Shinseki," said one Army general, referring to what many officers believe was the Bush administration's punitive treatment of the general, now Obama's secretary of veteran affairs. Shinseki's assessment was vindicated when President George W. Bush increased U.S. troop levels in Iraq.
  - "We take the kids to war and ask them to take a bullet. So you won't stop Stan from saying what he thinks is best for the mission and the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines," said the general, who is an acquaintance of McChrystal's.
  - "McChrystal was sent to fix Afghanistan -- is that to get rid of the Taliban or al-Qaeda?" said a one-star Army general. "Without the mission being defined well, you've left it to them to decide what to do."
  - Other officers faulted the Obama and Bush administrations for failing to define the mission in Afghanistan, leaving a series of commanders to do so on their own.
  - Several officers said such tensions arose because the military is serving a civilian leadership. "You kind of get used to it after years of service," the Army general said. "We tend to live with it."
  - Some officers observed that political leaders must commit the resources needed to fulfill their goals. If not, they said, the goals must change.
  - "Gen. McChrystal has given an assessment of what the military strategy should be to achieve the political objective," said an Army officer who served in Afghanistan under McChrystal and his predecessor, Gen. David D. McKiernan, who was abruptly relieved in May by the Pentagon leadership.
  - "It comes down to: How much am I willing to commit, and if I can't contribute what the commander needs, do I have to change my objective? It happens time and time again with senior military commanders and civilian leaders."
  - Policy in Afghanistan
  - As the violence began to increase in the country in 2006 and 2007, the Bush administration made it clear to commanders that no significant troop increase in Afghanistan was possible given the priority placed on quelling the violence in Iraq, according to officers familiar with decisions at that time.
  - For years, U.S. commanders in Afghanistan have said they need thousands of additional troops to combat a growing Taliban insurgency and to train the Afghan army and police forces.
  - McKiernan made a very public appeal for tens of thousands of additional forces, and that led to initial troop increases first under Bush and then Obama.
  - When McChrystal was selected by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to replace McKiernan, the belief in military circles was that he would be given the resources to conduct a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan -- finally providing what officers had long believed was necessary to try to stem increasing violence.
  - The Pentagon has also pressed NATO and other international allies to supply more forces, but Army officers at the convention voiced concern that signs of division within the Obama administration over Afghanistan strategy could sap the commitment of governments struggling to maintain public support for a sustained campaign.
  - Several officers simply shrugged off the civilian admonishments to the military -- most recently issued by Gates, who on Monday pointedly told hundreds of Army personnel attending an opening ceremony of the convention that military advice should be candid but private.
    
    "The public admonishments -- fine. If you made general, you've been chewed out a few times," said one senior Army general.
  - Officers said there was no question that McChrystal and other commanders would carry out whatever decisions Obama makes. "We will tell you what we think, but we are also soldiers, so if the president gives an order, we will execute it," the senior officer said.
    
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Alex Jones’ Prison Planet.com » NY Times: Afghan Opium Kingpin On CIA Payroll

SEE/Google: Gary Webb

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- NY Times: Afghan Opium Kingpin On CIA Payroll
- But exposé serves as little more than a whitewash because it fails to mention decades-long U.S. agenda to support lucrative Golden Crescent drug trade
- 24 more annotations...
- - Paul Joseph Watson
    
    Prison Planet.com
    
    Wednesday, October 28, 2009
  - A bombshell article in today’s edition of the New York Times lifts the lid on how the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a suspected kingpin of the country’s booming opium trade, has been on the CIA payroll for the past eight years.
  - However, the article serves as little more than a whitewash because it fails to address the fact that one of the primary reasons behind the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was the agenda to reinstate the Golden Crescent drug trade.
  - “The agency pays (Ahmed Wali) Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home,” reports the Times.
  - An October 2008 report from the Times reveals how, after security forces discovered a huge tractor-trailer full of heroin outside Kandahar in 2004, “Before long, the commander, Habibullah Jan, received a telephone call from Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, asking him to release the vehicle and the drugs.”
  - In 2006, following the discovery of another cache of heroin, “United States investigators told other American officials that they had discovered links between the drug shipment and a bodyguard believed to be an intermediary for Ahmed Wali Karzai.”
  - The Times article out today also discusses how the CIA uses Karzai as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban. He is also directly implicated in the manufacturing of phony ballots and polling stations that were attributed to the President’s disputed election victory.
  - “If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck,” the American officer said of Mr. Karzai. “Our assumption is that he’s benefiting from the drug trade.”
  - Officials quoted by The Times described Karzai as a Mafia-like figure who expanded his influence over the drug trade with the aid of U.S. efforts to eliminate his competitors.
  - The Afghan opium trade has exploded since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, following a lull after the Taliban had imposed a crackdown.
  - According to the U.N., the drug trade is now worth $65 billion. Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world’s opium, with the equivalent of 3,500 tonnes leaving the country each year. Other figures put the number far higher, at around 6,100 tonnes a year.
  - The New York Times exposé pins the blame on Karzai, but fails to explain that one of the primary reasons behind the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was the United States’ agenda to restore, not eradicate, the drug trade.
  - Before the invasion, the Taliban collaborated closely with the U.N. to reduce opium production down to just 185 tonnes, a figure at least 2000% below current levels.
  - The notion that the “Taliban benefits from the drug trade” and that the U.S. is trying to stop it, as both Bush and Obama claimed, is the complete opposite of what is actually happening.
  - As Professor Michel Chossudovsky has highlighted in a series of essays, the explosion of opium production after the invasion was about the CIA’s drive to restore the lucrative Golden Crescent opium trade that was in place during the time when the Agency were funding the Mujahideen rebels to fight the Soviets, and flood the streets of America and Britain with cheap heroin, destroying lives while making obscene profits.
    
    Add Sticky Note
  - The Times implies that the drug lord Karzai being on the CIA payroll is little more than an embarrassing coincidence, when in reality he is just a middle manager for the U.S. military-industrial complex’s control of the drug trade in Afghanistan which stretches back decades and was only interrupted when the Taliban came to power.
  - “Heroin is a multibillion dollar business supported by powerful interests, which requires a steady and secure commodity flow.
  - One of the “hidden” objectives of the war was precisely to restore the CIA sponsored drug trade to its historical levels and exert direct control over the drug routes,” writes Chossudovsky.
  - “As revealed in the Iran-Contra and Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandals, CIA covert operations in support of the Afghan Mujahideen had been funded through the laundering of drug money.
  - “Dirty money” was recycled –through a number of banking institutions (in the Middle East) as well as through anonymous CIA shell companies–, into “covert money,” used to finance various insurgent groups during the Soviet-Afghan war, and its aftermath.”
  - Within two years of the CIA’s covert operation in Afghanistan, “CIA assets again controlled this heroin trade.
  - As the Mujahideen guerrillas seized territory inside Afghanistan, they ordered peasants to plant opium as a revolutionary tax.
  - Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates under the protection of Pakistan Intelligence operated hundreds of heroin laboratories. During this decade of wide-open drug-dealing, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate major seizures or arrests.”
  - This is the history of the Afghan opium trade that the Times won’t tell you, and in failing to do so today’s article serves only to whitewash the true scale of the agenda behind the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan.
1,000 U.S. troops wounded in Afghanistan in past 3 months

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afghanistan OEF casualties Barack-Obama war POTUS-Obama delays US-Military IEDs combat-injuries Ward-57 Democrats on 2009-10-31 and saved by 2 people
- U.S. combat injuries rise sharply
- Three-month total in Afghanistan surpasses 1,000
- 31 more annotations...
- - By Ann Scott Tyson
    
    Washington Post Staff Writer
    
    Saturday, October 31, 2009
  - More than 1,000 American troops have been wounded in battle over the past three months in Afghanistan, accounting for one-fourth of those injured in combat since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
  - The dramatic increase in amputees and other seriously injured service members comes as October marks the deadliest month for U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
  - Expanded military operations, a near-doubling of the number of troops since the beginning of the year and a Taliban offensive that has included a proliferation of roadside bombings have led to the great increase in casualties.
  - U.S. troops in Afghanistan are suffering wounds at a higher rate than those who were serving in Iraq when violence spiraled during the military "surge" two years ago.
  - In mid-2007, 600 U.S. troops were wounded in Iraq each month out of about 150,000 troops deployed there. In Afghanistan, about 68,000 troops are currently installed, with about 350 wounded each month recently.
  - Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell acknowledged that the casualties in Afghanistan have surpassed Iraq surge proportions and noted that the violence in Afghanistan is directed more against U.S. and other coalition forces, whereas it was heavily sectarian in Iraq. "It shows you how we are the targets and how effectively they are targeting us," Morrell said.
  - He noted that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has become concerned about the rising number of wounded and has ordered thousands of additional support troops to Afghanistan to look for, and minimize, the roadside bombs.
  - Military doctors say the nature of the Afghanistan casualties is reminiscent of those in Iraq in 2007. "We're seeing similar types of injuries from Afghanistan that we saw in Iraq" before and during the surge, said Lt. Col. Shelton Davis, chief of physical medicine at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.
  - More than 1,000 improvised explosive devices, or roadside bombs, exploded or were found in Afghanistan in August, more than double any monthly total until this summer.
  - The bombs account for 70 to 80 percent of U.S. and coalition casualties in that country, according to Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, director of the Pentagon's Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization.
  - The bombs are so powerful, he said, that they can take out the latest mine-resistant vehicles the Pentagon has employed to protect troops. In addition, insurgents have begun targeting troops on foot.
  - Metz told military reporters this week that IEDs are now the "weapon of choice" for Taliban fighters.
  - He said that the rise in bombings has coincided with the doubling of U.S. troop numbers this year and that further troop increases -- now under consideration by President Obama -- would bring more bombs.
  - As U.S. ground forces moved in this year, Metz said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing this week, "the enemy was ready with a very thick array of IEDs. . . . Those soldiers and Marines ran into those IEDs, and it was what we predicted."
  - Walter Reed's Ward 57 provides wrenching proof of the devastating effectiveness of the bombs, with patients suffering amputations, spinal cord damage, traumatic brain injuries and fractures.
  - On Aug. 18, Lt. Dan Berschinski, 25, of Peach Tree City, Ga., was serving as a platoon leader with the Stryker brigade combat team in Kandahar province, where the roads were laced with bombs and his unit had to operate without engineer support or mine-detection equipment.
  - His platoon was crossing a footbridge when a bomb threw Berschinski to the ground, deafened a sergeant and blew up Pfc. Jonathan Yanney, a radio operator. An initial search located part of Yanney's shredded helmet, pieces of a boot and some small body parts that Berschinski said team members put in a plastic bag.
  - Realizing that not only the roads but also the foot trails were too dangerous, Berschinski and his men moved on by walking through shin-high water. Regrouping in a mud-walled compound later that day, Berschinski was passing a gate when another bomb blew up underneath him, bouncing him off a wall and tossing him back into the crater that had formed.
  - "I immediately reached down -- up, really, since I was upside down -- for my legs. I could tell they were gone," Berschinski said in a written account provided by his family. His right leg and hip and his left leg above the knee were amputated. According to Metz, few soldiers have survived stepping on such bombs.
  - But the survival rate among the wounded is greater than in previous conflicts because of improved first aid, quick evacuations to field hospitals and better armored protection.
  - Busy wards in wartime
  - "We can open more beds as needed and bring on more staff as needed. As you can imagine, that is not without its own challenges," said Col. Paul Pasquina, chief of orthopedics and rehabilitation at Walter Reed and the Bethesda National Naval Medical Hospital.
  - As more wounded flow in, hospitals must adjust.
  - He noted that although military medical personnel are in demand stateside, they also must deploy overseas.
  - "The ward is pretty full now," said Tracy Glascoe, a physician assistant on Ward 57.
  - One significant challenge, she said, is helping wounded troops transition from a regimen of constant ward care so that they can work on further physical rehabilitation.
  - Resting the stub of his right leg on his hospital bed one day last week, Spec. Harrison Ruzicka, 23, said he is eager for physical therapy. Ruzicka, who is from North Carolina knows he faces a long recovery but said he was thankful to be alive after a bomb flipped his armored vehicle into a river on Aug. 7.
  - He said he screamed for help but quickly realized no one was there. He somehow got loose, swam to the embankment and dragged himself onto land with his arms. He knew his legs were broken. "I didn't want to look at them because I would have put myself in shock," he said.
  - He recalled being pinned under the vehicle and fearing he could drown in the river.
  - He started calling for his good friend, vehicle driver Sgt. Jerry R. Evans Jr., 23, of Eufaula, Ala. "I was in his wedding party," Ruzicka said. "There was no response. Nothing from him."
Iowa Reps: No Pay, No Deployment for National Guard -- News from Antiwar.com

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- Iowa Reps: No Pay, No Deployment for National Guard
- Some Guard Members Owed $200 a Day
- 7 more annotations...
- - by Jason Ditz,
    October 30, 2009
  - Some members of Iowa’s National Guard are finally receiving a month worth of $200 a day respite pay they have been owed since their return from an extended deployment in Iraq.
  - The move came after Iowa representatives said the members shouldn’t be sent to Afghanistan next year unless they get the back pay first.
  - The Iowa National Guard says roughly 700 of its 20,000 members were owed the money after the 2005-2007 Iraq deployment.
  - 3,500 members are set to be sent to Afghanistan in 2010, the single largest deployment from the state since World War 2.
  - Congressmen said it was completely inappropriate for the guardsmen to be shipped off to Afghanistan before getting their due compensation for the last mission.
  - The troops are expected to spend at least 10 months in Afghanistan, though talk of escalation and a shortage of troops might lead to a longer deployment.
Fallen hero's mom says soldiers not getting support | 10connects.com | Tampa, St. Petersburg, Clearwater

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pentagon US-Govt afghanistan DoD soldiers-marines USMC ROE stupidity Perfumed-Princes washington-dc politicians sons-daughters soldiers neglect on 2009-10-31
- Fallen hero's mom says soldiers not getting support
- Mike Deeson
  
  19 hrs ago
- 16 more annotations...
- - Tampa, Florida -- Most stories about fallen soldiers end with Taps, but Susan Price says as she is learning about the details of her son's death, the story is just beginning.
  - Price says her son, Aaron Michael Kenefick, is gone, but she is a mother with the deepest wound you can imagine.
  - However, this mother of the man who was twice selected Marine of the year says she and the families of other fallen soldiers are upset about the way the troops on the ground in Afghanistan are being treated by the Pentagon
  - According to Price, they are all concerned. She says they don't mind defending America, but she says the men and women who are protecting America need to be protected.
  - Price says it is clear her son wasn't protected September 8th when he died in a battle with the Taliban.
  - The men were told before they left on the mission helicopters would be there for support within five minutes if a problem occurred.
  - His unit was trapped in a fire fight.
  - Journalist Jonathan Landay was embedded with Kenefick's unit.
  - Landay says they kept hearing, 15 minutes more time after time, and it was apparent the helicopters were not coming.
  - According to Landay, as they called for the helicopters, the unit was told it would be 15 minutes.
  - Price asks if America can't protect its men and women, how can it protect the Afghan people?
  - But what upset this mother of a fallen hero even more is that when her son's unit was under fire, they couldn't get artillery support that might have saved his life.
  - Landay says the U.S. commanders declined to provide the artillery, citing new rules that were instituted to cut down on civilian casualties. After hearing that, Price says the Pentagon has to change the rules of engagement. She says if the county is going to fight, let's fight, but if not she asks why we are there.
  - So as guns fire and Taps plays, this is not the end for Susan Price, but the beginning of fight for her son's memory.
  - Aaron Michael Kenefick
  - Price says he lived and died by his true beliefs and it was his honor. However she adds as a mother of a warrior she needs not only to honor him and others, but to protect them as well.