HISTORY IN THE NEWS:
DEDICATED TO THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY EVENTS AROUND THE WORLD.
IN BRIEF: Regarded from the vantage point of a distant future, the Doha Talks between NATO and Afghanistan will look like the prelude to another withdrawal of another foreign power and foreign culture from Afghanistan.
IN THE NEWS: NATO FORMALLY HANDS OVER AFGHAN SECURITY TO THE AFGHAN MILITARY. AT THE SAME TIME, THE TALIBAN AGREE TO PEACE TALKS IN DOHA, QATAR, HOURS BEFORE A TALIBAN ATTACK KILLS FOUR AT THE US MILITARY BASE AT BAGRAM. THE LEVEL OF MUTUAL TRUST HAS ALREADY BEEN LOW AS BOTH SIDES PREPARE FOR THE WITHDRAWAL OF ALL NATO TROOPS FROM AFGHANISTAN IN 2014. NATO'S WEAKNESS REMAINS AFGHAN SECURITY FROM THE TALIBAN WHILE THE TALIBAN THEMSELVES SUFFER INTERNAL DIVISIONS.
THE FACTS:
-until the 18th century, there was no recognized "Afghan" people; there were only the Pashtuns and other linguisitc and tribal groups.
-it has become a truism that in all of history most of those who have conquered Afghanistan have been unable to hold it.
-Afghanistan, then, has been a flux, with the one constant being its native peoples like the Pashtuns and the Hazara and the Tajiks.
-the Umayyad, Abbasid and Mogul Empires ruled indirectly through tribute and treaty with various chiefs and sultans. Rulers and ruled shared a more or less common culture.
-culture is key. Muslim outside powers have a much better chance at influencing if not ruling Afghanistan, than non Muslims, especially Europe and the West.
-that is why Afghanistan will be flooded with Pakistani influence after 2014.
-foreign cultures like the British, the Soviets and Europe and America haven't had the faintest hope of controlling or even changing Afghanistan politically, not mention culturally.
-in the 19th century, the British, in three invasions, attempted and failed to control Afghanistan as a buffer state between hostile Russia and Britain's wealthy colony of India.
-the Soviets failed to hold Afghanistan in 1979-1990.
-in 2002-2014- it appears that NATO and the West will not have fared much better. After their planned withdrawal, what improvements have they have wrought will probably fall victim to local cultural forces..
IN HISTORY:
-Islam, which remains a culture rather a political entity proves nevertheless provides exceptions to the rule:. From 684-1020- the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates succeeded in controlling or at least exacting tribute and military support from most of Afghanistan.
-in the 13th century and 14th centuries the Mongols and Tamerlane conquered and left.
-Babur, a Tamerlane descendant and another Muslim outsider, founded the Mogul Empire which lasted from 1526-1761. Something we might call a common Indo-Persian culture probably had something to do with this.
-after 1720 Afghanistan was ruled by Afghans and was subject to a series of culturally foreign invaders, none of whom would hold it for long.
RELEVANT THEMES
-the Afghan tribal people as the only constant in a flux of invasions, occupations and empires.
-the cultural advantage of Indo-Persrian-Islamic cultures in exerting influence and some degree of control over Afghanistan.
-the steep disadvantage of faraway and cultural alien powers in exerting influence let alone control of Afghanistan.
RELEVANT DATES: for US-Taliban Peace Talks.
THE SELEUCID DEFEAT
Alexander the Great.
9/11 and the US Invasion.
CONTENTS: SCROLL DOWN FOR:
CURRENT EVENTS:
AFGHANISTAN- 1978-2010
AFGHANISTAN- 1715-1978
AFGHANISTAN- 330 BC- 1715.CROSS CENTURY SUMMARY
LOCATION OF NOTE:
PROFILE:
TIMELINE FOR THE HISTORY OF
CURRENT EVENTS
After 9/11, the US and its western alllies invaded Afghanistan with the help of Afghan Uzbek and Tajik tribesmen. The first elected government was headed by Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, but the important posts were handed out to Uzbek and Tajik warlords as rewards, leaving the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group as well as Afghanistan historic rulers, with only a small share of the power. The Taliban began a gradual come-back in 2005, expanding its numbers through recruitment in the Pashtun region which straddles the border between Pakistan and southern Afghanistan. The Taliban appealed heavily to Pashtun nationalism Afghan rural traditionalism, to the local power of the Mullahs and the perceived threat of westernization. Allied troops returned at the request of the United Nations and the Afghan government, US, British and Canadian troops engaging the returning Taliban in the south, as pecially in Panjwaii, outside Kandahar, where the Taliban have been attempting to establish a base from which to take Kandahar itself. President Karzai has begun, tentatively, to negotiate with the Taliban, offering them government positions. Repeated Canadain victories over the Taliban in the Panjwai region have not stopped the Taliban from reoccupying Panjwaii. Meanwhile, Karzai has tried to steer Afghan policy on a narrow road between democracy and human rights on the one hand, and respect of Afghan cultural and religious traditions on the other. But the overwhelming corruption in his government and his tendency to rule through cronies as serious impeded prospects for reform and self government throughout the country. Throughout 2007, American and NATO troops found themselves in a stalement as Taliban attacks increased. In 2008, troop increases, especially around Kandahar, with the arrival of US and French units to support the Canadians and a change to new types of counterinsurgency strategy promises gradual but very limited progress. In the east, US troops remain frustrated by Pakistan's repeated truces with Taliban in the tribal areas, allowing the insurgents constantly to re-arm and launch attacks in Afghanistan. Most recently the Taliban assault on the prison in Kandahar, releasing captured fellow insurgents may signal a new type of strategy in their attempt to capture what they claim as their ancestral holy city, the capital of the south and the gateway to Kabul.
In June, a Taliban attack against India's ambassy in Kabul raised the spectre of a twin Islamist offensive against India and Afghanistan, since both are allied with the west and India is pressing its influence in Kabul. The suspicion that it was the work of Pakistani intelligence pointed once again to Pakistan as the axis of the Islamists' double offensive. It also drew attention to the Taliban's growing ability move inward from outlying areas of Afghanistan and threaten Kabul. It was only kilometers east of Kabul that ten French soldiers were killed in combat with Taliban fighters in August. The ham-handedness and rigidity of the US-NATO strategy was felt oonce again awhen 89 villgers died in a US air strike in western Afghanistans, the kind of error that only pushes more Afghans into the ranks of the Taliban.
It appeared that President Bush's 45,000 troop surge in September would do little without a change in approach. In October, Germany raised its troop levels by 1,000 to 4,500 in the northen province of Kunduz: with increasing Taliban attacks, Germany has been forced into the combat role it had avoided because of its militaristic past.
November saw Karzai's panacea of negotiation with the Taliban reduced to be a chimera as Taliban leaders responded to the president's overtures by announcing there would be no talks until every last foreign soldier was out of the country. Karzai's and Pakistan president Zardari's agreement to drive the Taliban from their joint border felt like one more statement of good intentions. The new year, 2009 couldn't have been a worse time for Kyrgyzstan to close the US airbase essential to supplying the allied war effort from the north. The commitment of 14,000 more US troops in February promised numbers but again no change in direction. It was a sign of how bad things were that Afghanistan's electoral commission moved the presidential elections from April to August, over president Karzai's objections.
Finally, but perhaps too late, President Obama announed a new plan in March: discredited tactics of search and destory would give way to "clear and hold" by which newly taken territory would be used to establish a permanent military presence with improved relations with the local population. In addition, 4,000 US troops were committed to train Afghan police. In May, Defence Secretary Robert Gates replaced US commander David McKiernan with General Stanley McChrystal to apply the new strategy. In the summer the new direction began to pay off with record drug seizures in Hemland and a joint Afghan-British offensive with 4,000 US Marines in the southern Helmand River valley, the Taliban's main conduit into southern Afghanistan from Pakistan. The results, were mixed with the allies able to take and occupy territory but without the numbers to proceed further and all the while taking record casualties.
The August presidential elections were a fiasco. The Taliban, threatening death to voters, insured a low turnout while massive electoral fraud, partcularly by supporters of President Karzai, eliminated his expected majority, leaving him somewhere below fifty per cent, with the country facing a late fall run-off vote between Karzai and runner-up Amanullah. In October, meanwhile, at least eight US soldiers were killed in a firefight with the Taliban in Nimroz, in the remote southwest of the country, near the Pakistan border. The Taliban`s penetration of the formerly peaceful region suggests that its occupation of the country`s periphery is complete.
In October, the Taliban launched deadly attacks far and wide- in the remote southwest, killing 8 US troops in Nimroz and killing several in an assault on the UN post in central Kabul. At the same time President Obama and General McChrystal announce the US troop surge of 30,000, bring total US troops to 100,000, promising the new strategy of "clear, hold and build" in populated areas, protecting anf gaining support of the population, instead of chasing the Taliban. But Obama's declared date of 2011 to begin withdrawing troops appears to give confidence to the Taliban.
December and the 2010 new year witness audacious Taliban sorties killing CIA agents in the east and assaulting goverment buildings in central Kabul as President Karzai finds himself increasingly at odds with his own parliament and with the West. In February the new Surge strategy gets a rather inconsequential debut with the massive but clumsy US-led Moshtarak offensive against opium depots and transit routes in Heland Province. In April Karzai blames August's electoral fraud on foreign observers. His falling out with the western powers is serious. In May, in a further sign of general disarray, the Taliban launches an unprecedented missile attack on the base at Kandahar airfield. Though causalties are few, it apppears that despite the augmentation of Candian troops and the US troop surge in Kandahar province, little ground has been gained and the Taliban still have freedom of movement.
By mid-summer 2010, Operation Moshtarak has little to show for itself, with a toll of civilian casualties and persistent problems with local corruption. Promised summer offensives by the Taliban and NATO alike fail so far to materialize but a Taliban attack on a Kandahar police compound shows the Taliban can penetrate almost every district of the country. To make matters yet worse, NATO commander in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal is fired by President Obama after making derogatory comments about the administration in an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine. Allied troops, meanwhile suffer record casualties amid bolder Taliban assaults. Indeed, the stage seems set for a ragged withdrawal as officials at an international conferecne agree to President Karzai's proposal that allied forces hand over military operations to the Afghan army in 2014.
If the going seems rough for NATO, the release by the website Wikileaks in August, 2010 of confidential documents detailing large numbers of civilian casualties in allied operations as well as further proof of Pakistani's ISI intelligecne army supporting the Taliban- shows that things are a good deal worse than thought. General Petraeus, taking command of NATO operations in the wake of McChrystal, is probably facing a far greater challenge than he faced in Iraq. And now NATO must fare on without the Dutch contingent which withdraws in the same month.
In one of his brief displays of independence, President Karzai bans the presence of foreign security companies from Afghan soil- just as 8 foregin aid workers are killed in Badakshan Province in September. And once again the Taliban exercises violence to discourage anyone from voting in the upcoming September 18 elections.
AFGHANSITAN- 1715-1978
Mirwais Shah Hotak
Shah Mirwais Hotak, the first founder of Afghanistan died in 1715. In 1720-22 his son Mahmud Hotak invaded Persia, overthrowing the Persian Safavids under Shah Hussein. Hotak made himself Shah at Isfahan before dying insane in 1724. By 1729, Nadir Shah of Persia had expelled all the Pashtun Hotaki Afghans. It was Nadir Shah who turned the table this time, invading Afghanistan and northern India in 1738, his empire lasting only unti lhis assassination in 1747. Afghan retribution against Persia was to arrive in the form of the Durrani, the great Pashtun clan that is still powerful in Afghanistan. In 1747 a Pashtun, Ahmad Shah (of the Saddozai family of the Abdali clan) happened to be commander of the Persian Shah, Nadir's body guard. He participated in the Shah's assassination, took the name "Durrani", meaning 'Pearl of the Age' , established the Pashtun Durrani dynasty of Afghanistan, took Kandahar and united the tribes of southern Afghanistan around their common link: the Pashtun language. He then invaded the Gangetic Plain of India, conquering and weakening the last Moghul emperor Aurangzeb. Under the Duranni, the modern Afghan nation began to take shape. Ahmad Shah's empire extended from near the Caspian Sea to India and entailed the final defeat of the Mahrattas of India at Panipat in 1761.
Ahmad Shah Durrani
After Ahmad Shah's death in 1777, his son, Timur Shah, moved the Durrani capital from Kandahar to Kabul. But the Durrani empire weakened under Timur and disintegrated under the rule of his son, Zaman. It was a decaying Durrani dynasty that the British confronted in their attempts to control Afghanistan as a buffer state against Russia in the 19th century. Under a Pashtun chieftain of the Barakzai clan , Dost Mohammed, (1826-63), the heart of the Afghan state was revived and something resembling a modern Afghanistan developed. In the mid century, Afghanistan was drawn into 'the Great Game' as Russia and Britain vied for control of the region, Britain determined to stem any Russian encroachment on her possessions in India and South Asia. Though the Pashtun Shahs were weak, the tribes were sufficiently organized to end British occupation twice in the nineteenth century. In the first Afghan war (1839-1842) the British took Kandahar on their northward march from India. In the second Afghan War (1879-1881) both Kandahar and Kabul had to be occupied if the country was to be controlled. The British never succeeded holding both cities for long enough to assert their authority and finally, in 1881, were forced into a disastrous retreat from Kabul back into India.
AFGHANISTAN, 33O BC-1715 AD.One of the earliest records of a ‘national movement’ is Pashtun resistance to Alexander the Great, whose armies occupied the area in 330 BC. His Seleucid successors barely held onto the region. By the 3rd century BC, the Greek colony of Bactria, in the Oxus region had seceded to form a kingdom which included northern Afghanistan. The Bactrians were succeeded, again from the north, by the Central Asian Kushans who, responding to pressures from China, pushed downward into the Afghan region and formed an empire extending southward into northern India. This southeastern movement from Central Asia, down through Afghanistan to India would be a two-way route of invasions, including Pashtun national invasions, for centuries to come. Afghanistan's place as a link between India and Central Asia would result in its gradual empowerment. As the Kushans declined in the fifth century AD, the Sassinid Persians managed to rule Afghanistan.
LOCATION OF NOTE: KANDAHAR, traditional capital of the Pashtun kings of Afghanistan. A settlement was present at Kandahar before Alexander the Great founded a city there in the 4th century BC.. Straddling the main trade and military route between the Indus and the Iranian Plateau, the city was fought over repeatedly by India and Persia. It was taken and converted by Muslim Arabs in the seventh century after which it fell under the rule of the Abassid Caliphate . Kandahar was then ruled by the Turkish warlord, Mahmud of Gazhni in 1010 and the Ghaznivids who succeeded him. Kandahar fell to the Mongols and was pillaged in the 13th century. It then became a major centre for clients of the Mongols, the Karts, until the city fell to Tamerlane in 1383. In 1507, Kandahar was taken by Babur, founder of the Moghul empire. In 1545, the city was made Moghul military base and economic centre. In the 17th century the city fell to Persia which fought off two attempts at reconquest by the Moghuls. Kandahar emerged in the modern age in 1704 when the Safavid Persians sent a military governor there to settle a feud between two Pashtun tribes, the Ghilzai and the Abdali. Five years later, the man who was effectively the founder of an Afghan state, Mirwais Hotaki rallied the Ghlzai against the Persian Safavids, killed the Persian governor and ruled Kandahar which was soon to be the nucleus of an Afghan state. Mahmud Hotak, son of Mirwais organized a tribal army at Kandahar, invaded Persia and seized the throne at Isfahan. After the death of Mahmud Hotak, a new king of Persia, Nadir Shah, turned the tables and conquered Afghanistan, taking Kandahar in 1738. Once again, Persian rule was thrown off by a Kandhar Pashtun, Ahmed Shah Abdali, who took the name 'Durrani' meaning 'Pearl of the Age' and gave it to his Abdali tribe. Thence arose the line of Durrani kings of Kandahar. In 1747, Ahmad Shah Durrani conquered an empire that stretched from northern India to Persia. He planned and built the old city of Kandahar and ruled Afghanistan through a federal assembly of tribal chiefs, a form of rule that would last until the end of the monarchy in 1973. Ahmad Shah is said to have traveled to Samarkand where he obtained a holy relic, the cloak of Mohammed. The relic has been kept at Ahmad Shah Durrani's mausoleum in Kandahar which, since then, has been Afghanistan's holiest city. Ahmad Shah died in 1777. Kandahar's status as capital ended when Durrani's son, Timur Shah Durrani (1777-1799), moved the capital to Kabul. During the First Afghan War the British occupied Kandahar from 1839 to 1842. They occupied the city during the Second Afghan War from 1879 to 1881. The Soviets used Kandahar as a command base in during their occupation in 1979-1989. Kandahar was the first city occupied by the Taliban at the end of the civil war. In making it their religious and political capital, they were in effect reclaiming the Pashtun legacy of the Duranni kings.
TIMELINE FOR THE HISTORY OF AFGHANISTAN:
King Amanullah
King Zahir Shah
The Afghan Republic.
The Taliban.
9/11 and the US Invasion.
The Resurgence of the Taliban.
-the production of opium poppies, whose traffic funds the Taliban, reaches an all-time record.
November- in the north at Baghlan, a suicide attack on a parliamentary convoy kills 41.
-two senior UN and EU envoys are expelled from Afghanistan allegedly for making contact with Taliban.
2008- April- NATO leaders meet at Bucharest and unanimously declare their long-term commitment to bringing stability and democracy to Afghanistan.
Taliban Increase control of terriotry and latitude of attacks.
-the Taliban launch an assault on an open air state function in Kabul, directly threatening the life of President Karzai.
-June 13- Taliban truck and suicide bombers blast open the the prison in Kandahar, freeing 400 captured insurgents.
July- suicide bombing of Indian Embassy kills dozens. Kabul lays the blame on Pakistan intelligence.
August- Taliban fighters kill ten French combat troops only a few miles east from Kabul.
-89 villagers killed in an air strike by NATO-Afghan forces.
US Troop Surges by Bush and Obama.
September- US President Bush sends a troop surge of 45,000 aditional US soldiers to Afghanistan.
October- Germany lengthens its mission in Afghanistan to 2009 and adds 1,000 troops bringing levels to 4,500.
November- Karzai's attempt to negotiate with the Taliban fail as Taliban commders insist there will be no negotiation until foreign troops leave Afghanistan.
December- Karzai and Palkistani president-elect Zardari agree to joint efforts to root out the Taliban from the border region.
2009- January Kygyzstan closes US air bases needed for transporting NATO and US troops and equipment into Afghanistan.
US Change in Strategy Under Obama.
February- US sends an additional 14,000 troops to Afghanistan and in response 20 NATO countries pledge to icnrease their own commitment.
March- the electoral commission of Afghanistan moves the presidential election date from April to August, over President Karzai's objections. Karzai insists he will stay on until August.
President Obama anounces a new military strategy for Afghanistan, concentrating on a strong relationship with the civilian population, and clearing and holding liberated areas. 4000 US troops are sent in to train Afghan police.
April- President Karzai declares his intention to run for re-election in August.
The NATO Offensive in Helmand.
May- US Defence Secretary Robert Gates replaces General David McKiernan with General Stanley McChrystal, saying that the Afghan situation needs new thinking.
US-Afghan forces capture 1000 tronnes of drugs, in Helmand, the largest seizure of drugs since 2001.
July- joint British-Afghan offensive in Helmand with about 4,000 US Marines. Their intention is to pursue a new policy of holding territory and forming a permanent presence among the local population. The offensive marks limited success with high allied casualties and insuffient numbers to advance further.
Karzai re-elected: Failure of the Afghan Presidential Election
August- the Taliban attempt to derail the Afghan presidential elections by threatening voters with death.
-Afghan elections are marred by low voter turn-out and widespread electoral fraud, most of it in districts claiming to re-elect president Karzai.
US Troop Surge gets under way as Taliban score bloody assaults east to west.
-October- at least 8 US soldiers are killed during a Taliban assault in an American base in Nimroz Province in the southwest, near the Pakistan border.
-Oct. 27- in Kabul, six UN workers as well as Afghan civilians are killed as two Taliban suicide car bombs blast UN headquarters.
-Dec- US troop number boosted by 30,000 bring total to 100,000 in General McChrystal's attempt to apply the Iraq "surge strategy" to Afghanistan. Allowing for differecnes between Iraq's urban and Afghanistan's rural society, McChrystal recognizes US troops will have to work closely with tribes and tribal elders, and maintain a constant presence among the population. The new strategy requires gainign the support of the population by protecting them after securing districts in succession- rather than trying search and destroy against the Taliban.
-Barak Obama's declared Surge Strategy includes 2011 as a start date for withdrawal.
-at a US base in Khost, 7 US CIA personnel are killed by an Afghan double agent suicide bomber.
President Karzai inceasingly autocratic and defiant of the West as Operation Moshtarak makes an inconclusive inauguration of the Surge Strategy.
2010- January- the Afghan parliament rejects most of President Karzai's nominees for cabinet.
-attack by Taliban gunmen on government buildings in in central Kabul, leaving 12 dead including 7 Taliban fighters.
February- NATO troops, led by US units, launch Operation Moshtarak in Helmand province in order to wipe out the Taliban's opium supply depots and cut their Helman river supply line. Despite a polciy of avoiding civilian casualties and protecting the populations, civilians are killed by allied fire and communitius severely disrupted.
-President Karzai decrees government control of the Electoral Complaint Commission, the same which had exposed the elctoral fraud by which he was re-elected. Western diplomats furious.
-Mullah Ghani Baradar, a top Taliban commander is captured in Pakistan.
April- President Karzai blames western officials for August's electoral fraud and accuses the US and UN of trying to replace him with a puppet president.
May- Taliban launch a record number of missiles at the Canadian air base in Kandahar and launch a sortie against Kandahar city, promising a Kandahar summer offensive.
Summer, 2010- Operation Moshtarak bogs down; Gneral McChrystal fired.
June- Operation Moshtarak falters, Afghan elders in Marjah protest excessive civilian casualities, precisely what US NATO General McChristal was trying to avoid.
-NATO commander General McChrystal is fired by President Obama for derogatory comments made by the general in a Rolling Stone Magazine inrerview.
July, 2010- NATO troops suffer record casualties; the Taliban launch a frontal assault on a fortified compound of an elite Afghan Police unit in Kandahar city.
-Allied troops, especially those of Britain and the USle suffer record casualties.
-officials at an international conferecne agree to President Karzai's proposal that allied forces hand over military operations to the Afghan army in 2014.
Wikileaks spotlights deteriorating Afghan Military Mission.
- release by the website Wikileaks in August, 2010 of confidential documents detailing large numbers of civilian casualties in allied operations as well as further proof of Pakistani's ISI intelligecne army supporting the Taliban.
-August- General Petraeus, takes command of NATO operations in the wake of disgraced General McChrystal.
-Dutch military contingent withdraws from Afghaniistan.
-President Karzai bans the presence of foreign security companies from Afghan soil.
-8 foregin aid workers are killed in Badakshan Province in September, 2010.
-the Taliban exercises violence to discourage anyone from voting in the upcoming September 18 elections.
General David Petraeus takes command of US, ISAF forces.
2010 August - Dutch troops quit.
Karzai says private security firms - accused of operating with impunity - must cease operations. He subsequently waters down the decree.
2010 September - Parliamentary polls marred by Taliban violence, widespread fraud and a long delay in announcing results.
NATO Determines Withdrawal Date of 2014.
2010 November - Nato - at summit in Lisbon - agrees plan to hand control of security to Afghan forces by end of 2014.
2011 January - President Karzai makes first official state visit to Russia by an Afghan leader since the end of the Soviet invasion in 1989.
2011 February - Number of civilians killed since the 2001 invasion hit record levels in 2010, Afghanistan Rights Monitor reports.
2011 April - Burning of Koran by a US pastor prompts country-wide protests in which foreign UN workers and several Afghans are killed.
Some 500 mostly Taliban prisoners break out of prison in Kandahar.
Close Associates of Karzai killed by Taliban
2011 July - President's half-brother and Kandahar governor Ahmad Wali Karzai is killed in Taliban campaign against prominent figures.
2011 September - Ex-president Burhanuddin Rabbani - a go-between in talks with the Taliban - is assassinated.
2011 October - As relations with Pakistan worsen after a series of attacks, Afghanistan and India sign a strategic partnership to expand co-operation in security and development.
Karzai Wins 10 Year Military Partnership with US- beyond 2014.
2011 November - President Karzai wins the endorsement of tribal elders to negotiate a 10-year military partnership with the US at a loya jirga traditional assembly. The proposed pact will see US troops remain after 2014, when foreign troops are due to leave the country.
2011 December - At least 58 people are killed in twin attacks at a Shia shrine in Kabul and a Shia mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif.
Pakistan and the Taleban boycott the scheduled Bonn Conference on Afghanistan. Pakistan refuses to attend after a Nato air strike killed Pakistani soldiers on the Afghan border.
Taliban Agree to Office in Doha to Start Peace Talks with US.
2012 January - Taliban agree to open office in Dubai as a move towards peace talks with the US and the Afghan government.
US Troops Mistakenly burn Koran and US Soldier Massacres 16 Afghan Civilians.
2012 February - At least 30 people are killed in protests about the burning of copies of the Koran at the US Bagram airbase. US officials believed Taliban prisoners were using the books to pass messages, and that they were extremist texts not Korans. Two soldiers are also killed in reprisal attacks.
2012 March - US Army Sgt Robert Bales is accused of killing 16 civilians in an armed rampage in the Panjwai district of Kandahar.
Haqqani Taliban Attack penetrates Kabul
2012 April - Taliban announce "spring offensive" with audacious attack on the diplomatic quarter of Kabul. The government blamed the Haqqani Network. Security forces kill 38 militants.
Nato withdrawal plan 2012 May - Nato summit endorses the plan to withdraw foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
France to Withdraw its Contingent by end of 2012.
New French President Francois Hollande says France will withdraw its combat mission by the end of 2012 - a year earlier than planned.
Arsala Rahmani of the High Peace Council is shot dead in Kabul. A former Taliban minister, he was crucial in reaching out to rebel commanders. The Taliban deny responsibility.
2012 July - Tokyo donor conference pledges $16bn in civilian aid to Afghanistan up to 2016, with US, Japan, Germany and UK supplying bulk of funds. Afghanistan agrees to new conditions to counter corruption.
2012 August - The US military discipline six soldiers for accidentally burning copies of the Koran and other religious texts in Afghanistan. They will not face criminal prosecution. Three US Marines are also disciplined for a video in which the bodies of dead Taliban fighters were urinated on.
US takes measures against killings of US troops by Afghan Forces and Police.
2012 September - US hands over Bagram high-security jail to the Afghan government, although it retains control over some foreign prisoners until March 2013.
The US also suspends training new police recruits in order to carry out checks on possible ties to Taliban following series of attacks on foreign troops by apparent police and Afghan soldiers.
Karzai, Pakistan and Britain back Doha peace Talks with Taliban.
2013 February - President Karzai and Pakistan's Asif Ali Zardari agree to work for an Afghan peace deal within six months after talks hosted by Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron. They back the opening of an Afghan office in Doha and urge the Taliban to do the same for talks to take place.
2013 March - Two former Kabul Bank chiefs, Sherkhan Farnood and Khalilullah Ferozi, are jailed for the multi-million dollar fraud that almost led to its collapse and that of the entire Afghan banking system in 2010.
President Karzai meets emir of Qatar for talks believed to pave the way for the opening of a Taliban office in the Gulf emirate.
DEDICATED TO THE ORIGINS OF CONTEMPORARY EVENTS AROUND THE WORLD.
IN BRIEF: Regarded from the vantage point of a distant future, the Doha Talks between NATO and Afghanistan will look like the prelude to another withdrawal of another foreign power and foreign culture from Afghanistan.
IN THE NEWS: NATO FORMALLY HANDS OVER AFGHAN SECURITY TO THE AFGHAN MILITARY. AT THE SAME TIME, THE TALIBAN AGREE TO PEACE TALKS IN DOHA, QATAR, HOURS BEFORE A TALIBAN ATTACK KILLS FOUR AT THE US MILITARY BASE AT BAGRAM. THE LEVEL OF MUTUAL TRUST HAS ALREADY BEEN LOW AS BOTH SIDES PREPARE FOR THE WITHDRAWAL OF ALL NATO TROOPS FROM AFGHANISTAN IN 2014. NATO'S WEAKNESS REMAINS AFGHAN SECURITY FROM THE TALIBAN WHILE THE TALIBAN THEMSELVES SUFFER INTERNAL DIVISIONS.
THE FACTS:
-until the 18th century, there was no recognized "Afghan" people; there were only the Pashtuns and other linguisitc and tribal groups.
-it has become a truism that in all of history most of those who have conquered Afghanistan have been unable to hold it.
-Afghanistan, then, has been a flux, with the one constant being its native peoples like the Pashtuns and the Hazara and the Tajiks.
-the Umayyad, Abbasid and Mogul Empires ruled indirectly through tribute and treaty with various chiefs and sultans. Rulers and ruled shared a more or less common culture.
-culture is key. Muslim outside powers have a much better chance at influencing if not ruling Afghanistan, than non Muslims, especially Europe and the West.
-that is why Afghanistan will be flooded with Pakistani influence after 2014.
-foreign cultures like the British, the Soviets and Europe and America haven't had the faintest hope of controlling or even changing Afghanistan politically, not mention culturally.
-in the 19th century, the British, in three invasions, attempted and failed to control Afghanistan as a buffer state between hostile Russia and Britain's wealthy colony of India.
-the Soviets failed to hold Afghanistan in 1979-1990.
-in 2002-2014- it appears that NATO and the West will not have fared much better. After their planned withdrawal, what improvements have they have wrought will probably fall victim to local cultural forces..
IN HISTORY:
-Islam, which remains a culture rather a political entity proves nevertheless provides exceptions to the rule:. From 684-1020- the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates succeeded in controlling or at least exacting tribute and military support from most of Afghanistan.
-in the 13th century and 14th centuries the Mongols and Tamerlane conquered and left.
-Babur, a Tamerlane descendant and another Muslim outsider, founded the Mogul Empire which lasted from 1526-1761. Something we might call a common Indo-Persian culture probably had something to do with this.
-after 1720 Afghanistan was ruled by Afghans and was subject to a series of culturally foreign invaders, none of whom would hold it for long.
RELEVANT THEMES
-the Afghan tribal people as the only constant in a flux of invasions, occupations and empires.
-the cultural advantage of Indo-Persrian-Islamic cultures in exerting influence and some degree of control over Afghanistan.
-the steep disadvantage of faraway and cultural alien powers in exerting influence let alone control of Afghanistan.
RELEVANT DATES: for US-Taliban Peace Talks.
THE SELEUCID DEFEAT
Alexander the Great.
330
BC- 200 AD- after the death of Alexander, the Seleucid Greek successors to Alexander
break away from the Antigonids and the Ptolemys and rule the Middle
Eastern region. They barely manage to hang on to the extreme
northeastern, Afghan region, known as Drangiana in the south and Bactria
in the north.
-the break-up of the Seleucid Empire.
The Durrani Empire
1747-
Ahmad Shah (of the Saddozai family, Abdali clan) commander of Nadir's
body guard, takes the name Durrani, meaning 'Pearl of the Age' and
establishes the Durrani dynasty of Afghanistan, unites varied tribes in
southern Afghanistan around their common link: the Pashtun language. He
invades the Gangetic plain of India conquering and weakening the last
Moghul emperor Aurangzeb. The modern Afghan nation begins to take shape.
His empire extends from near the Caspian Sea to India.
BRITISH DEFEATS.
The British.
The Taliban.
BRITISH DEFEATS.
The British.
1830s-
to protect her interests in India from the new Russian empire to the
north, Britain uses diplomacy and espionage to keep Afghanistan as a
friendly buffer state between India and Russia.
1847- After finding it too difficult to hold Afghanistan in the face of the Pashtuns, British forces retreat with heavy losses to Jalalabad, before retreating back to India.
1878-1880- Second Afghan War- after the struggle, Britain fails to control the country and withdraws its forces.
King Amanullah
1919- the Third Afghan War. Pashtun tribes under Ananullah, on both sides of the Durand line, defeat the British. The British concede nationhood to Afghanistan by the Treaty of Kabul. Amanullah attempts westernizing reforms.
1847- After finding it too difficult to hold Afghanistan in the face of the Pashtuns, British forces retreat with heavy losses to Jalalabad, before retreating back to India.
1878-1880- Second Afghan War- after the struggle, Britain fails to control the country and withdraws its forces.
King Amanullah
1919- the Third Afghan War. Pashtun tribes under Ananullah, on both sides of the Durand line, defeat the British. The British concede nationhood to Afghanistan by the Treaty of Kabul. Amanullah attempts westernizing reforms.
THE SOVIET DEFEAT.
The Soviet Invasion
1979-
President Babrak Kemal emerges from in-fighting. Radical anti-Muslim
Marixsts threaten to overthrow Kemal. At Kemal's request, the Soviet
Union Invades Afghanistan.
1979-1989- the Afghan Mujehadeen mount powerful resistance against Soviet occupying forces.
1989- the Soviet Occupation ends in defeat. Civil war begin among Afghan mujehadeen factions.The Taliban.
1993-
the Taliban, an ultra-Islamist religious student organization, intended
to bring order to the anarchy in Afghanistan, is formed by Pakistani
intelligence.
1994 -the Taliban cross into Afghanistan and take Kandahar
1996-
the Taliban are victorious in the civil war and begin strict rule
according to Shariah law. They are fully supported by Pakistan.
9/11 AND THE US INVASION
9/11 AND THE US INVASION
9/11 and the US Invasion.
2001- Al Qaeda terrorists fly passenger jets into the twin towers in New York, killing 2,900 Americans.
2001-2002-
US forces invade Afghanistan to rid the country of Al Qaeda and its
Taliban protectors. The Americans link up with the 'Northern Alliance',
former Mujehadeen of northern Afghanistan and kill or expel Afghan
Taliban and Al Qaeda forces.
THE TALIBAN RESURGENCE.
The Resurgence of the Taliban.
2010 November - Nato - at summit in Lisbon - agrees plan to hand control of security to Afghan forces by end of 2014.
Karzai Wins 10 Year Military Partnership with US- beyond 2014.
2011 November - President Karzai wins the endorsement of tribal elders to negotiate a 10-year military partnership with the US at a loya jirga traditional assembly. The proposed pact will see US troops remain after 2014, when foreign troops are due to leave the country.
THE TALIBAN BECOME OFFICIAL.
Taliban Agree to Office in Doha to Start Peace Talks with US.
2012 January - Taliban agree to open office in Dubai as a move towards peace talks with the US and the Afghan government.
Karzai, Pakistan and Britain back Doha peace Talks with Taliban.
2013 February - President Karzai and Pakistan's Asif Ali Zardari agree to work for an Afghan peace deal within six months after talks hosted by Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron. They back the opening of an Afghan office in Doha and urge the Taliban to do the same for talks to take plac
THE TALIBAN RESURGENCE.
The Resurgence of the Taliban.
2005- resurgent Taliban return to Afghanistan from refuges along the mountainous Pakistan border.
Allies re-engage Taliban.
NATO Affirms Withdrawal Date of 2014. Allies re-engage Taliban.
2006-
July- NATO combat forces, mostly British and Canadian, take over from
US command and with US support launch Operation Mountain Thrust to the
clear the Taliban from southern Afghanistan.
US Troop Surges by Bush and Obama.
2008- September- US President Bush sends a troop surge of 45,000 aditional US soldiers to Afghanistan.
2009- -Dec- Under President Obama US troop number boosted by 30,000 bring total to 100,000 in General McChrystal's attempt to apply the Iraq "surge strategy" to Afghanistan. Allowing for differecnes between Iraq's urban and Afghanistan's rural society, McChrystal recognizes US troops will have to work closely with tribes and tribal elders, and maintain a constant presence among the population. The new strategy requires gainign the support of the population by protecting them after securing districts in succession- rather than trying search and destroy against the Taliban.
-Barak Obama's declared Surge Strategy includes 2011 as a start date for withdrawal.
THE DEFEAT OR 'WITHDRAWAL' OF NATO.
NATO, Karzai agree on NATO withdrawal by 2014.
2010- Summer- -officials
at an international conference agree to President Karzai's proposal
that allied forces hand over military operations to the Afghan army in
2014.US Troop Surges by Bush and Obama.
2008- September- US President Bush sends a troop surge of 45,000 aditional US soldiers to Afghanistan.
2009- -Dec- Under President Obama US troop number boosted by 30,000 bring total to 100,000 in General McChrystal's attempt to apply the Iraq "surge strategy" to Afghanistan. Allowing for differecnes between Iraq's urban and Afghanistan's rural society, McChrystal recognizes US troops will have to work closely with tribes and tribal elders, and maintain a constant presence among the population. The new strategy requires gainign the support of the population by protecting them after securing districts in succession- rather than trying search and destroy against the Taliban.
-Barak Obama's declared Surge Strategy includes 2011 as a start date for withdrawal.
THE DEFEAT OR 'WITHDRAWAL' OF NATO.
NATO, Karzai agree on NATO withdrawal by 2014.
2010 November - Nato - at summit in Lisbon - agrees plan to hand control of security to Afghan forces by end of 2014.
Karzai Wins 10 Year Military Partnership with US- beyond 2014.
2011 November - President Karzai wins the endorsement of tribal elders to negotiate a 10-year military partnership with the US at a loya jirga traditional assembly. The proposed pact will see US troops remain after 2014, when foreign troops are due to leave the country.
THE TALIBAN BECOME OFFICIAL.
Taliban Agree to Office in Doha to Start Peace Talks with US.
2012 January - Taliban agree to open office in Dubai as a move towards peace talks with the US and the Afghan government.
Karzai, Pakistan and Britain back Doha peace Talks with Taliban.
2013 February - President Karzai and Pakistan's Asif Ali Zardari agree to work for an Afghan peace deal within six months after talks hosted by Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron. They back the opening of an Afghan office in Doha and urge the Taliban to do the same for talks to take plac
CONTENTS: SCROLL DOWN FOR:
CURRENT EVENTS:
AFGHANISTAN- 1978-2010
AFGHANISTAN- 1715-1978
AFGHANISTAN- 330 BC- 1715.CROSS CENTURY SUMMARY
LOCATION OF NOTE:
PROFILE:
TIMELINE FOR THE HISTORY OF
CURRENT EVENTS
AFGHANISTAN, 1978-2010 In
1978, the Marxist president, Babrak Kemal found himself caught in a
political feud with anti-Muslim Marxist radicals. He asked for Soviet
intervention. The Soviet Union, fearing that Kemal's opponents could
cause a severe Islamic reaction, invaded and occupied Afghanistan. In
1980, seven Afghan religious groups gathered in Peshawar, divided into
two broad streams: the radical "Islamists" and
the nationalist "Traditionalists". The traditionalists would be happy
with the return of the monarchy while the Islamists who wanted a total
Islamic state, regarding a monarchy as un-Islamic. Meanwhile in
Afghanistan, Afghan Muslims formed the Mujehadeen nationalist,
revolutionary movement to expel the Soviet Union, which they succeeded
in doing in 1989. The Mujehadeen were a loose alliance mainly between
ethnic Pashtun, Tajik and Uzbek warlords. With Pashtuns cleaving to a
sense of their historic right to rule Afghanistgan, and all the warlords
vying anyway for personal power, a bloody civil war among he Mujehadeen
factions ended with Pakistan’s decision to impose stability by helping
to create the Taliban. Throughout the 1980s, the Sunni Deobandi movement
(which had arisen in India at the turn of the century to define a pure
Islam against Shiism and British colonialism) entered southern
Afghanistan. After taking
Kandahar in 1994, The Taliban , educated in the Deobandi tradition,
emerged victorious in the civil war, ruled Afghanistan and hosted the
Islamist terrorist group, Al Qaeda. Sharia law was ruthlessly enforced
throughout the country. In March of 2001, the Taliban destroyed the
great Buddah sculptures of Bamian for being non-Islamic. Subsequently,
Taliban ministers systematically destroyed 3,000 non-Muslim artifacts in
the Kabul Museum.
After 9/11, the US and its western alllies invaded Afghanistan with the help of Afghan Uzbek and Tajik tribesmen. The first elected government was headed by Hamid Karzai, a Pashtun, but the important posts were handed out to Uzbek and Tajik warlords as rewards, leaving the Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group as well as Afghanistan historic rulers, with only a small share of the power. The Taliban began a gradual come-back in 2005, expanding its numbers through recruitment in the Pashtun region which straddles the border between Pakistan and southern Afghanistan. The Taliban appealed heavily to Pashtun nationalism Afghan rural traditionalism, to the local power of the Mullahs and the perceived threat of westernization. Allied troops returned at the request of the United Nations and the Afghan government, US, British and Canadian troops engaging the returning Taliban in the south, as pecially in Panjwaii, outside Kandahar, where the Taliban have been attempting to establish a base from which to take Kandahar itself. President Karzai has begun, tentatively, to negotiate with the Taliban, offering them government positions. Repeated Canadain victories over the Taliban in the Panjwai region have not stopped the Taliban from reoccupying Panjwaii. Meanwhile, Karzai has tried to steer Afghan policy on a narrow road between democracy and human rights on the one hand, and respect of Afghan cultural and religious traditions on the other. But the overwhelming corruption in his government and his tendency to rule through cronies as serious impeded prospects for reform and self government throughout the country. Throughout 2007, American and NATO troops found themselves in a stalement as Taliban attacks increased. In 2008, troop increases, especially around Kandahar, with the arrival of US and French units to support the Canadians and a change to new types of counterinsurgency strategy promises gradual but very limited progress. In the east, US troops remain frustrated by Pakistan's repeated truces with Taliban in the tribal areas, allowing the insurgents constantly to re-arm and launch attacks in Afghanistan. Most recently the Taliban assault on the prison in Kandahar, releasing captured fellow insurgents may signal a new type of strategy in their attempt to capture what they claim as their ancestral holy city, the capital of the south and the gateway to Kabul.
In June, a Taliban attack against India's ambassy in Kabul raised the spectre of a twin Islamist offensive against India and Afghanistan, since both are allied with the west and India is pressing its influence in Kabul. The suspicion that it was the work of Pakistani intelligence pointed once again to Pakistan as the axis of the Islamists' double offensive. It also drew attention to the Taliban's growing ability move inward from outlying areas of Afghanistan and threaten Kabul. It was only kilometers east of Kabul that ten French soldiers were killed in combat with Taliban fighters in August. The ham-handedness and rigidity of the US-NATO strategy was felt oonce again awhen 89 villgers died in a US air strike in western Afghanistans, the kind of error that only pushes more Afghans into the ranks of the Taliban.
It appeared that President Bush's 45,000 troop surge in September would do little without a change in approach. In October, Germany raised its troop levels by 1,000 to 4,500 in the northen province of Kunduz: with increasing Taliban attacks, Germany has been forced into the combat role it had avoided because of its militaristic past.
November saw Karzai's panacea of negotiation with the Taliban reduced to be a chimera as Taliban leaders responded to the president's overtures by announcing there would be no talks until every last foreign soldier was out of the country. Karzai's and Pakistan president Zardari's agreement to drive the Taliban from their joint border felt like one more statement of good intentions. The new year, 2009 couldn't have been a worse time for Kyrgyzstan to close the US airbase essential to supplying the allied war effort from the north. The commitment of 14,000 more US troops in February promised numbers but again no change in direction. It was a sign of how bad things were that Afghanistan's electoral commission moved the presidential elections from April to August, over president Karzai's objections.
Finally, but perhaps too late, President Obama announed a new plan in March: discredited tactics of search and destory would give way to "clear and hold" by which newly taken territory would be used to establish a permanent military presence with improved relations with the local population. In addition, 4,000 US troops were committed to train Afghan police. In May, Defence Secretary Robert Gates replaced US commander David McKiernan with General Stanley McChrystal to apply the new strategy. In the summer the new direction began to pay off with record drug seizures in Hemland and a joint Afghan-British offensive with 4,000 US Marines in the southern Helmand River valley, the Taliban's main conduit into southern Afghanistan from Pakistan. The results, were mixed with the allies able to take and occupy territory but without the numbers to proceed further and all the while taking record casualties.
The August presidential elections were a fiasco. The Taliban, threatening death to voters, insured a low turnout while massive electoral fraud, partcularly by supporters of President Karzai, eliminated his expected majority, leaving him somewhere below fifty per cent, with the country facing a late fall run-off vote between Karzai and runner-up Amanullah. In October, meanwhile, at least eight US soldiers were killed in a firefight with the Taliban in Nimroz, in the remote southwest of the country, near the Pakistan border. The Taliban`s penetration of the formerly peaceful region suggests that its occupation of the country`s periphery is complete.
In October, the Taliban launched deadly attacks far and wide- in the remote southwest, killing 8 US troops in Nimroz and killing several in an assault on the UN post in central Kabul. At the same time President Obama and General McChrystal announce the US troop surge of 30,000, bring total US troops to 100,000, promising the new strategy of "clear, hold and build" in populated areas, protecting anf gaining support of the population, instead of chasing the Taliban. But Obama's declared date of 2011 to begin withdrawing troops appears to give confidence to the Taliban.
December and the 2010 new year witness audacious Taliban sorties killing CIA agents in the east and assaulting goverment buildings in central Kabul as President Karzai finds himself increasingly at odds with his own parliament and with the West. In February the new Surge strategy gets a rather inconsequential debut with the massive but clumsy US-led Moshtarak offensive against opium depots and transit routes in Heland Province. In April Karzai blames August's electoral fraud on foreign observers. His falling out with the western powers is serious. In May, in a further sign of general disarray, the Taliban launches an unprecedented missile attack on the base at Kandahar airfield. Though causalties are few, it apppears that despite the augmentation of Candian troops and the US troop surge in Kandahar province, little ground has been gained and the Taliban still have freedom of movement.
By mid-summer 2010, Operation Moshtarak has little to show for itself, with a toll of civilian casualties and persistent problems with local corruption. Promised summer offensives by the Taliban and NATO alike fail so far to materialize but a Taliban attack on a Kandahar police compound shows the Taliban can penetrate almost every district of the country. To make matters yet worse, NATO commander in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal is fired by President Obama after making derogatory comments about the administration in an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine. Allied troops, meanwhile suffer record casualties amid bolder Taliban assaults. Indeed, the stage seems set for a ragged withdrawal as officials at an international conferecne agree to President Karzai's proposal that allied forces hand over military operations to the Afghan army in 2014.
If the going seems rough for NATO, the release by the website Wikileaks in August, 2010 of confidential documents detailing large numbers of civilian casualties in allied operations as well as further proof of Pakistani's ISI intelligecne army supporting the Taliban- shows that things are a good deal worse than thought. General Petraeus, taking command of NATO operations in the wake of McChrystal, is probably facing a far greater challenge than he faced in Iraq. And now NATO must fare on without the Dutch contingent which withdraws in the same month.
In one of his brief displays of independence, President Karzai bans the presence of foreign security companies from Afghan soil- just as 8 foregin aid workers are killed in Badakshan Province in September. And once again the Taliban exercises violence to discourage anyone from voting in the upcoming September 18 elections.
AFGHANSITAN- 1715-1978
Mirwais Shah Hotak
Shah Mirwais Hotak, the first founder of Afghanistan died in 1715. In 1720-22 his son Mahmud Hotak invaded Persia, overthrowing the Persian Safavids under Shah Hussein. Hotak made himself Shah at Isfahan before dying insane in 1724. By 1729, Nadir Shah of Persia had expelled all the Pashtun Hotaki Afghans. It was Nadir Shah who turned the table this time, invading Afghanistan and northern India in 1738, his empire lasting only unti lhis assassination in 1747. Afghan retribution against Persia was to arrive in the form of the Durrani, the great Pashtun clan that is still powerful in Afghanistan. In 1747 a Pashtun, Ahmad Shah (of the Saddozai family of the Abdali clan) happened to be commander of the Persian Shah, Nadir's body guard. He participated in the Shah's assassination, took the name "Durrani", meaning 'Pearl of the Age' , established the Pashtun Durrani dynasty of Afghanistan, took Kandahar and united the tribes of southern Afghanistan around their common link: the Pashtun language. He then invaded the Gangetic Plain of India, conquering and weakening the last Moghul emperor Aurangzeb. Under the Duranni, the modern Afghan nation began to take shape. Ahmad Shah's empire extended from near the Caspian Sea to India and entailed the final defeat of the Mahrattas of India at Panipat in 1761.
Ahmad Shah Durrani
After Ahmad Shah's death in 1777, his son, Timur Shah, moved the Durrani capital from Kandahar to Kabul. But the Durrani empire weakened under Timur and disintegrated under the rule of his son, Zaman. It was a decaying Durrani dynasty that the British confronted in their attempts to control Afghanistan as a buffer state against Russia in the 19th century. Under a Pashtun chieftain of the Barakzai clan , Dost Mohammed, (1826-63), the heart of the Afghan state was revived and something resembling a modern Afghanistan developed. In the mid century, Afghanistan was drawn into 'the Great Game' as Russia and Britain vied for control of the region, Britain determined to stem any Russian encroachment on her possessions in India and South Asia. Though the Pashtun Shahs were weak, the tribes were sufficiently organized to end British occupation twice in the nineteenth century. In the first Afghan war (1839-1842) the British took Kandahar on their northward march from India. In the second Afghan War (1879-1881) both Kandahar and Kabul had to be occupied if the country was to be controlled. The British never succeeded holding both cities for long enough to assert their authority and finally, in 1881, were forced into a disastrous retreat from Kabul back into India.
Between
1880 and 1901, Shah Abdur Rahman, with tacit British support, became
the first ruler to bind the country in something resembling a modern,
centralized state. His rule was stern but moderate and effective. The
first Afghan sovereign to establish the the divine right of kings, he
risked the wrath of the local Mullahs who normally held all religious
authority. Rahman broke their power by taking over the Waqfs or
religious trusts, effectively making the Mullahs into religious
bureaucrats. He went on to centralize the administration of religion,
fashion a state sharia law and make himself protector of Islam from
foreigners .
Rahman's son, Habibullah
and religious leaders, particularly in Eastern Afghanistan, were angry
that he failed to declare complete independence from Britain. King
Habibullah reigned from 1901 to 1919. His adviser, Mahmoud Beg Tarzi,
was also tutor to his children, Inyatullah and Amanullah. An influential
modernizer and nationalist, Tarzi was influenced by the secularizing
example of the young Turks and of the Japanese talent for modernization while keeping traditional social and religious structures in place.
Habibullah declared his neutrality in World War One but with Russian
influence declining after the revolution of 1917, nationalism was
resurgent. After Habibullah's assassination in 1919, he was succeeded by his son, Amanullah.
By
World War I, Britain had little control in Afghanistan but it did have
its garrisons along the Durand Line, protecting British India. The
Afghans took advantage of Britain's distraction by the war in Europe to
rally the Pashtun tribes which formed their own 'discrete' nation on
both sides of the border. In response, in 1919, the British launched
another invasion of Afghanistan. King Amanullah, as a Pashtun, used
fellow tribesmen from both sides of the Afghan-Indian border (the Durand
line which is the current Afghan-Pakistan border) to fight the British
to a standstill in what became known as the Afghan War of Independence.
In that same year, the British recognized an independent Afghanistan by
the Treaty of Kabul.
Amanullah
attempted to put the country on the road to modernization. He forged a
constitution which attempted to define the relationship between religion
and state, alienating secularists and religious conservatives alike.
His educational and religious reforms, meanwhile, threatened to weaken
the local Mullahs and he jailed the Hazrat Shabib of Shor Bazaar for
organizing a petition opposing the reforms. When the Chief Qazi of Kabul
protested Amanullah's reforms, he was charged with treason and
executed. The reaction gathered momentum. In 1928 a Tajik bandit and
religious conservative, the Bachi i Saqao organized an attack on Kabul.
Cowed, Amanullah released the Harzat Shabib of Shor Bazaar and rescinded
most of his secularizing reforms. He was soon deposed and for nine
months the Bachi ruled Kabul in a religious tyranny. In 1929 Amanullah's
cousin, Nadir Shah succeeded in ousting the Bachi and was made king.
Nadir
Shah put down tribal rebellions against further modernizing reforms. At
the same time, he attempted to appease religious traditionalists by
rolling back some of Amanullah's reforms and giving the Bachi authority
to enforce Sharia law through the courts.
Altogether, Nadir Shah managed to hold Afghanistan's quarrelsome tribes
in national unity- maintaining the state in its more or less historical
condition: a loose tribal confederation dominated by Pashtuns. Tribal
conflicts, however, resulted in Nadir Shah's assassination in 1933.
Nadir
Shah's son, Zahir Shah, used his country’s geopolitical position to
play off the United States and the Soviet Union against one another,
extracting support from both and embarking on further, gradual
modernization. He is responsible for bringing Afghanistan into the 20th
century, the very process which divides Afghanistan today. He gave the
country its first constitution in 1964 and its first elections in 1965. The
move to modern, secular republicanism was accelerated with his
overthrow in 1973 by one of his ministers, Mohammed Daoud who declared
himself president. Daoud accelerated the march toward secularization,
outraging the Mullahs by ordering the women of the royal family to
appear unveiled at the yearly Jeshn, the ceremony marking Afhganistan's
independence. He cracked down on
Islamic groups, jailing Mohammed Niasi, the Ikwan i Musulamin of the
Muslim Brotherhood and 200 of his followers. One of them, Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar fled to Pakistan where he set up an opposition group. (He
would later work in alliance with the Raliban)
It
was a Marxist movement that overthrew and assassinated Daoud in 1978.
The new Marxist government gave lip service to Islam. In 1978 the
Marxist Kalq government replaced the Afghan flag, with its green stripe
for Islam, with a red Communist fag and introduced Communist style mass
demonstrations. The invocation of Allah was dropped from all official
statements. Muslim clergy were
imprisoned and religious leaders were persecuted in the countryside. The
Soviet-backed leader, Babrak Karmal restored the old Afghan flag,
claimed to guarantee freedom of religion and set up 'Islamic
institutions' causing a backlash of Marxist protest from the Kalq.
AFGHANISTAN, 33O BC-1715 AD.One of the earliest records of a ‘national movement’ is Pashtun resistance to Alexander the Great, whose armies occupied the area in 330 BC. His Seleucid successors barely held onto the region. By the 3rd century BC, the Greek colony of Bactria, in the Oxus region had seceded to form a kingdom which included northern Afghanistan. The Bactrians were succeeded, again from the north, by the Central Asian Kushans who, responding to pressures from China, pushed downward into the Afghan region and formed an empire extending southward into northern India. This southeastern movement from Central Asia, down through Afghanistan to India would be a two-way route of invasions, including Pashtun national invasions, for centuries to come. Afghanistan's place as a link between India and Central Asia would result in its gradual empowerment. As the Kushans declined in the fifth century AD, the Sassinid Persians managed to rule Afghanistan.
With
the weakening of the Sassinids by internal dissension, the occupation
of the area by Islam in the late 7th century was, perhaps, the most
successful of all attempts to control the region. Despite occupation by
Mongols in the middle ages, the area remained Muslim. Around 1020,
Mahmoud of Ghazni, a Turkic Afghan warlord working for the Abassids of
Baghdad, formed his own South-Asian empire whose influence stretched
from the Tigirs to the Indus. He brought about forced, mass conversions to Islam in
Afghanistan and in northern India. The Samarkand warlord Tamerlane
conquered much of Afghanistan around 1400 . Though his empire fell apart
quickly after his death, his son Shah Rukh brought about the 'Timurid'
Islamic cultural renaissance in
Herat. In the 16th century, Babur, again from Samarkand, set up his own
empire in Afghanistan. This became the great Moghul Empire which
included northern India.
With the
gradual disintegration if the Moghul empire, the first thing resembling
an Afghan ‘nation’ rose in the 18th century with the growth of a Pashtun
nationalist sensibility around Kandahar and directed against Persian
rule. The result was the Afghan, Pashtun Durrani empire which extended,
like that of the Moghuls, into India.
LOCATION OF NOTE: KANDAHAR, traditional capital of the Pashtun kings of Afghanistan. A settlement was present at Kandahar before Alexander the Great founded a city there in the 4th century BC.. Straddling the main trade and military route between the Indus and the Iranian Plateau, the city was fought over repeatedly by India and Persia. It was taken and converted by Muslim Arabs in the seventh century after which it fell under the rule of the Abassid Caliphate . Kandahar was then ruled by the Turkish warlord, Mahmud of Gazhni in 1010 and the Ghaznivids who succeeded him. Kandahar fell to the Mongols and was pillaged in the 13th century. It then became a major centre for clients of the Mongols, the Karts, until the city fell to Tamerlane in 1383. In 1507, Kandahar was taken by Babur, founder of the Moghul empire. In 1545, the city was made Moghul military base and economic centre. In the 17th century the city fell to Persia which fought off two attempts at reconquest by the Moghuls. Kandahar emerged in the modern age in 1704 when the Safavid Persians sent a military governor there to settle a feud between two Pashtun tribes, the Ghilzai and the Abdali. Five years later, the man who was effectively the founder of an Afghan state, Mirwais Hotaki rallied the Ghlzai against the Persian Safavids, killed the Persian governor and ruled Kandahar which was soon to be the nucleus of an Afghan state. Mahmud Hotak, son of Mirwais organized a tribal army at Kandahar, invaded Persia and seized the throne at Isfahan. After the death of Mahmud Hotak, a new king of Persia, Nadir Shah, turned the tables and conquered Afghanistan, taking Kandahar in 1738. Once again, Persian rule was thrown off by a Kandhar Pashtun, Ahmed Shah Abdali, who took the name 'Durrani' meaning 'Pearl of the Age' and gave it to his Abdali tribe. Thence arose the line of Durrani kings of Kandahar. In 1747, Ahmad Shah Durrani conquered an empire that stretched from northern India to Persia. He planned and built the old city of Kandahar and ruled Afghanistan through a federal assembly of tribal chiefs, a form of rule that would last until the end of the monarchy in 1973. Ahmad Shah is said to have traveled to Samarkand where he obtained a holy relic, the cloak of Mohammed. The relic has been kept at Ahmad Shah Durrani's mausoleum in Kandahar which, since then, has been Afghanistan's holiest city. Ahmad Shah died in 1777. Kandahar's status as capital ended when Durrani's son, Timur Shah Durrani (1777-1799), moved the capital to Kabul. During the First Afghan War the British occupied Kandahar from 1839 to 1842. They occupied the city during the Second Afghan War from 1879 to 1881. The Soviets used Kandahar as a command base in during their occupation in 1979-1989. Kandahar was the first city occupied by the Taliban at the end of the civil war. In making it their religious and political capital, they were in effect reclaiming the Pashtun legacy of the Duranni kings.
TIMELINE FOR THE HISTORY OF AFGHANISTAN:
The Iranians
2200
BC: the original or Indoeuropean migrants move from Bactria (present
day Uzbekistan), down through Afghanistan into the Middle East.
1500 BC: Iranians of the Bactrian and 'Afghan' regions are at the source of a second great Indoeuropean migration.
670 BC: the Sakas, an Iranian sub-group form in Bactria and to the south in the Afghan region.
The Persians
560
BC- the Medes from an Empire in northern Persia, north of the
Babylonian empire. The Median Empire includes the Afghan region.
400-300-
conquests of the Median, Achaeminid Kings, Cyrus the Great and Darius I
create the Persian empire. Darius II conquers the eastern and
northeastern Afghan and Bactrian region. In Persia, the Afghan region is
known as Drangiana, Satrapy XIV.
The Greek Seleucids
330
BC: Alexander the Great of Macedon, having defeated Darius II, enters
Herat in western Afghanistan and in southern Afghanistan, founds a city
in his own name, Kandahar. He has to contend with determined resistance
by the Pashtuns.
330
BC- 200 AD- after his death, the Seleucid Greek successors to Alexander
break away from the Antigonids and the Ptolemys and rule the Middle
Eastern region. They barely manage to hang on to the extreme
northeastern, Afghan region, known as Drangiana in the south and Bactria
in the north.
-the break-up of the Seleucid Empire.
300 BC- Changragupta Maurya extends an empire of the central Ganges up to Kabul.
321-185 BC- the Mauryan empire- the subcontinent’s first state system which stretches from Afghanistan to southern India
220 BC- Greek colonists in Bactria begin to secede, forming the kingdom of Bactria which includes northern Afghanistan.
260
BC- (circa) under the influence of the great Indian emperor, Ashoka,
Buddhism becomes the religion of the Afghan-Bactrian region.
The Yue Che/Kushan People
176
BC- the Chinese Yue-Chi are forced westward by the Xiongnu of western
China and press on Bactria from the north, as the Sakas press from the
northwest.
74
BC- the eastern Seleucid empire breaks up into the Parthian Empire in
eastern Persia. Afghanistan is divided between Parthia in the south and
the Yue Chi in the North.
67 AD- the Kushan people, having emerged from the Yue Chi, form in force on the northern edges of Afghanistan.
-the
Kushans, caught between pressure from the Hsiang-Nu Chinese in the east
and Persia in the west, invade Afghanistan and Sind before conquering
part of northern India. The route southeast from central Asia to the
Gangetic plain of northern India will be used for repeated invasions,
the invaders always coming from the Afghan region and the north.
140
AD- the Kushan Empire extends into northern India. Afghanistan is
divided between the Kushan Empire on the North and the Parthian empire
to the south.
200-400 AD- the Kushan Empire breaks up into principalities.
Sassinid Persia.
484- the White Huns or Hephthalites from Central Asia invade Afghanistan and Persia.
500-630- the Sassinids rule Persia. Afghanistan is part of the Eastern Military Region, known as Kwarazm.
561- the Hephthalites are driven out of Afghanistan by the Sassinids and the Central Asian Turks.
-the Turks are the new opponents on the northeast of the Sassinid empire.
Islam
684-
the Muslim conquest of Kandahar. The Umayyads attempt to extend
religious, political and economic control into Central Asia.
751-
with the defeat of the Chinese by the Umayyads at the battle of Talas
in Turkestan, Central Asia comes within the sphere of Islam.
800-
Western Afghanistan is the Khorasan region of the Abbasid Empire.
Eastern Afghanistan, including Kabul and Kandahar is in the non-Islamic
tribal region of the Indus. There is already a circular trade route
anticipating the modern ring road from Kandahar to Kabul in the east to
Balkh in the north and to Herat in the west.
1020-
Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030), an East Afghanistan Turkic warlord and
mercenary for the Abbasid Muslims, was granted autonomy, as 'Sultan' to
form his own dynasty. He conquers an empire stretching from Kurdistan to
the Indus.
-Mahmoud's
capaigns were against the Shia Fatimids and non-Mislims like Buddhists
and Hindu India. Had a reputation as a bloodthirsty tyrant.
1030- Mahmoud of Ghazni dies of malaria.
The Mongols
1221- the Mongols of Gengis Khan conquer Muslim Kandahar and take Afghanistan before moving south and west.
1350- collapse of the Mongol Empire.
Tamerlane
1399-1425-
Tamerlane ('Timur the Lame'), an Uzbek descendant of Babur, invades
from Samarkand and takes Afghanistan, going on to conquer and briefly to
hold, much of the Middle East.
1425-1506- Descendants of Tamerlane rule an empire in Turkestan and Iran.
Babur and the Moghuls
1483-
the Muslim conqueror Babur fails to establish a kingdom in his native
Uzbekistan and instead takes Herat and Kandahar, making them the centre
of his future empire.
1526- Babur, the first Moghul, invades India, takes the Gangetic plain and founds the Moghul Empire in India.
1526-1761- the Moghuls rule India.
1502-1720- the Safavid kings rule Persia.
1504- Kabul is annexed as a Moghul military and administrative area.
1545- Kandahar becomes a Moghul military and economic base.
1540-1545- Babur’s son Humayun loses control to the Afghan chieftan Sher Shah.
1546- battle of Panipat: Humayun’s son Akbar the Great recovers the area from the Afghans, extending it to Deccan.
1700-1800-
the British consolidate their trading power in India through the East
India company, taking advantage of the weakened Aurangzeb and make India
a British colony.
1704-
the Persians, in an attempt to settle a tribal war between the Abdali
(Durrani) and the Ghilzai Pashtuns sent a Georgian, Gurgin, to govern
Kandahar.
1709- Mirwais Kahn Hotak,
Pashtun rallies the Afghan Ghilzais of Kandahar against the Persian
Safavids and defeats them. He kills Gurgin, the Persian governor of
Kandahar and becomes the city's mayor.
1715- Death of Mirwais.
1720-22-
Pashtun Afghans of the Kandahar region under Mahmud Hotak, son of
Mirwais, invade and overthrow the Persian Safavids under Shah Hussein.
Mir Mahmud Hotak declares himself Shah in Isfahan.
1724- Mahmud Hotak dies insane.
1729- Nadir Shah of Persia expels the Hotaki Afghans.
1738- Nadir Shah invades Afghanistan and northern India, his empire lasting only until his assassination in 1747.
The Durrani Empire
1747-
Ahmad Shah (of the Saddozai family, Abdali clan) commander of Nadir's
body guard, takes the name Durrani, meaning 'Pearl of the Age' and
establishes the Durrani dynasty of Afghanistan, unites varied tribes in
southern Afghanistan around their common link: the Pashtun language. He
invades the Gangetic plain of India conquering and weakening the last
Moghul emperor Aurangzeb. The modern Afghan nation begins to take shape.
His empire extends from near the Caspian Sea to India.
1761- Ahmad Shah defeats the Marathas of India at Panipat.
-Ahmad
rules Afghanistan through a federal assembly of tribal chiefs, a form
of rule that last until the end of the monarchy in 1973.
1777- death of Ahmad Shah Durrani.
1777-1799-
Timur Shah, son of Ahmad, moves the Durrani capital from Kandahar to
Kabul. The Durrani empire weakens under Timur and under Timur's son,
Zaman.
1826-1863- Afhganistan revives
under a Pashtun chieftain of the Barakzai clan , Dost Mohammed. The
modern state of Afghanistan begins to take shape.
The British.
1830s-
to protect her interests in India from the new Russian empire to the
north, Britain uses diplomacy and espionage to keep Afghanistan as a
friendly buffer state between India and Russia.
1838-
After Shah Mahmud of Kabul favours his Russian ambassador while
imprisoning the British ambassador, Britain sends a force from India and
invades Kabul.
1847-
After finding it too difficult to hold Afghanistan in the face of the
Pashtuns, British forces retreat with heavy losses to Jalalabad, before
retreating back to India.
1876- Baluchistan becomes a British protectorate.
1878-1880- Second Afghan War- after the struggle, Britain fails to control the country and withdraws its forces.
1879- despite the withdrawal of British forces, Afghanistan forced to concede theoretical sovereignty to the British.
Abdur Rahman
1880-1901-
Abdur Rahman, Emir of Afghanistan rules Afghanistan with British
approval. A draconian, but effective ruler, he creates the country's
first, highly centralized state.
1893- the
Durand line forms the limit of British territorial expansion into the
Pashtun territories of Afghanistan. The Pashtun region, which had once
defined Afghanistan, is split by the new boundary with Afghanistan.
Western Pakistan is ceded to British India.
1901-1919- King Habibullah
1907-
Britain and Russia work out a treaty defining separate spheres in
influence in Persia with a British sphere of influence in Afghanistan.
1919- King Habibullah is assassinated. He is succeeded by his son, Amanullah.King Amanullah
1919-
the Third Afghan War. Pashtun tribes under Ananullah, on both sides of
the Durand line, defeat the British. The British concede nationhood to
Afghanistan by the Treaty of Kapubl. Amanullah attempts westernizing
reforms.
1926. Amanullah is made king.
1929-
King Amanullah, depending too much on tribes instead of an army, is
forced to abdicate. He is succeeded briefly by Nadir Shah. Nadir Shah
rolls back Amanullah's liberalizing reforms but succeeds in uniting
Afghanistan despite tribal rebellions.
1933- Nadir Shah is assassinated as a result of a tribal dispute.
King Zahir Shah
1933- Nadir Shah is succeeded by his son, Zahir Shah.
1947-
Britain agrees to the formation of an independent Pakistan, separate
from India, with the Durand line remaining as the border between the two
nations. The border still cuts through the region of the Pashtun
people- despite Afghan claims on the entire Pashtun region, which
includes much of the Baluchistan region of western Pakistan.
-Zahir
Shah claims the Pathan (east Pashtun) state from Pakistan. Meanwhile,
he extracts support from both the US and the Soviet Union.
1964- King Zahir Shah institutes a constitutional monarchy.
1965- Afghanistan holds its first elections.
The Afghan Republic.
1973-
Zahir Shah is overthrown by his own Prime Minister, General Mohammed
Daoud. Khan Declares himself president. He begins an unpopular policy of
nationalization of industry.
1978- 28 April. The Kalq, (Armed Forces Revolutionary Council) a radical communist group overthrows Daoud and assassinates him.
The Soviet Invasion
1979-
President Babrak Kemal emerges from in-fighting. Radical anti-Muslim
Marixsts threaten to overthrow Kemal. At Kemal's request, the Soviet
Union Invades Afghanistan.
1979-1989- the Afghan Mujehadeen mount powerful resistance against Soviet occupying forces.
1987- the Soviets install Afghan Communist president, Najibullah.
1989- the Soviet Occupation ends in defeat. Civil war begin among Afghan mujehadeen factions.
1992- President Najibullah resigns.
The Taliban.
1993-
the Taliban, an ultra-Islamist religious student organization, intended
to bring order to the anarchy in Afghanistan, is formed by Pakistani
intelligence.
1994 -the Taliban cross into Afghanistan and take Kandahar
1996-
the Taliban are victorious in the civil war and begin strict rule
according to Shariah law. They are fully supported by Pakistan.
-Najibullah is murdered by the Taliban.
1997- former Saudi Mujehadeen leader Osama Bin Laden founds al Qaeda. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda become guests of the Taliban.
1999- the Taliban control most of the country.
9/11 and the US Invasion.
2001- Al Qaeda terrorists fly passenger jets into the twin towers in New York, killing 2,900 Americans.
2001-2002-
US forces invade Afghanistan to rid the country of Al Qaeda and its
Taliban protectors. The Americans link up with the 'Northern Alliance',
former Mujehadeen of northern Afghanistan and kill or expel Afghan
Taliban and Al Qaeda forces.
2002- a UN-approved interim government under President Hamid Karzai is approved by tribal leaders.
2003-
Western countries, under the United Nations pursue a program of
democratization and reconstruction. Hamid karzai becomes Afghanistan's
first president.
The Resurgence of the Taliban.
2005- resurgent Taliban return to Afghanistan from refuges along the mountainous Pakistan border.
2005-
NATO forces begin to engage the Taliban in the west and US forces fight
the re-emergent Taliban and Al Qaeda in the eastern Afghanistan. Both
engage in programs to reconstruct the Afghan economy.
2005- September- Hamid Karzai is re-elected president of Afghanistan.
Allies re-engage Taliban.
Allies re-engage Taliban.
2006-
July- NATO combat forces, mostly British and Canadian, take over from
US command and with US support launch Operation Mountain Thrust to the
clear the Taliban from southern Afghanistan.
2006-
August-September- Canadian forces lead Operation Medusa, clearing the
Taliban from the Panjwai district only 30 km from Kandahar, where the
Canadians are based.
2006 December- January 2007- Canadians launch operation Falcon's Summit, clearing the Taliban, once again, from Kandahar.
2007-
August- joint Loya Jirga held by Pakistan and Afghanistan in Kabul. The
two nations agree to increased and coordinated efforts against the
Taliban in the border regions.-the production of opium poppies, whose traffic funds the Taliban, reaches an all-time record.
November- in the north at Baghlan, a suicide attack on a parliamentary convoy kills 41.
-two senior UN and EU envoys are expelled from Afghanistan allegedly for making contact with Taliban.
2008- April- NATO leaders meet at Bucharest and unanimously declare their long-term commitment to bringing stability and democracy to Afghanistan.
Taliban Increase control of terriotry and latitude of attacks.
-the Taliban launch an assault on an open air state function in Kabul, directly threatening the life of President Karzai.
-June 13- Taliban truck and suicide bombers blast open the the prison in Kandahar, freeing 400 captured insurgents.
July- suicide bombing of Indian Embassy kills dozens. Kabul lays the blame on Pakistan intelligence.
August- Taliban fighters kill ten French combat troops only a few miles east from Kabul.
-89 villagers killed in an air strike by NATO-Afghan forces.
US Troop Surges by Bush and Obama.
September- US President Bush sends a troop surge of 45,000 aditional US soldiers to Afghanistan.
October- Germany lengthens its mission in Afghanistan to 2009 and adds 1,000 troops bringing levels to 4,500.
November- Karzai's attempt to negotiate with the Taliban fail as Taliban commders insist there will be no negotiation until foreign troops leave Afghanistan.
December- Karzai and Palkistani president-elect Zardari agree to joint efforts to root out the Taliban from the border region.
2009- January Kygyzstan closes US air bases needed for transporting NATO and US troops and equipment into Afghanistan.
US Change in Strategy Under Obama.
February- US sends an additional 14,000 troops to Afghanistan and in response 20 NATO countries pledge to icnrease their own commitment.
March- the electoral commission of Afghanistan moves the presidential election date from April to August, over President Karzai's objections. Karzai insists he will stay on until August.
President Obama anounces a new military strategy for Afghanistan, concentrating on a strong relationship with the civilian population, and clearing and holding liberated areas. 4000 US troops are sent in to train Afghan police.
April- President Karzai declares his intention to run for re-election in August.
The NATO Offensive in Helmand.
May- US Defence Secretary Robert Gates replaces General David McKiernan with General Stanley McChrystal, saying that the Afghan situation needs new thinking.
US-Afghan forces capture 1000 tronnes of drugs, in Helmand, the largest seizure of drugs since 2001.
July- joint British-Afghan offensive in Helmand with about 4,000 US Marines. Their intention is to pursue a new policy of holding territory and forming a permanent presence among the local population. The offensive marks limited success with high allied casualties and insuffient numbers to advance further.
Karzai re-elected: Failure of the Afghan Presidential Election
August- the Taliban attempt to derail the Afghan presidential elections by threatening voters with death.
-Afghan elections are marred by low voter turn-out and widespread electoral fraud, most of it in districts claiming to re-elect president Karzai.
US Troop Surge gets under way as Taliban score bloody assaults east to west.
-October- at least 8 US soldiers are killed during a Taliban assault in an American base in Nimroz Province in the southwest, near the Pakistan border.
-Oct. 27- in Kabul, six UN workers as well as Afghan civilians are killed as two Taliban suicide car bombs blast UN headquarters.
-Dec- US troop number boosted by 30,000 bring total to 100,000 in General McChrystal's attempt to apply the Iraq "surge strategy" to Afghanistan. Allowing for differecnes between Iraq's urban and Afghanistan's rural society, McChrystal recognizes US troops will have to work closely with tribes and tribal elders, and maintain a constant presence among the population. The new strategy requires gainign the support of the population by protecting them after securing districts in succession- rather than trying search and destroy against the Taliban.
-Barak Obama's declared Surge Strategy includes 2011 as a start date for withdrawal.
-at a US base in Khost, 7 US CIA personnel are killed by an Afghan double agent suicide bomber.
President Karzai inceasingly autocratic and defiant of the West as Operation Moshtarak makes an inconclusive inauguration of the Surge Strategy.
2010- January- the Afghan parliament rejects most of President Karzai's nominees for cabinet.
-attack by Taliban gunmen on government buildings in in central Kabul, leaving 12 dead including 7 Taliban fighters.
February- NATO troops, led by US units, launch Operation Moshtarak in Helmand province in order to wipe out the Taliban's opium supply depots and cut their Helman river supply line. Despite a polciy of avoiding civilian casualties and protecting the populations, civilians are killed by allied fire and communitius severely disrupted.
-President Karzai decrees government control of the Electoral Complaint Commission, the same which had exposed the elctoral fraud by which he was re-elected. Western diplomats furious.
-Mullah Ghani Baradar, a top Taliban commander is captured in Pakistan.
April- President Karzai blames western officials for August's electoral fraud and accuses the US and UN of trying to replace him with a puppet president.
May- Taliban launch a record number of missiles at the Canadian air base in Kandahar and launch a sortie against Kandahar city, promising a Kandahar summer offensive.
Summer, 2010- Operation Moshtarak bogs down; Gneral McChrystal fired.
June- Operation Moshtarak falters, Afghan elders in Marjah protest excessive civilian casualities, precisely what US NATO General McChristal was trying to avoid.
-NATO commander General McChrystal is fired by President Obama for derogatory comments made by the general in a Rolling Stone Magazine inrerview.
July, 2010- NATO troops suffer record casualties; the Taliban launch a frontal assault on a fortified compound of an elite Afghan Police unit in Kandahar city.
-Allied troops, especially those of Britain and the USle suffer record casualties.
-officials at an international conferecne agree to President Karzai's proposal that allied forces hand over military operations to the Afghan army in 2014.
Wikileaks spotlights deteriorating Afghan Military Mission.
- release by the website Wikileaks in August, 2010 of confidential documents detailing large numbers of civilian casualties in allied operations as well as further proof of Pakistani's ISI intelligecne army supporting the Taliban.
-August- General Petraeus, takes command of NATO operations in the wake of disgraced General McChrystal.
-Dutch military contingent withdraws from Afghaniistan.
-President Karzai bans the presence of foreign security companies from Afghan soil.
-8 foregin aid workers are killed in Badakshan Province in September, 2010.
-the Taliban exercises violence to discourage anyone from voting in the upcoming September 18 elections.
General David Petraeus takes command of US, ISAF forces.
2010 August - Dutch troops quit.
Karzai says private security firms - accused of operating with impunity - must cease operations. He subsequently waters down the decree.
2010 September - Parliamentary polls marred by Taliban violence, widespread fraud and a long delay in announcing results.
NATO Determines Withdrawal Date of 2014.
2010 November - Nato - at summit in Lisbon - agrees plan to hand control of security to Afghan forces by end of 2014.
2011 January - President Karzai makes first official state visit to Russia by an Afghan leader since the end of the Soviet invasion in 1989.
2011 February - Number of civilians killed since the 2001 invasion hit record levels in 2010, Afghanistan Rights Monitor reports.
2011 April - Burning of Koran by a US pastor prompts country-wide protests in which foreign UN workers and several Afghans are killed.
Some 500 mostly Taliban prisoners break out of prison in Kandahar.
Close Associates of Karzai killed by Taliban
2011 July - President's half-brother and Kandahar governor Ahmad Wali Karzai is killed in Taliban campaign against prominent figures.
2011 September - Ex-president Burhanuddin Rabbani - a go-between in talks with the Taliban - is assassinated.
2011 October - As relations with Pakistan worsen after a series of attacks, Afghanistan and India sign a strategic partnership to expand co-operation in security and development.
Karzai Wins 10 Year Military Partnership with US- beyond 2014.
2011 November - President Karzai wins the endorsement of tribal elders to negotiate a 10-year military partnership with the US at a loya jirga traditional assembly. The proposed pact will see US troops remain after 2014, when foreign troops are due to leave the country.
2011 December - At least 58 people are killed in twin attacks at a Shia shrine in Kabul and a Shia mosque in Mazar-i-Sharif.
Pakistan and the Taleban boycott the scheduled Bonn Conference on Afghanistan. Pakistan refuses to attend after a Nato air strike killed Pakistani soldiers on the Afghan border.
Taliban Agree to Office in Doha to Start Peace Talks with US.
2012 January - Taliban agree to open office in Dubai as a move towards peace talks with the US and the Afghan government.
US Troops Mistakenly burn Koran and US Soldier Massacres 16 Afghan Civilians.
2012 February - At least 30 people are killed in protests about the burning of copies of the Koran at the US Bagram airbase. US officials believed Taliban prisoners were using the books to pass messages, and that they were extremist texts not Korans. Two soldiers are also killed in reprisal attacks.
2012 March - US Army Sgt Robert Bales is accused of killing 16 civilians in an armed rampage in the Panjwai district of Kandahar.
Haqqani Taliban Attack penetrates Kabul
2012 April - Taliban announce "spring offensive" with audacious attack on the diplomatic quarter of Kabul. The government blamed the Haqqani Network. Security forces kill 38 militants.
Nato withdrawal plan 2012 May - Nato summit endorses the plan to withdraw foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
France to Withdraw its Contingent by end of 2012.
New French President Francois Hollande says France will withdraw its combat mission by the end of 2012 - a year earlier than planned.
Arsala Rahmani of the High Peace Council is shot dead in Kabul. A former Taliban minister, he was crucial in reaching out to rebel commanders. The Taliban deny responsibility.
2012 July - Tokyo donor conference pledges $16bn in civilian aid to Afghanistan up to 2016, with US, Japan, Germany and UK supplying bulk of funds. Afghanistan agrees to new conditions to counter corruption.
2012 August - The US military discipline six soldiers for accidentally burning copies of the Koran and other religious texts in Afghanistan. They will not face criminal prosecution. Three US Marines are also disciplined for a video in which the bodies of dead Taliban fighters were urinated on.
US takes measures against killings of US troops by Afghan Forces and Police.
2012 September - US hands over Bagram high-security jail to the Afghan government, although it retains control over some foreign prisoners until March 2013.
The US also suspends training new police recruits in order to carry out checks on possible ties to Taliban following series of attacks on foreign troops by apparent police and Afghan soldiers.
Karzai, Pakistan and Britain back Doha peace Talks with Taliban.
2013 February - President Karzai and Pakistan's Asif Ali Zardari agree to work for an Afghan peace deal within six months after talks hosted by Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron. They back the opening of an Afghan office in Doha and urge the Taliban to do the same for talks to take place.
2013 March - Two former Kabul Bank chiefs, Sherkhan Farnood and Khalilullah Ferozi, are jailed for the multi-million dollar fraud that almost led to its collapse and that of the entire Afghan banking system in 2010.
President Karzai meets emir of Qatar for talks believed to pave the way for the opening of a Taliban office in the Gulf emirate.
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