 You are clear for launch. And with that, shut down your visors, O2 on, and prepare for ignition to O2. You can copy that and um... Hi, Mr. Ruchoff here. Now what some of you may not know is that before I was a teacher, I was an officer in the United States Army. And during that time, I had the opportunity to deploy twice to Afghanistan and see the country up close. So what we're going to do in this lesson is together we're going to look at the country and learn about its land, its people, and what went wrong. Now first of all, we find that Afghanistan is a landlocked country in Central Asia surrounded by six countries. The Central Asian countries of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan run along its northern border. To the west is Iran, to the south and east lies Pakistan. And at the very itsy tip of the arm of Afghanistan that stretches to the east, we find it borders China. Now within Afghanistan, we find that its climate is dominated by the highland climate of its mountains and dry arid and semi-arid climates. With no oceans nearby to moderate Afghanistan's temperature, Afghanistan has hot summers and really cold winters. Now the dominant land feature of Afghanistan are the Hindukush mountains that reach in from the Pakistan to the east. The Baba mountain range is actually an extension of Hindukush that runs into the interior of the country. Now these mountains create a major obstacle to transportation and trade in Afghanistan. This is why the only major highway system that connects the major cities of the countries, which is Highway 1, also known as the Ring Road, literally goes all the way around these mountains. While this route has been in various stages of construction for decades, it's interesting to realize that in 2002, Afghanistan only had 32 miles of paved roads. Now today, although the United States has spent over $200 million in order to fix up the Ring Road, the Ring Road still isn't anything close to the internet system that we have today. It is often blocked by mudslides and insurgent groups. In the southwest, we find two deserts, the Dagestan and the Margo deserts. And I love the names of these deserts. The Rigastan desert actually means the country of sound, which is fitting, and then the Dasti Margo means the desert of death. Now despite their names, irrigation has made this area an important agricultural area for Afghanistan. Now that irrigation comes from the Helmand River that flows out of the Hindokush and between these two deserts. Despite the agricultural area of the Helmand River basin and the other farmland that we find to the north and to the east of the countries, only about 6% of the country is actually cultivated or has crops growing on it. Despite this, Afghanistan can grow most of its own food. In fact, two-thirds of its exports are agricultural products, as farming represents a quarter of the country's economy and over 60% of its people rely upon agriculture for income or subsistence. Now there are challenges to farming in the country though. Either there are times when there is too much rain or when there is not enough rain. Both of these cause crop failures. This is particularly tough on the people of Afghanistan as over half the people in Afghanistan get their food from subsistence agriculture. And the transportation network of Afghanistan is so poor that an eighth of the population literally cannot reach markets to buy food if they cannot grow the food themselves. And then there is the issue that the biggest crop in Afghanistan has absolutely nothing to do with food. That crop is opium. See Afghanistan is the source of 90% of the world's opium which is used for drugs and 85% of the world's heroin. In fact, it is estimated that the opium trade in 2007 alone represented a third of the entire economy of Afghanistan. In places like Helmand Province, two-thirds of all the households are involved in the production of opium. As 11% of the people in Afghanistan are useless of drugs, it is a problem that the United States has been working with the Afghanistan government in order to fix, however the problem seems to just be getting worse. And it's largely the people who are stuck in the middle and who are the people in Afghanistan. Well, Afghanistan has a population of 38 million people but only 25% of them actually lives in the cities. This means that 75% of the people live in areas where it's more difficult for the government to be able to provide services such as healthcare, education, and security. Afghanistan is also a diverse country with 14 ethnic groups that are actually identified in this constitution. Now the two largest of these is the Tajiks who are shown in the light blue on this map and the Pashtun in the turquoise color down here in the south. But to understand Afghanistan you have to understand the Pashtun people who are split by the eastern boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And to understand the Pashtun you need to understand that they are largely divided into more than 60 different tribes who have historically provided governance for their people. Now these tribes are collected into two large confederations known as the Durrani and the Gilzai. Historically the Durrani tribes have been those of the rulers. The king of Afghanistan was from a Durrani tribe as was the first elected president, Hamid Karzai. But the Gilzais have always been Afghanistan's fighters fighting for the land of Afghanistan and until recently they've usually been left out of power. The Taliban leader Mughal Omar was actually from a Gilzai tribe. Now regardless of your tribe, as a Pashtun you live your life under a cultural code known as Pashtun Wali that defines who you are as a Pashtun and what you do. This demands a life of honor which includes your honor to your Pashtun nation as well as to your women. Now different cultures show honor differently. For the Pashtun honoring women is done by protecting them even if it means that they women have less freedoms. Now Pashtun Wali also calls on you to extend hospitality and defend with your life the guests you have invited into your home. Now across Afghanistan Daria and Pashtu are the two official languages that also serve as the two lingua fronkas across the country. Daria is actually the Afghan dialect of Iran's language Farsi and Pashtu as you probably guess is the language of the Pashtuns. Now despite the differences in ethnicity tribes and languages the one thing that almost every Afghan has in common is they are Muslim. When last surveyed 99.7 percent of all Afghans identified as being a follower of the Islam faith. In Western Afghanistan you are more likely to run into the 10 percent of Afghans who are Shia Muslim influenced by their proximity to Iran. Now one of the impacts that culture has had as well as the fact that only a quarter of the people live in cities is that of education. See only 43 percent of all adults over 15 can read and write but only 29 percent the women can and when you go into the rural areas the literacy rate for women goes down to just seven percent and while the future looks better it certainly isn't good. Only 67 percent of boys and 48 percent of girls are today enrolled in school and in the rural areas this drops to just 39 percent of all children in school and almost all of them are boys. Now the reasons for Afghanistan's educational problems are cultural as well as quite frankly just not having enough schools or enough trained teachers. There also isn't enough hospitals and doctors large portions of the population have never seen a doctor before much less a hospital and the result is a life expectancy in Afghanistan is just 64 years and the infant mortality rate is 46. Of course this is better than it had been previously. So we've talked about the land of the people but to really understand Afghanistan today we need to look at its conflicts and over the last nearly 2,000 years Afghanistan has had its share of conflicts as a literal of who's who's of empires have marched or at least attempted to watch across its nation. Now we've already discussed a great game that played out between Russia and Britain in the 19th century in which Britain was worried that Russia's expansion into Central Asia was going to bring it into British India. Now the result of the great game would be that Britain would redraw Afghanistan's borders. Now one of the important changes that was made was that Sir Durand a British Duke diplomat drew the border that bears his name between Afghanistan and Pakistan dividing the Pashtun people. Now this border change also left a narrow strip of land that stretches out to the east and serves as a buffer between British India and Russian Central Asia. This strip of land is known as the walk on corridor. Now many times you will hear that Afghanistan has never had a government until the United States came and this simply isn't true. Afghanistan had a series of monarchies before during and after the great game. The last monarchy ruled between 1923 and 1973 in a period of relative peace and the last king of the kingdom of Afghanistan was Seher Shah. However, he was overthrown by his cousin Daoud Khan in 1973 in a bloodless coup. When Khan took over Khan actually attempted to modernize the country by instituting policies to protect women's rights and to create economic wealth. He was also playing the United States and the Soviet Union off each other. First he courted the Soviets to see what assistance they would be able to provide and then he courted the United States essentially shopping for the superpower that would provide Afghanistan with the most support. Now if we look at Afghanistan during this time between the 1950s and 1970s it seems to be a country with lots of progress. These are some of the pictures from that time. We see the women in Afghanistan was pretty much stressed exactly how women in the United States would be dressed at the time. Women were going to school, studying science at the university. In fact during this time 50 percent of the university students in Afghanistan were women. But something happened. Take a look at these two pictures. They are exactly of the same site separated by 40 years. The top one was taken in 1967 and the bottom one was taken in 2007. And what happened between these two pictures? Well it was the 1978 Great Sauer Revolution that put into motion over 50 years of conflict in fighting in Afghanistan. See what happened was Daoud Khan decided to side with the United States and cut off ties with the Soviets. The communist in Afghanistan didn't like this and led a revolution to remove Daoud from power and installed a Marxist regime in Afghanistan. The policies that this new government put into place angered the Afghans. The government started taking land, they started establishing atheist policies in a country that is 99 percent Muslim and they started to interfere with tribal laws. Now when the backlash against the communists threatened to topple the government the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan to prop up its communist government. The Soviet interaction would last until 1989 at a cost of more than 15,000 soldiers. Now remember that this was all going on during the Cold War. So in response to the American President President Carter boycotted the summer Olympics which were supposed to be held in Moscow that year and bigger yet when President Reagan was elected he began to support the Mujahideen with financing to fight. The Mujahideen were faithful Muslims who came around the world to engage in a holy struggle against the Soviets. Now one of the Mujahideen who would join the Mujahideen his pictured here was his family and their vacation to Switzerland. Who is he? Well that's actually the former leader of al-Qaeda whose organization did the 9-11 attacks that is Osama bin Laden. Yes he joined the Mujahideen who the United States was actually supporting. Now after losing over 15,000 troops the Soviets decided to withdraw his forces from Afghanistan and left Nagyabaya, Amadzai in charge. Now many experts thought that Afghanistan would fold without the Soviet troops supporting him. However Amadzai was able to defeat the Mujahideen at Jalalabad and started to actually regain more and more power. That was until 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. While Amadzai did not need Soviet troops he did need the money the Soviets had been providing them. So when the money from the Soviet Union dried up after the collapse of the Soviet Union Amadzai was unable to pay troops and maintain control. The result was civil war broke out. Now the civil war that began in 1992 was the time of the warlords. A warlord as a military commander used his private armies to establish and hold the autonomy of a region. And soon these different warlords would be fighting each other in order to gain additional land. It was a dangerous confusing time in Afghanistan when there was no government and no rule of law. Then came Mullah Omar and the Taliban. Now the Taliban actually comes from the word that means students. In this case it was students from madrasas were found along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Now a madrasa is a school that is usually attached to a Muslim mosque that is ran by a religious leader. But the only thing that was being taught in these madrasas was the Quran and a specific type of Islam known as Dilbande. Now there are two radical schools of thought in Islam. There is Wahhabism which comes from Saudi Arabia and Dilbande that comes from India. Now Wahhabism calls for a strict adherence to the Quran or the holy texts. In the 1960s in Egyptian by the name of Sayyid Qatub wrote an influential book that argued for an armed force to be able to spread Islam around the world. It is the writings of Sayyid Qatub that Al-Qaeda was formed upon. Now the Taliban followed Dilbande which is very similar to Wahhabism. And Mullah Omar's rise to power began in southwestern Afghanistan where he and some students came to a city of Kandahar. And when they met two warlords that were arguing over a boy that quite frankly the warlords wanted to sodomize, Mullah Omar and his men stepped in and they hung both the warlords in the street. Now reacting to someone finally taking a stand for law and order many Pashtuns in Afghanistan began to support Mullah Omar and by 1996 the Taliban were able to take over most of Afghanistan and establish the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan. And listen things were not fun in the Islamic Emirates. The Taliban demanded that all men had to grow beards. They forbid the playing of cards and playing in music. They demanded that women must wear a burqa and women could not go to work or even go to school. Now about the same time that Mullah Omar and the Taliban were terrorizing the Afghan people, another terrorist, remember this young man that we saw visiting Switzerland, Osama bin Laden? Bin Laden decided to move his al-Qaeda fighters to Afghanistan. Now following their cultural code of Pashtun Wali, Mullah Omar provided al-Qaeda with refuge and hospitality until 2001. And during that time al-Qaeda used Afghanistan as their base of terror operations. And then on the September 11th 2001 al-Qaeda conducted the 9-11 tax which flew airplanes into the trade towers in New York City and into the Pentagon in Washington DC. This brought swift military action by the United States who invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 and toppled the Taliban and forced it in al-Qaeda to flee to Pakistan. Now since 2001 the United States, NATO and other countries have been working hard to rebuild the country. Now in 2004 the Afghan's first president was elected and served until 2008 this was Hamid Karzai who despite being supported by the United States and NATO was difficult to be able to work with. Oswa's government was plagued by increased amounts of corruption. Now in 2014 Ashraf Ghan who was a former U.S. citizen was elected president of Afghanistan and there was hope that he would finally be able to rid the country of all the corruption that we see. In 2020 Ghani was re-elected but was forced to enter into a power sharing agreement with the Pashtun Tajik politician named Abdullah. And only the future knows if together they could be able to bring the normalcy back to Afghanistan. Alright so that's Afghanistan. So you should now know more about his people, land and why the 50 years of constant fighting has brought this once promising country to the brink of destruction. Alright until next time keep on learning.