Durrani Empire

The Durrani Empire (Pashto: د درانیانو واکمني, also referred to as the Afghan Empire) was a monarchy centered in Afghanistan and included northeastern Iran, the modern state of Pakistan as well as the Punjab region of India. It was established at Kandahar in 1747 by Ahmad Shah Durrani, an Afghan military commander under Nader Shah of Persia and chief of the Abdali tribe. After the death of Ahmad Shah in about 1773, the Emirship was passed onto his children followed by grandchildren and its capital was shifted to Kabul. Ahmad Shah and his descendants were from the Sadozai line of the Abdalis (later called Durranis), making them the second Pashtun rulers of Kandahar, after the Ghilzai Hotakis.

With the support of tribal leaders, Ahmad Shah Durrani extended Afghan control from Meshed to Kashmir and Delhi, from the Amu Darya to the Arabian Sea.Next to the Ottoman Empire, the Durrani was the greatest Muslim Empire in the second half of the eighteenth century The Durrani Empire is considered the foundation of the current state of Afghanistan,with Ahmad Shah Durrani being credited as "Father" of Afghanistan.]Even before the death of Nader Shah of Persia in 1747, tribes around the Hindu Kush region had been growing stronger and were beginning to take advantage of the waning power of their distant rulers.

Nader Shah's Turkmen Afsharid rule ended in June 1747 after being murdered by his Persian soldiers.[10] In October of 1747, when the chiefs of the Afghans met at a loya jirga (grand council) in Kandahar to select a new ruler for the Abdali confederation, the young 25-year-old Ahmad Shah Abdali was chosen. Despite being younger than other claimants, Abdali had several overriding factors in his favor:

• He was a direct descendant of Asadullah Khan, patriarch of the Sadozai clan, the most prominent tribe amongst the Pashtun people at the time;

• He was unquestionably a charismatic leader and seasoned warrior who had at his disposal a trained, mobile force of 4,000 loyal cavalrymen

• Not least, he possessed a substantial part of Nadir Shah's treasury.

One of Abdali's first acts as chief was to adopt the title Padshah durr-i durrān ('King, "pearl of the age" or "pearl of pearls"). The name may have been suggested, as some claim, from Abdali's dream, or as others claim, from the pearl earrings worn by the royal guard of Nadir Shah. The Abdali Pashtuns were known thereafter as the Durrani, and the name of the Abdali confederation was changed to Durrani.

Ahmad Shah began his rule by capturing Ghazni from the Ghilzais, and then wresting Kabul from the local ruler. In 1749, the Mughal ruler was induced to cede Sindh, the Punjab region and the important trans Indus River to Ahmad Shah in order to save his capital from Afghan attack. Having thus gained substantial territories to the east without a fight, Ahmad Shah turned westward to take possession of Herat, which was ruled by Nader Shah's grandson, Shah Rukh of Persia. Herat fell to Ahmad after almost a year of siege and bloody conflict, as did Mashhad (in present-day Iran). Ahmad Shah next sent an army to subdue the areas north of the Hindu Kush mountains. In short order, the powerful army brought under its control the Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik and Hazaras tribes of northern Afghanistan. Ahmad invaded the remnants of the Mughal Empire a third time, and then a fourth, consolidating control over the Punjab and Kashmir regions. Then, early in 1757, he sacked Delhi, but permitted the Mughal dynasty to remain in nominal control of the city as long as the ruler acknowledged Ahmad Shah's suzerainty over Punjab, Sindh, and Kashmir. Leaving his second son Timur Shah to safeguard his interests, Ahmad Shah left India to return to Afghanistan.

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1979: Soviet invasion

On October 31, 1979 Soviet informants to the Afghan Armed Forces who were under orders from the inner circle of advisors under Soviet premier Brezhnev, relayed information for them to undergo maintenance cycles for their tanks and other crucial equipment. Meanwhile, telecommunications links to areas outside of Kabul were severed, isolating the capital. With a deteriorating security situation, large numbers of Soviet airborne forces joined stationed ground troops and began to land in Kabul on December 25. Simultaneously, Amin moved the offices of the president to the Tajbeg Palace, believing this location to be more secure from possible threats. According to Colonel General Tukharinov and Merimsky, Amin was fully informed of the military movements, having requested Soviet military assistance to northern Afghanistan on December 17.[49][50] His brother and General Dmitry Chiangov met with the commander of the 40th Army before Soviet troops entered the country, to work out initial routes and locations for Soviet troops.

On December 27, 1979, 700 Soviet troops dressed in Afghan uniforms, including KGB and GRU special force officers from the Alpha Group and Zenith Group, occupied major governmental, military and media buildings in Kabul, including their primary target - the Tajbeg Presidential Palace.

That operation began at 19:00 hr., when the Soviet Zenith Group destroyed Kabul's communications hub, paralyzing Afghan military command. At 19:15, the assault on Tajbeg Palace began; as planned, president Hafizullah Amin was killed. Simultaneously, other objectives were occupied (e.g. the Ministry of Interior at 19:15). The operation was fully complete by the morning of December 28, 1979.

The Soviet military command at Termez, Uzbek SSR, announced on Radio Kabul that Afghanistan had been liberated from Amin's rule. According to the Soviet Politburo they were complying with the 1978 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Good Neighborliness and Amin had been "executed by a tribunal for his crimes" by the Afghan Revolutionary Central Committee. That committee then elected as head of government former Deputy Prime Minister Babrak Karmal, who had been demoted to the relatively insignificant post of ambassador to Czechoslovakia following the Khalq takeover, and that it had requested Soviet military assistance.

Soviet ground forces, under the command of Marshal Sergei Sokolov, entered Afghanistan from the north on December 27. In the morning, the 103rd Guards 'Vitebsk' Airborne Division landed at the airport at Bagram and the deployment of Soviet troops in Afghanistan was underway. The force that entered Afghanistan, in addition to the 103rd Guards Airborne Division, was under command of the 40th Army and consisted of the 108th and 5th Guards Motor Rifle Divisions, the 860th Separate Motor Rifle Regiment, the 56th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade, the 36th Mixed Air Corps. Later on the 201st and 58th Motor Rifle Divisions also entered the country, along with other smaller units. In all, the initial Soviet force was around 1,800 tanks, 80,000 soldiers and 2,000 AFVs. In the second week alone, Soviet aircraft had made a total of 4,000 flights into Kabul. With the arrival of the two later divisions, the total Soviet force rose to over 100,000 personnel.

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Soviet war in Afghanistan

The Soviet War in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving the Soviet Union, supporting the Marxist-Leninist puppet government of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistanagainst the indigenous Afghan Mujahideen and foreign "Arab–Afghan" volunteers. The mujahideen found other support from a variety of sources including the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Egypt, China and other nations. The Afghan war became a proxy war in the broader context of the late Cold War.

The initial Soviet deployment of the 40th Army in Afghanistan began on December 24, 1979 under Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev. The final troop withdrawal started on May 15, 1988, and ended on February 15, 1989 under the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Due to the interminable nature of the war, the conflict in Afghanistan has sometimes been referred to as the Soviet Union's Vietnam War.

The Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was formed after the Saur Revolution on 27 April 1978. The government was one with a pro-poor, pro-farmer and socialistic agenda. It had close relations with the Soviet Union. On 5 December 1978 a friendship treaty was signed with the Soviet Union. Wary of this alliance, the capitalist bloc started conspiring to oust this government. On July 3, 1979 USA's President Jimmy Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. The aim of USA was to drag the Soviet Union into the "Afghan trap" as US Secretary of State Zbigniew Brzezinski termed it.

Russian military involvement in Afghanistan has a long history, going back to Tsarist expansions in the so-called "Great Game" between Russia and Britain. This began in the 19th century with such events as the Panjdeh Incident, a military skirmish that occurred in 1885 when Russian forces seized Afghan territory south of the Oxus River around an oasis at Panjdeh. This interest in the region continued on through the Soviet era, with billions in economic and military aid sent to Afghanistan between 1955 and 1978.

In February 1979, the Islamic Revolution ousted the American-backed Shah from Afghanistan's neighbor Iran and the United States Ambassador to Afghanistan was kidnapped by Setami Milli militants, and was later killed during an assault carried out by the Afghan police, assisted by Soviet advisers. The death of Ambassador Adolph Dubs led to a major degradation in Afghanistan – United States relations.

The United States then deployed twenty ships to the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea including two aircraft carriers, and there was a constant stream of threats of warfare between the US and Iran.

March 1979 marked the signing of the US-backed peace agreement between Israel and Egypt. The Soviet leadership saw the agreement as a major advantage for the United States. One Soviet newspaper stated that Egypt and Israel were now "gendarmes of the Pentagon". The Soviets viewed the treaty not only as a peace agreement between their erstwhile allies in Egypt and the US-supported Israelis but also as a military pact.In addition, the US sold more than 5,000 missiles to Saudi Arabia and also supplied the Royalists in the North Yemen Civil War against the communist rebellion. Also, the Soviet Union's previously strong relations with Iraq had recently soured. In June 1978, Iraq began entering into friendlier relations with the Western world and buying French and Italian-made weapons, though the vast majority still came from the Soviet Union, their Warsaw Pact allies and China.

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Osama bin Laden

During the war, bin Laden forged connections with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the militant group linked with the 1981 assassination of President Anwar el-Sadat. Under the influence of this group, bin Laden was persuaded to help expand the jihad and enlist as many Muslims as possible to rebel against so-called infidel regimes. In 1988 he and the Egyptians founded Al Qaeda, ("The Base"), a network initially designed to build fighting power for the Afghan resistance. Al Qaeda would later become known as a radical Islamic group with bin Laden at the helm, and with the United States as the key target for its terrorist acts.

After the war, bin Laden was touted as a hero in Afghanistan as well as in his homeland. He returned to Saudi Arabia to work for the Binladin Group, but he remained preoccupied with extremist religious politics. Now it was his homeland that concerned him. In 1990 Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, worried about a possible invasion by Iraq, asked the United States and its allies to station troops that would defend Saudi soil. Eager to protect its interests in the oil-producing kingdom, the United States complied. Bin Laden, euphoric after the Afghan victory and proud of the power of Muslim nations, was outraged that Fahd had asked a non-Muslim country for protection. He now channeled his energy and money into opposition movements against the Saudi monarchy.

As an outspoken critic of the royal family, bin Laden gained a reputation as a troublemaker. For a time, he was placed under house arrest in Jedda. His siblings, who had strong ties to the monarchy, vehemently opposed his antics and severed all ties—familial and economic—with their upstart brother. "He was totally ostracized by the family and by the kingdom," Daniel Uman, who worked with the Binladin Group, told an interviewer for the New York Times. The Saudi government, ever watchful of bin Laden, caught him smuggling weapons from Yemen and revoked his passport. No longer a Saudi citizen, he was asked to leave the country.

With several wives and many children, bin Laden relocated with his family to Sudan, where a militant Islamic government ruled. In Sudan, he was welcomed for his great wealth, which he used to establish a major construction company as well as other businesses. He also focused on expanding Al Qaeda, building terrorist training camps and forging ties with other militant Islamic groups. His primary aim had become to thwart the presence of American troops in Muslim countries.

Bin Laden regarded even American humanitarian efforts as disgraces to Muslim countries. The first terrorist attack believed to trace back to bin Laden involved the December 1992 explosion of a bomb at a hotel in Aden, Yemen. American troops, en route to Somalia for a humanitarian mission, had been staying at the hotel, but they had already left. Two Austrian tourists were killed. Almost a year later, 18 American servicemen were shot down over Mogadishu in Somalia. Bin Laden initially claimed not to be involved in the attack, yet he later admitted to an Arabic newspaper that he had played a role in training the guerrilla troops responsible for the attack.

Several months later, on February 26, 1993, a bomb exploded in the parking garage of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing six and injuring more than 1,000. Though it has not been proven, bin Laden is widely suspected of being the mission's ringleader. Many believe it was the terrorist leader's first attempt to destroy the towers, which suicide hijackers succeeded in toppling in 2001. United States and Saudi leaders pressured the Sudanese government to expel bin Laden. In 1996 he left the country voluntarily, according to Sudanese officials.

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Osama bin Laden

The Islamic fundamentalist leader Osama bin Laden (born 1957), a harsh critic of the United States and its policies, is widely believed to have orchestrated the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, as well as the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden. But it is his role as the apparent mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon that have made bin Laden one of the most infamous and sought-after figures in recent history.

The 6-foot-5, lanky, bearded leader—soft-spoken and effeminate, even when he rails against America—is a man of tremendous wealth, and makes an unlikely spokesman for the poor and oppressed people of Islam whom he claims to represent. Nevertheless, his call for a jihad, or holy war, against the United States and Israel, has been heeded by like-minded fundamentalist Muslims.

Born in Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden was the son of Mohammad bin Laden, one of the country's wealthiest business leaders. Some sources state that he is the seventh son, while others claim that he is the seventeenth of some 50 children born to the construction magnate and his various wives. Young bin Laden led a privileged life, surrounded by pampering servants and residing in air-conditioned houses well insulated from the oppressive desert heat. He may have heard tales of poverty from his father, who started his career as a destitute Yemeni porter. He moved to Saudi Arabia and eventually become the owner of the kingdom's largest construction company.

Mohammed bin Laden's success was in part due to the strong personal ties he cultivated with King Saud after he rebuilt the monarch's palaces for a price much lower than any other bidder. Favored by the royal family, Mohammed served for a time as minister of public works. King Faisal, who succeeded Saud, issued a decree that all construction projects go to Mohammed's company, the Binladin Group. Among these construction projects were lucrative contracts to rebuild mosques in Mecca and Medina. When Mohammed died in a helicopter crash in 1968, his children inherited the billionaire's construction empire. Osama bin Laden, then 13 years old, purportedly came into a fortune of some $300 million.

Young bin Laden attended schools in Jedda, and was encouraged to marry early, at the age of 17, to a Syrian girl and family relation. She was to be the first of several wives. In 1979 he earned a degree in civil engineering from King Abdul-Aziz University. He seemed to be preparing to join the family business, but he did not continue on that course for long.

Former classmates of bin Laden recall him as a frequent patron of Beirut nightclubs, who drank and caroused with his Saudi royalty cohorts. Yet it was also at the university that bin Laden met the Muslim fundamentalist Sheik Abdullah Azzam, perhaps his first teacher of religious politics and his earliest influence. Azzam spoke fervently of the need to liberate Islamic nations from foreign interests and interventions, and he indoctrinated his disciples in the strictest tenets of the Muslim faith. Bin Laden, however, would eventually cultivate a brand of militant religious extremism that exceeded his teacher's.

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http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Osama_bin_Laden.aspx

The afghanistan war

Afghanistan War 1978-92, conflict between anti-Communist Muslim Afghan guerrillas (mujahidin) and Afghan government and Soviet forces. The conflict had its origins in the 1978 coup that overthrew Afghan president Sardar Muhammad Daud Khan, who had come to power by ousting the king in 1973. The president was assassinated and a pro-Soviet Communist government under Noor Mohammed Taraki was established. In 1979 another coup, which brought Hafizullah Amin to power, provoked an invasion (Dec., 1979) by Soviet forces and the installation of Babrak Karmal as president.

The Soviet invasion, which sparked Afghan resistance, intially involved an estimated 30,000 troops, a force that ultimately grew to 100,000. The mujahidin were supported by aid from the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia, channeled through Pakistan, and from Iran. Although the USSR had superior weapons and complete air control, the rebels successfully eluded them. The conflict largely settled into a stalemate, with Soviet and government forces controlling the urban areas, and the Afghan guerrillas operating fairly freely in mountainous rural regions. As the war progressed, the rebels improved their organization and tactics and began using imported and captured weapons, including U.S. antiaircraft missiles, to neutralize the technological advantages of the USSR.

In 1986, Karmal resigned and Mohammad Najibullah became head of a collective leadership. In Feb., 1988, President Mikhail Gorbachev announced the withdrawal of USSR troops, which was completed one year later. Soviet citizens had become increasingly discontented with the war, which dragged on without success but with continuing casualties. In the spring of 1992, Najibullah's government collapsed and, after 14 years of rule by the People's Democratic party, Kabul fell to a coalition of mujahidin under the military leadership of Ahmed Shah Massoud.

The war left Afghanistan with severe political, economic, and ecological problems. More than 1 million Afghans died in the war and 5 million became refugees in neighboring countries. In addition, 15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed and 37,000 wounded. Economic production was drastically curtailed, and much of the land laid waste. At the end of the war more than 5 million mines saturated approximately 2% of the country, where they will pose a threat to human and animal life well into the 21st cent. The disparate guerrilla forces that had triumphed proved unable to unite, and Afghanistan became divided into spheres of control. These political divisions set the stage for the rise of the Taliban later in the decade.

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Afghanistan War

A record 60 percent of Americans say the war in Afghanistan has not been worth fighting, a grim assessment -- and a politically hazardous one -- in advance of the Obama administration's one-year review of its revised strategy.

Public dissatisfaction with the war, now the nation's longest, has spiked by 7 points just since July. Given its costs vs. its benefits, only 34 percent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say the war's been worth fighting, down by 9 points to a new low, by a sizable margin

Negative views of the war for the first time are at the level of those recorded for the war in Iraq, whose unpopularity dragged George W. Bush to historic lows in approval across his second term. On average from 2005 through 2009, 60 percent called that war not worth fighting, the same number who say so about Afghanistan now. (It peaked at 66 percent in April 2007.)

As support for the Iraq war went down, approval of Bush's job performance fell in virtual lockstep, a strongly cautionary note for President Obama. Presidents Truman and Johnson also saw their approval ratings drop sharply during the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

The public's increasingly negative assessment comes after a new strategy, including a surge of U.S. and allied forces, led to the Afghanistan war's bloodiest year. According to icasualties.org, nearly 500 U.S. soldiers have been killed and 4,481 wounded in 2010, compared with 317 killed and 2,114 wounded in 2009, and 155 killed, 793 wounded in 2008.

HANDLING IT -- While opposition to the war has grown, Obama himself gets more mixed reviews for handling it. This survey, produced for ABC News by Langer Research Associates, finds that 45 percent approve of Obama's work on Afghanistan, matching his low, while 46 percent disapprove, a scant 2 points from the high. Still, that's considerably better than Bush's ratings for handling Iraq in his second term -- on average, 63 percent disapproved of how he did.

One apparent reason is Obama's pledge to start withdrawing U.S. forces next summer. Fifty-four percent of Americans support that time frame -- up by 15 points since it was announced a year ago. An additional 27 percent say the withdrawal should begin sooner; just 12 percent say it should start later, down 7 points from a year ago.

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Afghanistan

Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, has known little peace since 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded. Now it is the scene of what has become the central military struggle for the United States, as American forces try to help a weak and corrupt government tame a stubborn insurgency.

Aftghanistan's strategic location, at the crossroads of Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East, has long granted it a pivotal role in the region, while its terrain and population have stymied would-be conquerors for centuries. The country's population is 34 million. Its capital is Kabul.

The United States has been militarily involved in Afghanistan since 2001, when it led an invasion after the Sept. 11 attacks by Al Qaeda. The group had been given safe haven in the country by the Taliban, the extremist Islamic group that had seized control in 1996 after years of civil war.

The 2001 invasion succeeded in dislodging Al Qaeda and removing the Taliban from power, but not in eradicating either group. With American military efforts focused on Iraq, the Taliban made a steady comeback, fueled by profits from the opium trade and dissatisfaction with the weak and often corrupt new Afghan government. By 2009, Kabul was encircled by Taliban forces and there was talk of the capital's falling to the insurgents.

President Obama has made Afghanistan the central military focus of his administration, drawing troops out of Iraq and increasing the number in Afghanistan by almost 50,000. He put Gen. David H. Petraeus, the architect of the 2007 "surge'' in Iraq, in command of American forces in Afghanistan, and the pace of American operations stepped up enormously, initially in the Taliban's strongholds in the south.

In March 2011, General Petraeus said that NATO forces have been able to halt or reverse Taliban gains not only in the south but also around Kabul, and even in the north and west of the country. And President Hamid Karzai is to announce on the Afghan New Year, March 21, the beginning of the transition to Afghan control of some districts around the country, part of the plan to pass responsibility for security to the Afghan government by 2014.

But between tactical success on the ground and the strategy of handing off to Afghan forces lies what one colonel called "the great disconnect.'' The Taliban and the groups it collaborates with remain deeply rooted; the Afghan military and police remain lackluster and given to widespread drug use; the country's borders remain porous; Kabul Bank, which processes government salaries, is wormy with fraud, and Mr. Karzai's government, by almost all accounts, remains weak, corrupt and erratically led. And the Pakistani frontier remains a Taliban safe haven.

Even a successful military campaign is seen from the ranks as unlikely to untangle this knot of dysfunction, much less within the deadlines discussed in Washington.

The relationships between the United States, the Afghan government and the Afghan people have often been tense, and repeatedly damaged by civilian casualties. On April 1, 2011, thousands of protesters, angry at the burning of a Koran at a Florida church, overran the compound of the United Nations in a northern Afghan city. Seven U.N. workers were killed in the attack, and at least 24 others died during protests which continued across the country for days.

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Afghanistan, pushed to the edge

Deadly protests sweeping Afghanistan in reaction to the Quran-burning by Florida Pastor Terry Jones are a defeat for those on all sides fighting for Afghanistan's peaceful future. They could not come at a worse time for the war effort in Afghanistan or the push to win greater support for the war here in the United States.

For the last two weeks, Afghan media have reported both on the Quran-burning and the horrific charges that American soldiers created "kill teams" that targeted Afghan civilians for sport and captured their murders on video, in some cases even posing with their corpses.

Many Afghans don't realize that these few do not stand for the majority of Americans, who respect Islam and vocally condemn the desecration of a holy book by a rogue, publicity-seeking pastor. And that Americans feel overwhelming shame and outrage at the killing of innocents at the hands of U.S. soldiers, a sentiment particularly strong among those in uniform who see such crimes as a brutal desecration of their own standards and values.

In the last several days, American television has rediscovered Afghanistan, following weeks in which the nuclear disaster in Japan and turmoil in the Middle East dominated the airwaves. Disturbing images of throngs of men in the street shouting against the United States and chilling reports of murderous protesters attacking innocent United Nations employees in Mazar-e-Sharif -- and a girls' high school in Kandahar -- are the only pictures from Afghanistan that Americans have seen recently.

Many Americans don't realize that these few do not stand for the majority of Afghans, who condemn the killing of innocents and feel horror and shame at the attack on United Nations personnel. And that in a December 2010 opinion poll, about 60 percent of Afghans said they continue to support the U.S. military presence in their country and oppose the Taliban, despite growing insecurity.

On either side of this war, America's longest ever, a gulf of understanding gapes ever wider. Increasingly, this chasm separating the two publics is filled by pictures that widen the divide even further. War-weary Americans wonder why in the world they should offer their blood and treasure to a country that burns their flag. Afghans exhausted by war wonder how they can support an American presence that does not even respect their most basic beliefs. Television cannot be relied upon to provide context, but it is expert in igniting emotion.

In the past week, men peddling hate and anger have scored thumping victories. The extremist few have ably outmaneuvered the peaceful many, their heinous acts amplified by repellent images played over and over on television. Those who traffic in destruction have won -- at least for the moment.

On the losing side: men and women of goodwill acting valiantly and quietly each day to build a stronger and more secure country. Among the most soundly defeated are those fighting on all sides for a better future for Afghanistan.

The battle for hearts and minds is not waged in one direction. Right now it is being lost in both.

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http://edition.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/04/04/lemmon.afghanistan.protests/index.html