AFGHANISTAN – INGOVERNABILE MERAVIGLIA 1ª PARTE
Why do we call Afghanistan a wonder?
It's not hard to understand why this unfortunate country has become the very image of the word ungovernable; this is demonstrated not only by the very recent developments following the withdrawal of US forces (August 2021), but also by its past history: the territory on which Afghanistan extends has been the object of territorial disputes between various empires well before the birth of the first modern Afghan state (1747), and has spent centuries marked by conflict, occupation, partitions, and revolutions. So what is its wonder?
The crossroads of Asia
While we don't often hear about Afghanistan for reasons other than the various problems that plague it, its land and the people who inhabit it have plenty of merit to reserve a place in our curiosity.
Overlooked by some of the world's most rugged peaks and hidden by the omnipresence of a rocky desert that defies the view for the remaining half of the country, Afghanistan certainly isn't likely to disappoint the eye of the Western visitor, who is drawn by the beauty of its unique landscapes but unfortunately unaware of the surprising cultural variety they offer.
An untamed land
If Herodotus could already affirm in the second book of his Histories that Egypt is a gift of the Nile, a shrewd foreigner would just as quickly be convinced that Afghanistan is the kingdom of the Hindu Kush.
Its impervious walls cover approximately half of the national territory, and almost never, along its internal course, does the massif allow travellers routes below 2,000 metres above sea level.
Given the large number of languages that have challenged him, the translations underlying his name may well be faulty, but there is no reason to doubt that the massif will have provided plenty of examples over the centuries, among the columns of slaves that Afghan raiders dragged home after their habitual raids in Hindustan, to deserve the name of Killer of Hindus.
Given the difficulties of crossing such a colossal barrier, stretching as it does for more than 500 miles north-south, from Mazar-i-Sharif to Kabul, and almost double that west-east, from Herat to Jalalabad, the cumbersome presence of this natural wall in the center of the Afghan plateau has always barred the country's path to political unification, condemning it to a fate of fragmentation and internal strife.
Plains in Takhaar province
The peaks of the Hindu Kush
It was first the travails of the surrounding empires in the mid-eighteenth century, and then the needs of the imperial policies of England and Russia in the nineteenth century, that gave this vast expanse of land wedged between Iran, India, China and the steppe its current shape.
In all other ages before, since the warlike tribes that still populate it paid tribute to the Persian King of Kings, the region has always been little more than the periphery of neighboring empires, the frontier along which the uncertain edge of the known world fades into the vast unknown, hidden, to the north, by the endless sea of the Eurasian steppe, and to the west by the crags of the murderous mountain.
It is precisely from the original provinces of the Persian Empire that the thousand names of Ariana, Bactria, Sogdiana, Gandara, Corasmia, Dranghiana and Aracosia come, which for centuries have designated the lands that only since the agreements signed by the English and Russians in the 19th century have assumed the single name we know today.
And it was also from Persia that many of the other fundamental elements of Afghanistan's culture arrived, such as writing, the Muslim faith, and the revelation of a common belonging among the Pashtu.
Afghanistan, in fact, has never been considered a single thing, except by foreigners who, having to pass through it to reach the more fortunate lands that extend beyond its borders, certainly could not ignore their own difficulties in understanding the reality of a country largely hidden behind its impervious mountains.
At the time of the appearance of Europeans, in the 1830s, the very idea of Afghaniyat, of a community of customs and destiny, the unexpected fruit of the successful military enterprises undertaken seventy years earlier by a local leader, was still in an embryonic state.
Through endless gorges, silently carved by time for miles and miles, revealing their secrets only to goats and eagles, the crevasses of the Hindu Kush finally give way to the vast arid expanses that surround the massif in every direction, where history has condemned 30 million people to an existence of unforgiving toil, in the deserts of the southwest as well as in the less thankless hills of the north.
While television news may have accustomed us to the sight of this lunar landscape, which nevertheless retains a largely intact hold on our foreign minds, it would be difficult not to marvel at the unexpected succession of rivers, lakes, and even forests that lie hidden here and there, as if sheltered from eyes unwilling to undertake the laborious search, and which the locals would be able to point out to us in great numbers, albeit not without suspicion.
Un popolo inesauribile
And how could a place so resistant to uniformity not be home to an equally multi-colored population?
According to the latest available census (2019), the population of Afghanistan numbers more than 38 million people, divided into different ethnic-linguistic groups such as the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and many other minorities, who find their main, and often only, points of convergence in the harshness of their living conditions and in the Muslim faith.
Islam rules unchallenged over 99% of the population, and, as evidence of the continuing Persian influence, a significant 15% or so of the faithful are Shia, while approximately half the population speaks some type of Iranian dialect, most often Pashto or Dari, the country's two official languages.
Pashto in particular has a literary tradition of astonishing endurance; its script is the source of the poems of Pata Khazana (The Hidden Treasure), Afghanistan's national work, composed in the 18th century by the great poet Khushal Khan Khattak, whose immortal verses, engraved on the lips of every elder, tell us about the life of the country dating back to the 8th century.
Although during the medieval age Persian influence meant that Dari, more closely related to Persian than Pashto, assumed a prominent position, as evidenced by several epic works (the main one being the Shahnameh), over time it was Pashto that assumed the role of the main vehicular language.
It is no coincidence that all the main works of contemporary Afghan literature belong to Pashto, or, given the historical events of recent decades, to the fraction of Afghan society that it identifies, from those of Sher Zaman Taizi, its undisputed founder, to the more recent ones of Khaled Hosseini.
Demographic details of neighboring countries
It's senseless, as well as dangerous, all this saying, "I'm Tajik, you're Pashtun, he's Hazara, and she's Uzbek." We're all Afghans, that's what matters. But when one group dominates others for so long... There's contempt, rivalry. That's what happens. It's always been like this.
Khaled Hosseini Tweet
The conditions that led to the enduring political fragmentation that dominated Afghan history until the 19th century actually encouraged the development of an extraordinarily diverse, vibrant culture with a strong local dimension, not unlike, ultimately, what happened, albeit in a different form, in our country.
Even at the table, Afghanistan manages to surprise the Italian, who is decidedly pretentious on a pitch where, for once, possession of imposing hills is not in itself an advantage.
In light of this, it is certainly difficult to resist the wonder of such ethnic and cultural variety in a country so hostile to permanent settlement, and the foods that Afghans manage to prepare, despite the limited possibilities their land offers their imagination, offer further arguments even to the most incredulous eyes.
There isn't a village where, at the end of a long journey, we wouldn't be offered the refreshment of lavash bread and lamb stew (Palau-i-Shahee), heralded by the aroma of meatballs and chickpeas (Kofta Nakhod) wafting through every street in the country. And if we're lucky enough to be there during a festive occasion, we might also savor the delicious Ashak or Mantu ravioli.
During tiring days of walking, we could sit on a dry stone wall and refresh ourselves with goat's milk and excellent yogurt, and for a few coins we could stock up on grapes, pomegranates, and melons, or spices with which to leave a reminder of our gratitude to the local families for their hospitality.
Afghanistan's hidden wealth
But in many ways, it is precisely the details of Afghan economic life that amaze those who delve into the reality of this country for the first time.
During the ten-year war (1979-89) they fought against the indomitable tribes of the plateau, the Soviets discovered that the subsoil of the Hindu Kush is extremely rich in rare minerals, today highly sought after by high-tech industries; but, as always in the history of this unfortunate place, unfortunately, the difficulties posed by nature and the lack of a central power capable of imposing order in the provinces and preventing external infiltration, have long prevented Afghanistan from being able to make use of the treasure that lies within its own subsoil.
Mineral resources
Only since 2007 has it been possible to launch serious extraction projects, thanks to which, in due time, Afghanistan would finally be able to provide itself with a foundation on which to build a production system capable of alleviating the extreme poverty in which almost all of its population lives, also helping the rest of the world to reduce its dependence, in this sector, on the Chinese monopoly.
But once again, the country's political weakness has called everything into question, because the Taliban's return to power, with the abrupt interruption of humanitarian aid that it entailed, has seriously called into question the continuation of extraction projects, particularly costly and complex in a fractured and hostile territory like Afghanistan.
The opium poppy industry, the country's main export, has proven capable of emerging unscathed from every crisis, demonstrating a truly marvelous capacity for resilience.
Afghanistan, or rather its narrow northern plains, alone satisfies 80% of the world's demand for opium, guaranteeing dizzying annual revenues (between 100 and 400 million dollars a year) to the owners of the plantations, the Taliban.
The opium poppy at harvest time
The opiate trade, especially heroin, has always been one of the Taliban's main sources of income, even during the years of exile following the American intervention (2001), and even before they first came to power (1992). As Saviano said, during the conflict with the Americans, "the bullets the Taliban fired at Americans were purchased with the money of heroin addicts in the West."