AFGHANISTAN

PINKY MARIEL G. MANGAYA

Discussant
Afghanistan: A Country of Diverse People and
Culture. Afghanistan is a landlocked Islamic
country of 251,825 square miles with a strategic
location in the heart of Asia, surrounded by the
six countries of Pakistan, Tajikistan, Iran,
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and China. To the
south and west, Afghanistan shares borders with
Iran and to the south and east, it is bounded by
Pakistan along the longest border with
Afghanistan. To the north, Turkmenistan,
Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan have common borders
with Afghanistan, and in the far northeast, China
is another neighbor of Afghanistan with the
shortest common land border.
The national flag of Afghanistan consists of a vertical
tricolor with the classical National Emblem in the
center. The current flag was adopted on August 19,
2013, but many similar designs had been in use
throughout most of the 20th century.
Afghanistan had 25 different flags since the first flag
when the Hotaki dynasty was established in 1709.
During the 20th century alone, Afghanistan went
through 18 different national flags, more than any other
country during that time period, and most of them had
the colors black, red, and green on them.

The black color represents its troubled 19th century

history as a protected state, the red color represents the
blood of those who fought for independence (specifically,
the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919), and the green
represents hope and prosperity for the future. Some
have alternatively interpreted the black to represent
history, the red to represent progress, and the green to
represent either agricultural prosperity or Islam.

The tricolor was supposedly inspired by the Afghan

King, Amanullah Khan, when visiting Europe with his
wife in 1928. The original horizontal tricolor design was
based on that of the flag of Germany.
The center of the flag contains the Emblem of
Afghanistan. Almost every national flag since 1928 has
had the emblem in the center. Almost every emblem has
had a mosque in it, which first appeared in 1901,
and wheat, first appearing in 1928.
BRIEF COUNTRY HISTORY
o Afghanistan as a state began in 1747 with its establishment
by Ahmad Shah Durrani. The written recorded history of the land
presently constituting Afghanistan can be traced back to around
500 BCE when the area was under the Achaemenid Empire,
although evidence indicates that an advanced degree
of urbanized culture has existed in the land since between 3000
and 2000 BCE. Bactria dates back to 2500 BCE.
o The Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up to large parts of
Afghanistan in the north. Alexander the Great and
his Macedonian army arrived at what is now Afghanistan in 330
BCE after the fall of the Achmaemenid Empire during the Battle
of Gaugamela. Since then, many empires have risen from
Afghanistan, including the Mauryan Empire,Greco
Bactrians, Kushans, Hephthalites, Saffarids, Samanids, Ghaznavi
ds, Ghurids, Khaljis, Timurids, Mughals, Hotakis and Durranis.
o Afghanistan (meaning "land of the Afghans")
has been a strategically important location
throughout history. The land served as "a
gateway to India, impinging on the ancient Silk
Road, which carried trade from
the Mediterranean to China". Sitting on many
trade and migration routes, Afghanistan may be
called the 'Central Asian roundabout' since
routes converge from the Middle East, from
the Indus Valley through the passes over
the Hindu Kush, from the Far East via
the Tarim Basin, and from the
adjacent Eurasian Steppe.
o Afghanistan is
an Islamic
republic consisting of
three branches of
power (executive,
legislative, and
judiciary) overseen by
checks and balances.
The country is led by
President Ashraf
Ghani, who replaced
Hamid Karzai in
2014.
EXISTING ETHNIC GROUPS IN THE
COUNTRY
Ethnic Groups Share Population
Pashtun (Pashto) 42%
Tajik 27%
Uzbek 9%
Hazara 8%
Aimaq 4%
Turkmen 3%
Balochi (Baluch) 2%
Other Groups 5%
EXISTING LANGUAGES IN THE COUNTRY

 Afghanistanis a multilingual country in

which two languages – Dari and Pashto –
are both official and most widely spoken.

 Dariis the official name of the Persian

language in Afghanistan. It is often
referred to as the Afghan
Persian. Although still widely known
as Farsi ("Persian") to its native speakers,
the name was officially changed to Dari in
1964.
 Both Persian and Pashto are Indo-European
languages from the Iranian languages sub-family.
Other regional languages, such
as Uzbek, Turkmen, Balochi, Pashayi and Nurista
ni, are spoken by minority groups across the
country.
 Minor languages include Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi,
Ashkunu, Kamkata-viri, Vasi-
vari, Tregami and Kalasha-
ala, Pamiri (Shughni, Munji, Ishkashimi and Wak
hi), Brahui, Arabic, Qizilbash, Aimaq, and Pashai
and Kyrgyz. Linguist Harald Haarmann believes
that Afghanistan is home to more than 40 minor
languages, with around 200 different dialects.
 Spoken Languages in Afghanistan
2018
Language

Dari 77%
Pashto 48%
Uzbek 11%
Turkmen 3%
Balochi 1%
Pashayi 1%
Nuristani 1%
Arabic 1%
English 6%
Urdu 3%
LANGUAGE PLANNING AND LANGUAGE
POLICY

 The official languages of the country are Dari and

Pashto, as established by the 1964 Constitution of
Afghanistan. Dari is the most widely spoken
language of Afghanistan's official languages and
acts as a lingua franca for the country. In 1980,
other regional languages were granted official
status in the regions where they are the language
of the majority. This policy was codified in the
2004 Afghan Constitution, which established
Uzbek, Turkmen, Balochi, Pashayi, Nuristani and
Pamiri as a third official language in areas where
they are spoken by a majority of the population.
LANGUAGE OF EDUCATION AND PUBLIC
DISCOURSE

 Education in Afghanistan includes K–

12 and higher education, which is greatly
supervised by the Ministry of
Education and Ministry of Higher
Education in Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghanista
n is going through a nationwide rebuilding
process and, despite setbacks, institutions are
established across the country. By 2013 there
were 10.5 million students attending schools
in Afghanistan, a country with a population of
around 27.5 million people.
As a crossroads in Central Eurasia, it is no surprise
that Afghanistan is characterized by considerable
social and linguistic diversity. Table 1 displays
information on most of the languages of Afghanistan
by language family, branch and sub-branch, estimated
number of speakers and language status according to
the 1980 Constitution. The four status types in the
table derive from Kieffer (1983) based on provisions of
the 1980 Constitution for official and national
languages, and based on estimated number of
speakers and manner of use in local contexts.2
Afghanistan exhibits large-scale societal
multilingualism, and considerable individual
plurilingualism 3 in West Iranian, East Iranian, Indic,
Turkic, Mongolic, and Dravidian languages (Barfield,
2010; Bashir, 2006; Kieffer, 1983, 2006).
The 1980 Constitution gave equal official status to
Pashto, the language of the Pashtun ethnic group,
and Dari Persian, the language of several of
Afghanistan’s ethnic groups, which is also the most
widely known Language of Wider Communication
in Afghanistan. The 1980 Constitution designated
as national languages those languages apart from
the two official languages that could be used in
publishing or broadcast media, or as languages of
instruction (LOI) in schools. Kieffer (1983) uses the
term local languages for languages that go
constitutionally unrecognized despite being used by
a sizable population in a particular context, and
residual languages for those whose transmission is
endangered.
Some of the complexity of this language
ecology is the 21st-century remnant of
19th-century Pashtun nation-building,
where intra-Pashtun rivalry led to some
Pashtun groups being resettled in non-
Pashtun-speaking areas, with the aim of
weakening their power, which
established a Pashtun presence in more
regions of Afghanistan (Naby, 1984).
Naby, who worked as a teacher in schools
in Mazar-eSharif in the Uzbek-speaking
northwest in the 1960s, observes:
The Pushtu language, although still an infrequently heard
language in places like Mazar-i-Sharif and Kunduz, can
nevertheless be used in government offices almost
interchangeably with Persian because government
appointees to these regions can count on being able to staff
their offices with indigenous Pushtu speakers. In the same
manner Kabul can justify its insistence on the instruction
of Pushtu in northern schools not only because Pushtu is
the national language of Afghanistan and one of its two
official languages (with Dari/Persian), but also because a
significant, if minor portion of the students come from
Pushtun families. ... Afghan institutions such as public
schools have acted to instill in graduates a certain sense of
being Afghans, but the retention of Uzbek language and
culture appears to affect the attitudes and activities of
younger Uzbeks (Naby, 1984: 12).
In 1978, following Soviet-style language policy,
the Khalqi faction of the Communist Party of
Afghanistan announced a policy of greater use of
the non dominant languages of Afghanistan for
official purposes. This included education and
publication in Uzbek, Turkmen and Baluch in
addition to Dari and Pashto, and according to
some reports it included languages of Nuristan as
well. Thus, the anti-regional, anti-rural, anti-
Pashto effect of de facto language policy in modern
schools may in part explain the source of anti-Dari
feelings that have arisen among unpersianized
Pashtuns. During the Taliban’s rule, for example,
Pashto is said to have replaced Dari at Kabul
University
You could go to every office, if your language
was Pashto. You could do everything. Nobody
asked you where you were coming from and
where you were going. If you spoke Persian or
Baluchi they thought you were cursing at them.
This is how they were (Rzehak, 2009: 193).

Some argue that the Pashtun élite may have

used Pashtun linguistic and cultural symbols as
a means of maintaining hegemony over
unpersianized Pashtuns (Hanifi, 2004). Seen in
this light, anti-Dari actions can be understood
as part of an intra-Pashtun dispute, between
persianized and unpersianized Pashtuns.
RECENT CHANGES IN LANGUAGE POLICY
 The 2004 Constitution makes more particular statements about
Afghanistan’s languages than have any previous constitutions.
Table 3 lists its detailed provisions regarding languages. Most
significant perhaps is Article 17, which commits the state to
whatever measures are necessary to promote education, which
arguably means that in certain districts languages other than
Pashto or Dari should be taught in schools, or ideally used as
languages of instruction. Indeed, the most recent draft of the
national strategic plan for education for the years 2010-2014
does take the step of examining the implementation of bilingual
Dari-Pashto education nationally and the provision of
opportunity for speakers of non-dominant languages to learn
their languages in school as well. For example, there is planning
for the development of textbooks for grades 1 to 12 teaching in
Turkmen, Uzbek, Pashai, Baluch, as well as Pamiri and
Nurestani languages to be completed by 2014 (Afghanistan
Ministry of Education, 2010).
Since Articles 16 and 43 of the Constitution lay out
commitments both to the development of all
languages and to quality education for all, certain
tensions may arise from different notions of quality
and its relationship to various language-in
education models. The commitment to quality basic
education seems to require an emphasis on
teaching in whatever language(s) children know
best, while quality preparation for higher levels of
education, which has been delivered largely in Dari,
seems to suggest the need for some effective form of
Dari learning. As we have seen above, Dari and
Pashto have both been used as LOIs with the other
language taught as a subject, and the either-or
logic of presuming that only one can be chosen as
LOI has precluded a bilingual approach in which
two or more languages could be used as LOIs.
CULTURAL INTEGRATION
 Afghanistan is a traditional society, dominated by
ancient tribal practices, Islamic culture and a well-
established suspicion of outsiders. A foreign force in
such an environment cannot defeat the insurgency by
itself – “only locals have the access to the population
and deep understanding of a particular insurgency
that is necessary”– and to secure sufficient legitimacy
and trust from the population, one must appear
sympathetic and receptive to it.
 Instead of cultural awareness/integration and local
engagement, ISAF activities have helped develop a
persona of disconnection from the population. This
has primarily arisen from an extraneous employment
of technology, which encourages an
institutionalization of risk aversion and thus
separation from the local population.
THE JOURNEY TOWARDS THE
EMERGENCE OF A NATIONAL IDENTITY
 An innate sense of the essence of their culture sustained
Afghans through 24 years of conflict and displacement.
Although they continue to cherish the diversity of
regional differences, individuals cling tenaciously to their
national identity, upholding traditional values and
customs that distinguish them from their neighbors.
From the beginning of the twentieth century, attempts to
foster unity through nation-building activities in mostly
urban areas met with mixed success; the latest attempts
to cast Afghans in a puritanical Islamic mould met with
disaster. Years of discord stretched taut the fabric of the
society and national traits once honored hallmarks of the
culture were compromised. Yet the fundamentals of the
culture remain strong, changed in some ways but readily
recognizable as uniquely Afghan. Current expectations
aim to engage various cultural elements as bonding
vehicles to hasten reconstruction and strengthen peace.
CHALLENGES IN THE CREATION
OF A NATIONAL IDENTITY
 Continued armed conflict and insecurity limit access to area
and opportunity to implement (large scale) development
projects and explore natural resources, and cause urbanization
and outmigration.
 A weakened economy and high level of corruption reduce
government income potential and private sector’s willingness
to invest.
 A disunited and at the same time highly centralized
government hampers reform processes and ability/ capacity to
implement agreed development programmes, further
constrained by fractured Parliament and civil society.
 Cultural and religious constraint and low education level (and
quality) limit women’s access to public participation and
entrance to a workforce
 Internal warfare and regional conflicts hamper Afghanistan’s
ability to reach the ambition of being the “Heart of Asia” for
trade and interaction.
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