History
Afghanistan's history spans five thousand years and the Afghan people have contributed to the emergence of many Central Asian empires. The ancient centers of culture and civilization were influenced by diverse outsiders such as Rome, Greece, Arabia, Iran, Central Asia, India, and China. Great conquerors such as Jenghiz Khan and Timurlane swept through Afghanistan during the 13th and 14th century. These rulers brought with them the desire to establish kingdoms, and founded cultural and scholarly communities in Afghanistan. In particular, during the Time rid dynasty, poetry, architecture and miniature painting reached their zenith.
General Facts and Statistics
Area: 647,500 sq. km. (249,935 sq. mi.), slightly smaller than Texas in USA
Capital: Kabul, 2,000,000 (approx.)
Population: 32,738,376 (July 2008 est.)
Natural resources: Natural gas, petroleum, coal, cooper, chromate, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, iron ore, salt, precious and semiprecious stones
Land use: Arable land 12% Permanent pastures 46% Forests and woodland 3% Other 39%
Literacy rate: 28.7 percent (UN Afghanistan Human Development Report of 2005).
Major religious, ethnic, and linguistic groups
For centuries, Afghanistan has been a mosaic of people with diverse cultures, religions and languages. Afghanistan’s ethnically and linguistically rich and mixed population reflects its location at the crossroads of Central, South and Southwest Asia. Communities with separate religions, languages, and ethnic backgrounds have lived side by side for generations. Afghanistan still remains a country of dynamic diversity. [1]
The main ethnic groups are Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Turkmen, Aimaq, Baluch, Nuristani, and Kizilbash. Pashto and Dari are Afghanistan’s official languages. Afghanistan’s Constitution stipulates that all other languages are “official” in the areas in which they are spoken by a majority of the population. Afghanistan is an Islamic country. An estimated 80% of the population is Sunni, following the Hanafi School of jurisprudence. The remainder of the population is predominantly Shi'a.
Geography and climate
Afghanistan's rugged terrain and seasonally harsh climate have presented a challenge to habitants and conquering armies for centuries. Afghanistan extends from the imposing Pamir Mountains in the northeast Wakhan Corridor, through branches of smaller mountain ranges, down to the southwestern plateau where the fertile regions of Kandahar merge with the deserts of Farah and Seistan. More than 49 percent of the total land area lies above 2,000 meters. There are a number of smaller mountain ranges spanning Afghanistan but the largest mountains are found in the north-eastern section of the 600 km Hindu Kush mountain range. Afghanistan is completely landlocked, bordered by Iran to the west (925 kilometers), by the Central Asian States of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan to the north and northeast (2,380 kilometers), by China at the easternmost top of the Wakhan Corridor (96 kilometers), and by Pakistan to the east and south (2,432 kilometers). For the most part, Afghanistan may be described as semi-arid but regional variations and climate contrasts according to levels of elevation. Annual rainfall is low, but the high mountains contain sources for many streams and rivers which supply water for cultivation.
Government
Let me to talk about Afghanistan government. Afghanistan forms a presidential type of government which president is high in executive body. The executive branch of the Afghan government consists of a powerful and popularly elected President and two Vice Presidents. A National Assembly consisting of two Houses, the House of People (Wolesi Jirga) with 249 seats, and the House of Elders (Meshrano Jirga) wiyh 102 seats forms the Legislative Branch. There is an independent Judiciary branch consisting of the Supreme Court (Stera Mahkama), High Courts and Appeal Courts. The President appoints the nine members of the Supreme Court with the approval of the Wolesi Jirga.
President Hamid Karzai became the first democratically elected President of Afghanistan on December 7, 2004. Previously, Hamid Karzai had been Chairman of the Transitional Administration and Interim President from 2002. Although there were parliamentary elections during the reign of King Zahir Shah (the last were in1969, before his reign was ended in a 1973 military coup). Presidential, parliamentary, and provincial elections and adoption of a constitution were part of a post-Taliban transition roadmap established by a United Nations-sponsored agreement of major Afghan factions signed in Bonn, Germany on December 5, 2001, (“Bonn Agreement”)
Government Performance
U.S. policy has been to help expand Afghan institutions and to urge reforms such as merit-based performance criteria and weeding out of the rampant official corruption. Afghan ministries are growing their staffs and technologically capabilities, although they still suffer from a low resource and skill base, and corruption is fed in part by the fact that government workers receive very low salaries. The anti-corruption and governmental performance aspect of U.S. policy is to be enhanced as a result of the Obama Administration’s strategy review, as announced March 27, 2009, which concluded that more needed to be done to promote the legitimacy and effectiveness of the Afghan government at both the Kabul and local levels. As a consequence of the review, the Administration is attempting to identify or recruit about 430 U.S. civilian personnel—and many additional civilians from partner countries will join them—to advise Afghan ministries and provincial and district administrations.
Therefore now almost in all country special in developing countries Democracy means buy the people, off the people and far from the people.
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