Introducing Afghanistan
When Lonely Planet was hitting the Asia overland trail in the 1970s, Afghanistan was known for its dramatic mountain scenery and the unparalleled hospitality of its people. At the turn of the 21st century the country was more synonymous with war and terrorism, the picture of a failed state. The fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 and the subsequent reconstruction attempts have done much to address this view, but in early 2007 Afghanistan’s future remained on a knife-edge.
Having been bled white by ten years of Soviet occupation, Afghanistan was dropped by the international community almost the minute the last Red Army tank withdrew in 1989, allowing it to slip into the chaos of civil war and the Taliban. Promises not to repeat the same mistake 13 years later proved half-hearted at best. Progress in development of education and the political processes (which have seen successful presidential and parliamentary elections) are real enough. Kabul and other cities have boomed with increasing trade and new constructions. Most of the country is at peace, but the state remains perilously weak. The return to power of many of the rejected warlords of the 1990s has cynically proved to Afghans that you can apparently have peace or justice but not both. The booming economy has failed to touch the countryside where most Afghans live and development programmes have mostly ignored the centrally important agricultural sector, particularly in the Pashtun regions that originally spawned the Taliban.
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Postcards featuring assassinated military leader Massoud, the "Lion of Panjshir".
- Gavin Quirke
- Lonely Planet photographer
