History

Outline of History

General Notes

Timelines

Rulers

"In Afghanistan... the internal government of the tribes answers its end so well, that the utmost disorders of the royal government never derange its operations, nor disturb the lives of the people. A number of organized and high-spirited republics are ready to defend their rugged country against a tyrant; and are able to defy the feeble efforts of a party in a civil war."

Mountstuart Elphinstone, 1815

Re: The Taliban

"... their puritanical outlook stemmed, in part at least, from their revulsion at the corruption and immorality they saw emanating from the West... since part of their revulsion derived from the memory of streams of hippies and "overlanders" who had passed through Afghanistan in the 1960s and 1970s in search of their individual nirvanas... Aghans were deeply shocked at the visitors' nihilism and irresponsibility, as well as at the loose morals that many of them, and women in particular, displayed. Their conclusion was that if this was how Westerners behaved, Afghanistan wanted no part of it."

Martin Ewans, Afghanistan: A Short History of its People and Politics 2002