Afghanistan journal

Notes from Herat, Afghanistan - May 1975 Page 5 of 7

page 5 of 7

The candle is not there to illuminate itself... - Nawab Jan-Fishan Khan

President Daoud's protective gaze enlivens a then-current 10 Afs note.

The brief Afghan republic of Mohammed Daoud

    Afghanistan was enjoying relative peace at this time, under the temporarily stable presidency of Mohammed Daoud Khan, who had ousted his cousin King Mohammed Zahir Shah in 1973.
(Zahir Shah is still very much present in 200, at the age of 86). These two were the last repre- sentatives of the Pashtun Afghan dynasty established by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747.
    Daoud had been educated in the West, was politically moderate enough to be reviled by the Islamists, and was very much interested in improving the economy of his country. Women enjoyed general freedom of movement, access to education, professional options, and were under no official (just a societal) obligation to wear the burqa. One would occasionally see women garbed in (conservative) western dress.
   Although Daoud had courted the Soviets, and accepted much economic and military assistance from them, he began to attempt to distance himself from Moscow in the mid-1970s, and worked to develop relationships with India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait. He had already enjoyed a tentative but long-standing economic
aid-based relationship with the U.S. (which funded the Helmand River hydroelectric project in the 1950s).
   Unfortunately for Daoud, Afghanistan's Communist party, the PDPA, had been gaining strength, and in April of 1978 Nur Muhammad Taraki of the Khalq faction swept to power in a violent coup d'etat, which Daoud did not survive. This revolution led inevitably to the Soviet Union's invasion in December of 1979, and its horrific and senseless nine year long debacle there. Once the Soviets finally pulled out in February of 1989, things only got worse, at least from the point of view of the general populace. Civil war, enacted according to tribal loyalties for the most part, was quelled only by the ascension of those guardians of virtue and propriety known as the Taliban, in 1996. You're probably familiar with the story since then... and now yet another chapter is opening in the history of Afghanistan.
    The account above is my own [WA's] condensation of material from the comprehensive and well-written Country Study & Country Guide for Afghanistan which stretches back to the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, 2500 years ago, up till 1997. Little has changed in Afghanistan from 1977 until... just recently.

Views of Herat's large and well-preserved Masjid-i-Jami (Friday Mosque). The haft rangi (seven color) tile work is spectacular.

Posted 2 Dec 2001. Last updated 9 Dec 2001.

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	The brief Afghan republic of Mohammed Daoud
	Afghanistan was enjoying relative peace at this time, under the temporarily stable presidency of Mohammed Daoud Khan, who had ousted his cousin King Mohammed Zahir Shah in 1973. (Zahir Shah is still very much present in 200, at the age of 86). These two were the last repre- sentatives of the Pashtun Afghan dynasty established by Ahmad Shah Durrani in 1747. Daoud had been educated in the West, was politically moderate enough to be reviled by the Islamists, and was very much interested in improving the economy of his country. Women enjoyed general freedom of movement, access to education, professional options, and were under no official (just a societal) obligation to wear the burqa. One would occasionally see women garbed in (conservative) western dress. Although Daoud had courted the Soviets, and accepted much economic and military assistance from them, he began to attempt to distance himself from Moscow in the mid-1970s, and worked to develop relationships with India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait. He had already enjoyed a tentative but long-standing economic	aid-based relationship with the U.S. (which funded the Helmand River hydroelectric project in the 1950s). Unfortunately for Daoud, Afghanistan's Communist party, the PDPA, had been gaining strength, and in April of 1978 Nur Muhammad Taraki of the Khalq faction swept to power in a violent coup d'etat, which Daoud did not survive. This revolution led inevitably to the Soviet Union's invasion in December of 1979, and its horrific and senseless nine year long debacle there. Once the Soviets finally pulled out in February of 1989, things only got worse, at least from the point of view of the general populace. Civil war, enacted according to tribal loyalties for the most part, was quelled only by the ascension of those guardians of virtue and propriety known as the Taliban, in 1996. You're probably familiar with the story since then... and now yet another chapter is opening in the history of Afghanistan. The account above is my own [WA's] condensation of material from the comprehensive and well-written Country Study & Country Guide for Afghanistan which stretches back to the Achaemenid Empire of Persia, 2500 years ago, up till 1997. Little has changed in Afghanistan from 1977 until... just recently.