Afghanistan Project CMS

<p>In the early 19th century, Afghanistan became a playing field.</p> <p>Sandwiched between Tsarist Russia and British India, the emerging nation was maneuvered by its neighboring empires. Afghans, historians, and anthropologists have compared the country to the national Afghan sport of buzkashi.</p> <p>Buzkashi requires players on horseback to capture the carcass of a dead animal. Players must drag the carcass into a designated ring, and in the traditional game, a match can go on for days.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the rich owners of the horses watch the players from the sidelines, hoping that their own prestige will rise in the event of a win. They are perhaps the real players of bukhashi.</p> <p>And so there are varying levels of manipulation and competition in the game, varying spheres of influence as the game unfolds upon the playing field. And like all games, there is more at play than just what&rsquo;s on that field.</p> <p>Buzkashi is an apt metaphor for describing the politics of Afghanistan. Early in the 19th century, Russia and Britain began a long struggle to best each other on the playing fields of the Hindu Kush. This struggle, which would last well into the 20th century, would be known as The Great Game.</p> <p>The concept of the Great Game is an interesting one and very 19th century in the way in which it was framed as a game&hellip;.You can think of the Great Game in Asia of the 19th century as similar to the Cold War in the 20th century, in the sense that in both cases you had great imperial powers who were trying to improve or to create greater leverage, create greater influence over countries that were, to this point, independent in Asia&ndash;small countries like Afghanistan.</p> <p>And like the Cold War, the Great Game never involved direct conflict between the empires.</p> <p>In the 20th century the Cold War was played out through development projects, through modernization schemes, through dams, hydroelectric power, other ways in which the West, the U.S. in particular, and the Soviet Union tried to demonstrate their superiority. In the 19th century the Great Game was also not played out with armies, but rather with spies, with secret agents. And I think this is one of the ways in which they call it a game, because it was not a war per se, but these great powers were definitely competing with each other.</p> <p>But while the empires never warred directly with each other, they certainly did with the Afghans. The British fought three wars against the Afghans, and the Russians continually tested the strength of the Afghan border.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s easy to see the Afghans as victims.</p> <p>But perhaps, like a game of buzkashi, the issues are a bit more complicated. Afghan leaders also played the empires off of each other in order to secure their own spheres of power.</p> <p>Who exactly was the player and who was the pawn, who was playing from the sidelines and who was playing from the field?</p>

<p>I think the Afghans have always been aware of themselves as a great people in a small nation.</p> <p>Today, Afghanistan looks like this.</p> <p>But this is a country with a long cultural memory. And in that memory, Afghanistan looks more like this.</p> <p>And that&rsquo;s because of one man: Ahmad Shah Durrani.</p> <p>When the Persian emperor Nadir Shah expanded east and took Kandahar, Ahmad Shah Durrani was a charismatic young man. He joined the invading army, traveled with its campaigns into India, and quickly rose to become one of Nadir Shah&rsquo;s favorite commanders.</p> <p>When Nadir was assassinated in 1747, Ahmad Shah returned to Kandahar and declared the region independent from the Persians.</p> <p>He rallied the Pashtun tribes in the area and convinced them to join together in fighting outside powers instead of fighting each other. With new, massive armies, he captured Ghazni, then Kabul, then parts of Iran.</p> <p>As Ahmad Shah&rsquo;s power was rising, the Mughal&rsquo;s power in India was declining. To save themselves from an attack, the Mughals ceded land to Ahmad Shah.</p> <p>While the Mughals in India were weakening, other powers were starting to rise. The Marathas and the Sikhs were each making important gains, and the power struggle for northern India had begun.</p> <p>To hold onto his lands, Ahmad Shah Durrani had to do two things. First, he engaged the Marathas in the famous Battle of Panipat in 1761 &ndash; a battle that saw 100,000 Afghans fight 100,000 Marathas. Ahmad Shah&rsquo;s armies won, decisively, and returned home, victorious, to Kandahar. But the sweetness of victory would not last long. This time, the Sikhs were rising, taking the Punjab out from under the Afghans.</p> <p>So in this second attempt to hold onto his lands, Ahmad Shah crossed the Khyber Pass once again the following year. If he had exercised benevolence in previous campaigns, as some historians suggest, this time he unleashed nothing but wrath. He sacked the city of Lahore and killed thousands of Sikhs. In the holy city of Amritsar, he destroyed the Golden Temple and filled its pool with cow&rsquo;s blood.</p> <p>Ahmad Shah&rsquo;s empire was facing more and more challenges. The Sikhs continued to rise up, and in the north, other rebellions were also breaking out.</p> <p>The vast empire was beginning to weaken. After his death in 1772, it would disintegrate quickly.</p> <p>Despite its brevity, Ahmad Shah Durrani&rsquo;s reign was one of the most important in Afghanistan&rsquo;s history. Finally the region wasn&rsquo;t the edge of somebody else&rsquo;s larger empire. Now, it was its own empire, and its people were united under their own common identity. This was a dramatic change, and one that would remain significant into the 21st century. Now, the concept of Afghanistan&mdash;of an Afghan homeland&mdash;was beginning to emerge.</p> <p>The concept of homeland or <i>watan</i> is an important one in Afghanistan. One of the important ideological developments was to gain or transfer identification of homeland with tribe, tribal territory, to homeland with the nation state. And I think that there is a strong identification among Afghans, and not just Pashtuns, but all Afghans throughout the country, with Afghanistan as a single political entity, and with the idea of Afghanistan as their homeland.</p> <p>Afghanistan, as a concept, had been born.</p>

<p>The nation known today as Afghanistan did not really start to emerge until the 18th century. Prior to that, it was a loosely defined region, ruled by a series of empires that rose and fell throughout the centuries. These empires controlled vast territories, much larger than the nations that would eventually replace them. But ruling that amount of land required some compromises.</p> <p>Because the area was so vast and because the resources were spotty &amp;mdash that is some parts were very valuable and others were not so valuable, difficult of access, either deserts, mountains, steppes &amp;mdash what governments attempted to do was to rethink how should we rule such a place? And the way they did this is by what I call a &quot;Swiss cheese model of empire.&quot;</p> <p>That is to say, you ruled the places that were valuable and you provided services to their people, but you were more flexible about places that didn&rsquo;t justify the cost of administration.</p> <p>This meant that some parts of this region had a strong government presence while others did not. It was an empire, but it was an empire with many, many holes.</p> <p>In essence the urban areas, the irrigated agricultural areas, are the places that governments have always dominated. They&rsquo;ve always taxed. They&rsquo;ve always administered.</p> <p>Meanwhile, the people in the more remote regions, remained mostly autonomous, allowed to use their own tribal systems for governing themselves. But this freedom came at a price.</p> <p>There&rsquo;s a downside to being autonomous. The areas that are autonomous are usually very poor. So you can celebrate your freedom but you&rsquo;re living in poverty.</p> <p>But of course, these remote regions were not completely isolated from the more cosmopolitan centers of the empires. Some roads did pass through, sustaining rural people with at least a modest income.</p> <p>What we found is Silk Route caravans of quite ancient date passing through these territories bringing very, very high valuable goods. Not because they were going to necessarily sell them there. They weren&rsquo;t. But as long as they&rsquo;re passing through these people are bringing money, they&rsquo;re bringing ideas, they&rsquo;re bringing news. You might think about it as a large truck stop in Wyoming.</p> <p>And so the vastness of empire was continually bisected, and the different points within it were connected to each other, despite large areas that remained independent.</p> <p>In the 18th century all of this would have to change.</p> <p>Afghanistan would begin to emerge as a nation, the lines of its territory drawn in the sand. It would have to create a uniform national identity and all the holes would need to be connected.</p> <p>That project, and all of its challenges, would continue into the modern era.</p>

<p>With the collapse of the Timurid Empire in Central Asia and Iran, a native dynasty called the Safavids took power in Iran, and ruled the country for several centuries, up until the 18th century.</p> <p>It was another glorious time for art.</p> <p>New techniques, such as modeling, were introduced.</p> <p>And new subjects, like women and love, became popular.</p> <p>But as much as it was defined by love, it was also defined by hate. Specifically, the hatred that the Safavid ruler Ismael felt towards the Ottomans.</p> <p>Ismael Shah&rsquo;s army battled the Ottoman Empire to the West. The fighting led to the divided caliphs of Islam.</p> <p>What made it unique was the conversion of the population to the Shiite form of Islam.</p> <p>While the Ottoman world were orthodox Sunni, Ismael was Shiite. The people of his Safavid world were told to convert to the Shiite denomination&ndash;or face death.</p> <p>The heart of the Safavid Empire was in what is today Iran. The Hindu Kush region was on the very edge of the Safavid Empire.</p> <p>It was unclear how much influence the Safavids really had on Afghanistan&ndash;aside from one very important consequence: the end of Silk Roads trade.</p> <p>As the Silk Road had to go through Iran, and by converting to the Shiite form of Islam, the Safavids made enemies, both to the west, the Ottoman Empire, which was a bastion of Sunni orthodoxy.</p> <p>And also to the South, where land-based trade connected to seaports. Around the same time, another ruler was building an army that would become the great Indian Mughal Empire.</p> <p>And Central Asia and Afghanistan, which were also bastions of Sunni orthodoxy. So the struggles and conflicts back and forth between the Ottoman Empire, the Safavids in Iran, the Mughals in Afghanistan and India spelled the end of trade across Asia.</p> <p>This interruption in land-based trade probably had an influence on the rise of European and Chinese explorations of sea routes.</p> <p>But the Safavid reign would not last forever. In the 18th century, the Pashtuns would wrestle control of the region, and turn it from a buffer zone to a national homeland.</p>

<p>One way to understand literature is to look at the courts that produced it.</p> <p>One of the first courts that spawned a golden age in Persian literature occurred during the reign of the Samanids, in their twin capitals of Samarkand and Bukhara. And many of the court poets came from Balkh, in today&rsquo;s Afghanistan.</p> <p>Their pinnacle poets were Rudaki and Dakaki. But before them and around them, we know there were many others. We don&rsquo;t just have the stars but, of course, you have many other poets. And, to show this fluidity of borders and fluidity of culture, we see that many of the poets up in Bukhara come from Balkh, actually. So we have Abu Shakur of Balkh, Shahid of Balkh, and a woman named Rabia of Balkh.</p> <p>The role of the poet in the Persian Court was to praise the king, but also to guide him because remember a king had tyrannical powers. He could kill anyone he wanted. His command was the law. [...] So the role of the court here and the role of the poet also is to guide the king and keep him just.</p> <p>And so in the poems where they&rsquo;re praising him, what are they praising? They are praising, &ldquo;Oh, you are so kind. Oh, you are so just. Oh, you are so generous. No one has ever seen such a just and generous and kind and merciful king as you.&rdquo; So it was not just flattery. This is trying to guide them to proper behavior.</p> <p>One of the most brilliant examples of the important role of the poet in guiding the king happens in the Samanid court of Bukhara. This is one of the most glorious courts of Persian culture and literature.</p> <p>The king took his whole army throughout his lands down to Herat, and was having fun for a year. The whole army was there for a year. Another year goes by and they&rsquo;re still away from home and down in Herat, and they go hunting and they go fighting and they keep the peace of their land. And then a third year goes by and they start to grumble and springtime is coming and the heat of summer, and then another winter is coming. And four years have gone by, and they really want to go home.&nbsp;And so they go to Rudaki, the poet and then the chief poet of the Samanid Court and said, &ldquo;Please do something. Please get to him and we&rsquo;ll pay you lots of money to get us home.&rdquo;</p> <p>After breakfast one time Rudaki comes into the presence of the king and the musicians are playing and entertaining the king. It&rsquo;s a very soft, quiet morning and the poet walks in and the king nods to him, and he begins his song as a love song and he talks about the river that&rsquo;s back at home.</p> <p>Rudaki begins his poem talking about the fragrance of the river, and what&rsquo;s beautiful about the opening of the poem is that the three syllables of the three most important words rhyme. So you have &ldquo;bou&rdquo;, which is fragrance and &ldquo;drou&rdquo; which is river, and muliyan is the river. So he says, &ldquo;bou and drou and muliyan, [PH] ayad hami,&rdquo; and this ending of &ldquo;ayad hami&rdquo; means it comes on forever. It&rsquo;s always coming toward you.</p> <p>Then he goes on, &ldquo;Our friends are there and the memory of our friends is always with us and coming toward us.&rdquo; And then he says, &ldquo;Oh, Bukhara.&rdquo; The name of the home where they want to go, right. &ldquo;Oh, Bukhara, be happy. Your king is coming home. Oh, Bukhara, be happy. The moon is coming back to the heavens. Oh, Bukhara, you are such a beautiful garden. The beautiful cypress is coming back to its garden.&rdquo;</p> <p>With these images of beauty and the river and the silken sands of the Oxus calling him, it is so effective that by the end of the poem, the king jumps up without his riding boots on and jumps on his horse and starts running before the people can take down the tents and close up camp. By the time they get back to Bukhara, Rudaki is a very rich man.</p> <p>Samanid court poetry was so popular&mdash;and continues to be so&mdash;because it speaks to all the emotions that everyone feels. But the poets used this opportunity to impart philosophical lessons as well.</p> <p>There are emotional moments followed by moral and didactic sayings by the poet that see you shouldn&rsquo;t do this. See what happens when injustice rules the world. See what happens when love is not brought together.</p> <p>Some may think of poetry as the domain of dreamers, but in Central Asia, poetry has power.</p>

<p>A piece of silk adorned the hair of a mummified Egyptian. She was a noble woman who lived some 3,000 years ago.</p> <p>Silk had its secrets. It&rsquo;s believed that no one outside of China knew how to create silk. Did the silk come from China? How did it get to Africa?</p> <p>Archaeologists, historians, and linguists believe that humans on the vast Eurasian continent had traded for millennia, but little is known about their connections. &nbsp;For the first time, around the third century BCE, significant historical evidence showed that there was an intercontinental highway that linked the Roman, Persian, and Chinese empires&mdash;and by extension throughout the Mediterranean and into Africa. Soldiers, traders and monks&mdash;along with their goods and ideas&mdash;passed through deserts, plains, and the mighty Hindu Kush mountain passes.</p> <p>Although there had been trade before the 2nd century BCE, the Silk Road trade really originated in that time period. &nbsp;</p> <p>And these road would flourish because of a particular interest the Chinese began to develop in other parts of the world. &nbsp;</p> <p>It originated as a result of the travels of a Chinese ambassador to central Asia who brought back reports of spectacular horses in central Asia, one of the few products that the Chinese needed while simultaneously providing silk to the central Asian rulers.</p> <p>But the Silk Road trade was not just for Emperors and Shahs.</p> <p>The Silk Road trade is somewhat of a misnomer because there were lots of other products that were sent across Eurasia, one of them being Roman glass around the 3rd century BCE. &nbsp;</p> <p>Silver artifacts from Iran were also part of the trade that went back and forth. Herbs, spices, the idea of the grape and the walnut, all of those came from Iran to China.</p> <p>But these routes were for more than just the simple exchange of goods. &nbsp;</p> <p>Nobody absolutely needed silk or glass or anything of the sort. Much more important was the Silk Road brought cultures in touch with each other and resulted in a great deal of cultural and artistic diffusion. &nbsp;</p> <p>To understand society and prosperity in Central Asia, one could look to the great cities at either end of the trade routes. &nbsp;</p> <p>For the Silk Road trade to be sustained, there were two major civilizations that had to be at their height: China and Persia. If either one of those civilizations declined, then the Silk Road trade dwindled in large part because the two civilizations could protect the caravans as they were going across Asia.</p> <p>The Silk Road trade could also not have survived without the intermediaries, people in central Asia and Afghanistan who transported the goods, who acted as brokers for these products, and who knew the routes across these treacherous domains. Some of the most daunting desserts in the world had to be traversed. Some of the loftiest mountains in the world had to be traversed. It was precisely the nomadic pastoral peoples and the settled peoples of Afghanistan in central Asia who knew those routes and who facilitated travels across Eurasia. &nbsp;</p> <p>Throughout the centuries, travelers created a web of caravan tracks through the Eurasian continent, weaving together different traditions to form a rich tapestry across the Hindu Kush region.</p>

<p>After Alexander the Great&rsquo;s demise, there was an epic power struggle over Alexander&rsquo;s dominion. Seleucus, a brilliant but pitiless military general, exerted control over the massive Eastern portion of Alexander&rsquo;s territory. The empire he founded became known as the Seleucid empire.</p> <p>Throughout Seleucid reign,&nbsp;Persian culture continued to mingle with Greek traditions.&nbsp;</p> <p>The Seleucid culture&nbsp;had an impact on Afghanistan.&nbsp;They did play a role in reinforcing Iranian culture in the country.</p> <p>The Greek historian Strabo wrote an encyclopedia called&nbsp;<em>Geographica</em>, which suggested Seleucusused his Eastern assets to conquer lands Westward.</p> <p>Strabo wrote: &ldquo;Alexander [...] established &hellip; settlements of his own [in the Indus Valley], but Seleucus&nbsp;gave them [away]&nbsp;in consequence of a marriage contract, and received in return 500 elephants.</p> <p>The story goes that Seleucus offered a young Indian king the hand of his own daughter in marriage.&nbsp;In return the Indian king gave Seleucus 500 elephants from his reported 9,000-strong elephant army.The 500 elephants later went on to win a critical battle for the Seleucid Empire&nbsp;that eventually allowed them to capture lands that include what is now Turkey, through the Middle East, and beyond.</p> <p>Just as Alexander&rsquo;s army had conquered vast lands from Macedonia, east to Central Asia, Seleucus and his descendents swept his armies from what is today Afghanistan&nbsp;back towards the west and clear to the Aegean Sea.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Although the land of Afghanistan can be harsh &ndash; for farmers, herders, travelers, and conquerors alike &ndash; in many ways Afghanistan is in a fortuitous location.</p> <p>If we look at a map of Afghanistan one of the things that&rsquo;s most striking about the country is the central mountain region which consists of quite a number of mountain ranges. But the predominant one is the Hindu Kush.</p> <p>And it really sets the parameters for Afghanistan because the snowfall, the snow pack, of the Hindu Kush is what provides irrigation water and river water and sets the geographical parameters of the country.</p> <p>Most of the trade routes went through Afghanistan. That&rsquo;s what made it important rather than any specific item derived from Afghanistan [&hellip;]<br /> The trade routes in Afghanistan were based in part on topography [...] but it&rsquo;s also based upon water. The rivers of Afghanistan were the locations of the major oases, and towns, and settlements, and many trade routes would follow that pattern of rivers.<br /> The four major cities or regions of Afghanistan [&hellip;] are located in the specific areas where they&rsquo;re found because the Hindu Kush dominates the central part of the country.</p> <p>The important thing about mountains to realize is that the people who live there may be isolated politically and economically but because they lie in a transit region what we find is that they are exposed to new ideas, to trade, to political connections that in other parts of the world they might not encounter. And this is not because the regions themselves are particularly important but because the routes through them are particularly important.<br /> So [&hellip;] particularly through Central Afghanistan and Bamyan or in the Pamirs what we found is Silk Route caravans of quite ancient date passing through these territories bringing very, very high valuable goods.</p> <p>Not because they were going to necessarily sell them there. They weren&rsquo;t. But as long as they&rsquo;re passing through these people are bringing money, they&rsquo;re bringing ideas, they&rsquo;re bringing news.</p> <p>For example, the famous Khyber Pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan - which has been the path of migrations, trade, and armies for centuries - remains an important route through the region even today.Although the land of Afghanistan can be harsh &ndash; for farmers, herders, travelers, and conquerors alike &ndash; in many ways Afghanistan is in a fortuitous location.</p> <p>If we look at a map of Afghanistan one of the things that&rsquo;s most striking about the country is the central mountain region which consists of quite a number of mountain ranges. But the predominant one is the Hindu Kush.</p> <p>And it really sets the parameters for Afghanistan because the snowfall, the snow pack, of the Hindu Kush is what provides irrigation water and river water and sets the geographical parameters of the country.</p> <p>Most of the trade routes went through Afghanistan. That&rsquo;s what made it important rather than any specific item derived from Afghanistan [&hellip;]<br /> The trade routes in Afghanistan were based in part on topography [...] but it&rsquo;s also based upon water. The rivers of Afghanistan were the locations of the major oases, and towns, and settlements, and many trade routes would follow that pattern of rivers.</p> <p>The four major cities or regions of Afghanistan [&hellip;] are located in the specific areas where they&rsquo;re found because the Hindu Kush dominates the central part of the country.</p> <p>The important thing about mountains to realize is that the people who live there may be isolated politically and economically but because they lie in a transit region what we find is that they are exposed to new ideas, to trade, to political connections that in other parts of the world they might not encounter. And this is not because the regions themselves are particularly important but because the routes through them are particularly important.<br /> So [&hellip;] particularly through Central Afghanistan and Bamyan or in the Pamirs what we found is Silk Route caravans of quite ancient date passing through these territories bringing very, very high valuable goods.</p> <p>Not because they were going to necessarily sell them there. They weren&rsquo;t. But as long as they&rsquo;re passing through these people are bringing money, they&rsquo;re bringing ideas, they&rsquo;re bringing news.</p> <p>For example, the famous Khyber Pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan - which has been the path of migrations, trade, and armies for centuries - remains an important route through the region even today.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Walls may seem simple, but actually they are an indication of a complex society. They demarcate not only space, property, and people, but also important concepts &ndash; like the difference between what is &ldquo;inside&rdquo; and what is &ldquo;outside&rdquo;; and who is one of &ldquo;us&rdquo; and who is one of &ldquo;them.&rdquo;</p> <p>As social groups form and settle, they design new ways to live together.<br /> <br /> Human structures serve a variety of purposes. They are often built to keep things out &ndash; for example, as shelter from the elements or protection from attackers. The site on which they are built is also often chosen to be close to water or other valuable resources, and in a strategic setting that can be defended from others outside the community.</p> <p>The qala was one of the earliest kinds of settlement patterns in what we now think of as Afghanistan. It was a series of attached houses with a wall surrounding these houses.</p> <p>The qala settlement pattern developed uniquely in Afghanistan because of the tensions between nomadic cultures and the sedentary. The sedentary needed the protection of the walls around the qala.&nbsp;It looks like a fortress from the outside but when you look on the inside it may have a couple of dozen families living inside the qala. So effectively it&rsquo;s a village but it&rsquo;s in one large structure.</p> <p>This is unique from other settlement patterns, in which farmhouses are built outside a village, and the villages are built outside a larger central town. In the qala, the structures of the house, village, and town would all exist inside one walled site. In this way, qala settlements can keep important things protected inside - like families and workshops.</p> <p>This type of walled structure can still be seen today, although on a much smaller scale. Similarly, houses in Afghanistan often have walls surrounding a central courtyard.</p> <p>Houses change. We know from archeology however, that the courtyard house was a very popular form throughout this entire region. It provided privacy; it provided shade; it was multi-functional. And we actually have evidence of houses going back quite far through excavations, certainly to many, many millennia B.C.</p> <p>The courtyard house traditionally is centered around a courtyard in the middle with rooms often on two sides, sometimes on four sides, to take advantage of the position of the sun. So when the sun is strong, you can go into the shade. When the sun is weak, as in the winter, the sun will penetrate into the ends of the courtyard and warm the rooms. You have communal activities like cooking often in the courtyard, and you have individual rooms for sleeping and other activities.<br /> <br /> From the street you often don&rsquo;t have any idea of what&rsquo;s inside the house. The street is anonymous, the street is blockaded. You have usually a single entrance, often separating then into men&rsquo;s and women&rsquo;s quarters, or certainly public and private quarters.<br /> <br /> You would have had a public room for entertaining, and then smaller, more private rooms, often on the other side of the courtyard for personal and private life.</p> <p>This style of architecture may seem to hide a lot, but it is actually an inviting portal into a way of living that has existed for millennia.</p>

<p>The natural environment has always shaped human lives and societies. So, too, did humans shape the natural environment.<br /> <br /> In the Hindu Kush, one ancient invention changed the landscape forever. It was so effective that the idea spread throughout the region, and perhaps as far as the Americas centuries later.</p> <p>Most of the land in the Hindu Kush is not suitable for farming. Water is a constant and vigorous demand of a thirsty landscape trying to produce crops. Early settlers in the region figured out how to quench that thirst.</p> <p>The qanat were irrigation canals that brought water down from the mountains to the agricultural settlements that were founded in Afghanistan.</p> <p>We don&rsquo;t know exactly when the idea of qanat developed, but it must have been very early because there is a need for irrigation in most regions of Afghanistan.&nbsp;And this is a style of irrigation, a type of irrigation, particularly characteristic of Central Asia and particularly in parts of Southern and Western Afghanistan. It&rsquo;s very, very common.</p> <p>The qanat system is a unique form of irrigation in which the irrigation channels, the main ones, are actually under ground. And what they do is they dig a tunnel from the area that you want to irrigate at a shallow angle all the way up to the water table at the foothills of the mountains.</p> <p>In order to do this you need to sink shafts that look like wells, maybe every hundred meters, sometimes less so that you can pull the soil out and so you can get in and clean it.</p> <p>But what it means is that when you&rsquo;re finished you essentially have an irrigation channel that&rsquo;s tapping underground water and bringing it underground to a valley. That&rsquo;s a way to irrigate areas that have no surface water, the lack of rivers or streams.</p> <p>They&rsquo;re quite distinctive, particularly from the air. You just see these long lines of what look to be like well holes you know prairie dog holes you know crossing the landscape.</p> <p>But the capital investment as you might imagine is quite large. Also technically this is not an easy thing to do. The angle has to be right. You have to have specialists that know how to do it and you also have to have usually someone who puts up the money to have it dug in the first place.</p> <p>And then you have to have it pretty much constantly maintained over time.</p> <p>But the investment has its pay-offs.</p> <p>Afghanistan has a very demanding environment. Only about 12% of the land is cultivable. And so of that amount, even of that 12%, only 20% is dry farming; the other 80% requires water through the irrigated agriculture and qanat system.</p> <p>Just as water has flowed through the qanats, the concept, too, flowed from one people to another. Throughout history other farmers of parched lands also adopted the method.</p> <p>It appears likely that a similar development occurred in Northwest China, what is now Xinjiang, where you have the so-called kariz, which are similar to the qanat, and probably the qanat did influence the development of the kariz in Northwestern China. There is also some feeling that the qanat influenced irrigation patterns in Central Asia&ndash;that is still undetermined&ndash;but it&rsquo;s certainly possible.</p> <p>Others like it spread throughout the Hindu Kush region&ndash;and beyond to the East and West. Eventually, with Arab conquests and Spanish colonization, a descendant of the qanat found its way to the Americas.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>But just as humans have created this life-nourishing invention, so too, have humans found a way to destroy it. There have been recent reports that combatants have used the qanat tunnels as passage ways and for storage. Other reports claim that several have been destroyed due to armed conflict. Newer technologies, such as the water pump and large-scale dams, have found their way to Afghanistan in the last century, but with mixed success.</p> <p>It&rsquo;s unclear whether the ancient ways or new technology will win out. But just as the agricultural lands are parched, so, too, are the people in those places thirsty for solutions.</p>