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The Afghans have a 2500 year tradition of strongly distrusting --and fighting--armed outsiders.
The Afghans have a 2500 year tradition of strongly distrusting --and fighting--armed outsiders.
Since 1978, Afghanistan has experienced an unprecedented demographic catastrophe, with millions killed, wounded, or displaced. The Soviet invasion and occupation slaughtered 1,750,000 Afghans (from a range of 1.5-2 million killed).<ref>“Communism in Afghanistan,” in Stephane Courtois, ed., The Black Book of Communism,
(Harvard University Press, 1999), p725</ref><ref>http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm#Afghanistan</ref> This is surely conservative when one considers all those killed by the Afghan Communists from 1978-92. The subsequent civil wars (89-92 and 92-96) resulted in the deaths of another 400,000 Afghans (according to the Christian Science Monitor), with at least 50,000 killed in Kabul alone.<ref>http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat2.htm#Afghanistan</ref> The Taliban seized power in 1996, and subsequently slaughtered hundreds of thousands. According to UNICEF figures, in 5 years of Taliban rule, over 600,000 Afghans died just from Taliban restrictions on access to healthcare for women (120,000 per year).<ref>New York Times, February 1, 2002/ref> The Taliban also executed tens of thousands throughout the country, and caused potentially scores of thousands of deaths through refusal to allow foreign aid and through miscellaneous "excess deaths". In all, the Taliban was likely responsible for over 750,000 deaths (150,000 per year) on top of nearly half a million in the civil war. The turmoil in Afghanistan from 1978-2001 killed nearly 3,000,000 Afghans, with 5,000,000 displaced.
==People==
==People==
Afghanistan's ethnically and linguistically mixed population reflects its location astride historic trade and invasion routes leading from Central Asia into South and Southwest Asia. While population data is somewhat unreliable for Afghanistan, Pashtuns make up the largest ethnic group at 38-44% of the population, followed by Tajiks (25%), Hazaras (10%), Uzbek (6-8%), Aimaq, Turkmen, Baluch, and other small groups. Dari (Afghan Farsi) and Pashto are official languages. Dari is spoken by more than one-third of the population as a first language and serves as a lingua franca for most Afghans, though Pashto is spoken throughout the Pashtun areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan. Tajik and Turkic languages are spoken widely in the north. Smaller groups throughout the country also speak more than 70 other languages and numerous dialects.
Afghanistan's ethnically and linguistically mixed population reflects its location astride historic trade and invasion routes leading from Central Asia into South and Southwest Asia. While population data is somewhat unreliable for Afghanistan, Pashtuns make up the largest ethnic group at 38-44% of the population, followed by Tajiks (25%), Hazaras (10%), Uzbek (6-8%), Aimaq, Turkmen, Baluch, and other small groups. Dari (Afghan Farsi) and Pashto are official languages. Dari is spoken by more than one-third of the population as a first language and serves as a lingua franca for most Afghans, though Pashto is spoken throughout the Pashtun areas of eastern and southern Afghanistan. Tajik and Turkic languages are spoken widely in the north. Smaller groups throughout the country also speak more than 70 other languages and numerous dialects.