Afghanistan's place in the world

I am done reading through your essays. In my second reading, I will formally evaluate your work, and then pass along my comments to you—individually, of course.

Through your work, you have identified how much of an interesting, and important, location Afghanistan has—now and in history. This is a country with a rich history, and a complex one too, and its modern story is even more complicated.

If we look at it from a physical geography perspective, the Indian Subcontinent is bordered by huge mountains all around. Well, this is no surprise given our understanding that this landmass is still on the move, pushing itself against the larger landmass, which is also why the Himalayas continues to grow at a little over two inches a year!

Afghanistan is on the other side of these mountains. From a crude sketch of the physical geography, we can then make an observation that this is a country that does belong more with Iran and the rest of Southwest Asia.

Southwest Asia is mostly Islamic, which is also the religion that pretty much all of Afghanistan practices. This too then adds to the argument that perhaps Afghanistan belongs to the Southwest Asian group, and not to South Asia. It is not that South Asia does not have Muslims; the country with the second largest Muslim population in the world is India. (Do you know which country has the largest number of Muslims? Need a hint? It is NOT in Southwest Asia!) South Asia has a dominant Hindu population, and there are other significant religious groups as well—Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, ….

On the other hand, Afghanistan has a long history with the Indian Subcontinent. While the Subcontinent was the jewel in the British Empire, Afghanistan fiercely resisted any occupation. (Later the Soviet Union also found that Afghanistan was no pushover. These two experiences were why many policy analysts were not too keen on America and NATO occupying Afghanistan for too long.) If not for the fiercely independent Afghans, the British Empire would have extended even further.

Going back some more in time, it was through the Khyber Pass that Central Asian warriors reached India, and then established the Mughal Dynasty. And even further back, before the advent of Islam, Buddhism played a major role even well into Afghanistan. As a couple of you pointed out, it was not any freakish accident that there were those giant Buddha statues in Afghanistan that later the Taliban blew up.

Retracing the historical path, we have ample evidence of a great deal of interaction between erstwhile kingdoms in Afghanistan and India.

It is, therefore, a tough call to make on whether Afghanistan is in Southwest Asia or in South Asia. It is not merely a matter of semantics—such a classification shapes our understanding of not only Afghanistan itself, but of those regions too.

As long as you have examined both the arguments, I don’t care whether you decided that Afghanistan is in South Asia, or Southwest Asia, or neither.

One student wondered as an aside whether Afghanistan belongs to neither group, but to Central Asia. I would think that be a difficult argument to make. Afghanistan has way, way, more in common with SW or S Asia, compared to Central Asia. But, yes, we do have to note the presence of Central Asian ethnicities in Afghanistan. If you have seen the movie, The Kite Runner, you might recall that the friend of the protagonist is made fun of by the bullies because of his Mongol features/ethnicity.

Any comments? Rejoinders?