ISLAMIC STATE OF AFGHANISTAN

Official name: Dowlat-e Eslami-ye Afghanestan (Islamic State of Afghanistan) Location: Central Asia International organisations: Non-Aligned Movement, The Organisation of Islamic Conference, The United Nations Borders: China, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan Coastline: None Land area: 647,500 Km2 Population: 28,500,000 (estimate) Ethnicity: Pashtun 42%, Tajik 27%, Hazara 9%, Uzbek 9%, Aimak 4%, Turkmen 3%, Baluchi 2%, others 4%.

Languages: Pashtu is the official language but is the first language of only 35% of the population. Dari, an Iranian language, is spoken by 50%, and Turkic languages such as Uzbek and Turkmen by 11%. Many other languages such as Baluchi are spoken.
Religion: Sunni Muslim (the state religion), 80%, Shi'a Muslim 19%
Form of government: Presidential republic. Afghanistan is divided into 34 provinces.
Capital: Kabul
Constitution: The new Constitution of Afghanistan was signed on 16 January 2004.
Head of state: The President, elected for a five-year term by universal suffrage. President Hamid Karzai took office on 7 December 2004. He had been interim President since 22 December 2001.
Head of government: The President appoints the Cabinet.
Legislature: None currently functioning. Under the new constitution, there will be a bicameral National Assembly consisting of the House of the People (Wolesi Jirga), with up to 250 members directly elected for five-year terms, and the House of Elders (Meshrano Jirga), composed of one representative from each provincial council, one representative from each district council, and a number of presidential appointees, of whom half must be women.
Electoral authority: The Joint Election Management Board runs elections.
Freedom House 2005 rating: Political Rights 5, Civil Liberties 6

Political history

Afghanistan (which means "Land of the Turbulent") in Persian, was under the nominal authority of the Shah of Persia until 1747, when Ahmad Shah Durrani, a Pashtun warlord, established an emirate at Kabul which became the Kingdom of Afghanistan. During the 19th century there was a series of wars with the British Empire, but Afghanistan proved difficult to consquer and anyway the British prefered it to remain an independent buffer state between India and Russia.

King Amanullah (1919-29) tried to modernise Afgfhanistan on the lines of Ataturk's Turkey, but the forces of conseravtism proved too strong. Under his successors there was little change until 1946, when King Mohammad Zahir Shah began limited political reforms. leading to Afghanistan's first constitution in 1964. These reforms were reasonably successful, but in 1973 an ambitious relative, Mohammed Daoud Khan, seized power in a military coup and declared a republic. He in turn was overthrown by a faction of pro-Soviet Communists in 1979, althoygh it is not clear whether the Soviets encouraged this. When Afghanistan's conseravtive regional warlords rebelled against the Communist regime in Kabul, the regime appealed for Soviet aid, and this led to ten years of bitter warfare. The US, China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia funded and armed the Islamic resistance for a variety of motives. Many figures who later became well-known, such as Osama bin Laden, received their military training in Afghanistan. In 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev pulled the Soviet forces out, and in 1992 the Communist regime collapsed.

Attempts to establish a stable regime in place of the Communists soon failed, and the country lapsed into civil war. In 1998 the Taleban, a militant Islamist movement, seized power and established a theocratic regime. This regime soon aroused armed opposition, mainly in the Turkic-speaking north, but received crucial support from Pakistan, and also some international support for its suppression of the drug trade.

The Taleban allowed Osama and other terrorist leaders to base themselves in Afghanistan, and after the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, the US government demanded that Afghanistan hand Osama, the main suspect, over to them. When the Taleban refused, the US invaded the country with the assistance of the anti-Taleban Northern Alliance, which captured Kabul in November.

Since 2001 Afghanistan has been occupied by the US and a coalition of allies. The former King Mohammad Zahir Shah returned and presided over a Loya Jirga (Grand Council) in June 2002. The Loya Jirga elected Hamid Karzai as president for a two-year transitional period. Presidential elections, the first in Afghan history, were held in October 2004, and legislative elections were held in October 2005.

Afghani politics are essentially regional and ethnic, and while there are dozens of political parties, most of them are really the personal followings of various tribal or military leafers. There is a variety of Islamist and Communist groupings but they have little real following. The National Islamic Movement of Afghanistan (Jumbish-i-Milli Islami Afghanistan) represents the Uzbek minority.