Afghanistanافغانستان

The land that is now Afghanistan sat on the eastern edge of the Persian world. Bactria in the north and Arachosia around Kandahar were Achaemenid provinces; Alexander the Great passed through in the 320s BCE, and his successors left a Greek city at Ai-Khanoum on the Oxus with a theatre and gymnasium. The Kushan empire of the first to third centuries CE linked Central Asia and India and sponsored Gandharan Buddhist art, which blended Greek sculpture with Buddhist subjects.

Islam arrived gradually from the seventh century. The Ghaznavid sultans (977–1186), ruling from Ghazni, raided deep into India and patronised Persian poets such as Ferdowsi; the Ghurids who followed left the 65-metre Minaret of Jam in a remote valley. Genghis Khan's armies devastated the region in the 1220s. Under Timur's descendants in the fifteenth century, Herat became one of the great cultural capitals of the Persian world.

The modern state dates from 1747, when Ahmad Shah Durrani, a Pashtun commander, founded an empire from Kandahar. In the nineteenth century Afghanistan became the buffer in the 'Great Game' between Britain and Russia; three Anglo-Afghan wars followed, and the 1893 Durand Line split Pashtun lands with British India — a border Afghanistan has never formally accepted. Full independence came in 1919.

King Zahir Shah's long reign (1933–1973) was a period of relative calm, when Kabul was a stop on the overland 'hippie trail'. A coup in 1973, a communist takeover in 1978 and the Soviet invasion of 1979 began more than forty years of war: the mujahideen struggle, civil war after 1992, the first Taliban government from 1996, the US-led intervention after September 2001, and the Taliban's return in August 2021.

Afghanistan has no majority ethnic group. Pashtuns, concentrated in the south and east and across the border in Pakistan, have dominated politics since 1747 and form the Taliban's core. Tajiks, Persian-speaking, live in the north-east, the west around Herat and in Kabul. Hazaras, many of them Shia, live in the central highlands and have faced persecution under several governments. Uzbeks and Turkmen live in the north, and smaller groups include Aimaq, Baluch, Nuristanis and Pashai.

Dari, the Afghan form of Persian, is the common language of trade and government, and Pashto the other official language. Most Afghans are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school; Shia Muslims, mostly Hazara, are perhaps a tenth or more; Ismailis live in Badakhshan and Baghlan. Small Sikh and Hindu communities, once prominent in Kabul's trade, have almost all left, and the country's last known Jewish resident departed in 2021.

Village life is organised around the extended family, the local mosque and elders' councils (jirga or shura). Pashtun customary law, pashtunwali, stresses hospitality, honour and revenge. Decades of war and displacement have scattered families across Iran, Pakistan, the Gulf and Europe, and millions of returnees forced back from Iran and Pakistan since 2023 have strained towns with few jobs.

The two giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, carved into a cliff in the sixth century, stood 55 and 38 metres high until the first Taliban government blew them up in March 2001. The cliff's caves still hold traces of painted Buddhist sanctuaries. Bamiyan's valley, with its fortresses and the lakes of Band-e Amir nearby, is on UNESCO's World Heritage list — and on its list of sites in danger.

The Minaret of Jam, built in the late twelfth century in a narrow gorge in Ghor, is covered in Kufic inscriptions and geometric brickwork; it is threatened by river erosion. Herat's old city holds the Friday Mosque with its tile work, the citadel, and the fifteenth-century Musalla minarets associated with Timur's descendants, several of which have fallen over the last century.

In the 1970s archaeologists at Tillya Tepe found the 'Bactrian Gold', about 20,000 gold ornaments from nomad graves of the first century BCE. Hidden by museum staff during the wars, the hoard reappeared in 2003 and has toured the world. Much of the rest of the National Museum's collection was looted in the 1990s, and some statues were smashed in 2001.

Since August 2021 Afghanistan has been ruled by the Taliban's 'Islamic Emirate', led by the reclusive Hibatullah Akhundzada from Kandahar. Western governments do not recognise it; Russia became the first state to do so in July 2025, and China, Pakistan, Iran, Central Asian states and Gulf countries deal with it pragmatically. Western embassies closed, and aid was cut, which pushed millions into hunger.

The authorities have barred girls from secondary school and women from universities, most workplaces, parks, gyms and long-distance travel without a male guardian; a 2024 law on 'the promotion of virtue and prevention of vice' codified rules on dress, music and behaviour. Opium poppy cultivation fell steeply after a 2022 ban. Security is tighter than during the war, but ISKP bombings continue, and foreigners — including tourists — have been detained and, in 2024, killed in an attack in Bamiyan.

Pressure from outside has grown: Iran and Pakistan deported millions of Afghans in 2023–25, earthquakes struck Herat in 2023 and Kunar in 2025, and fighting with Pakistan along the border in October 2025 closed the main crossings for long periods (check). For a reader this is the context of every news story; for a would-be traveller it is why every government's advice sits at its highest level.