AFGHANISTAN

PINKY MARIEL G. MANGAYA

Discussant
Afghanistan: A Country of Diverse People and
Culture. Afghanistan is a landlocked Islamic
country of 251,825 square miles with a
strategic location in the heart of Asia,
surrounded by the six countries of Pakistan,
Tajikistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,
and China. To the south and west,
Afghanistan shares borders with Iran and to
the south and east, it is bounded by Pakistan
along the longest border with Afghanistan. To
the north, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and
Tajikistan have common borders with
Afghanistan, and in the far northeast, China is
another neighbor of Afghanistan with the
shortest common land border.
vertical tricolor with the classical National
Emblem in the center. The current flag was adopted
on August 19, 2013, but many similar designs had
been in use throughout most of the 20th century.
Afghanistan had 25 different flags since the first
flag when the Hotaki dynasty was established in
1709. During the 20th century alone, Afghanistan
went through 18 different national flags, more than
any other country during that time period, and
most of them had the colors black, red, and green
on them.

The black color represents its troubled 19th century

history as a protected state, the red color
represents the blood of those who fought for
independence (specifically, the Anglo-Afghan Treaty
of 1919), and the green represents hope and
prosperity for the future. Some have alternatively
interpreted the black to represent history, the red
to represent progress, and the green to represent
either agricultural prosperity or Islam.

The tricolor was supposedly inspired by the Afghan

King, Amanullah Khan, when visiting Europe with
his wife in 1928. The original horizontal tricolor
design was based on that of the flag of Germany.
The center of the flag contains the Emblem of
Afghanistan. Almost every national flag since 1928
has had the emblem in the center. Almost every
emblem has had a mosque in it, which first
appeared in 1901, and wheat, first appearing in
1928.
BRIEF COUNTRY HISTORY
o Afghanistan as a state began in 1747 with its establishment
by Ahmad Shah Durrani. The written recorded history of the
land presently constituting Afghanistan can be traced back to
around 500 BCE when the area was under the Achaemenid
Empire, although evidence indicates that an advanced degree
of urbanized culture has existed in the land since between
3000 and 2000 BCE. Bactria dates back to 2500 BCE.
o The Indus Valley Civilisation stretched up to large parts of
Afghanistan in the north. Alexander the Great and
his Macedonian army arrived at what is now Afghanistan in
330 BCE after the fall of the Achmaemenid Empire during
the Battle of Gaugamela. Since then, many empires have risen
from Afghanistan, including the Mauryan Empire,Greco
Bactrians, Kushans, Hephthalites, Saffarids, Samanids, Ghazna
vids, Ghurids, Khaljis, Timurids, Mughals, Hotakis and Durranis.
o Afghanistan (meaning "land of the
Afghans") has been a strategically important
location throughout history. The land served
as "a gateway to India, impinging on the
ancient Silk Road, which carried trade from
the Mediterranean to China". Sitting on many
trade and migration routes, Afghanistan may
be called the 'Central
Asian roundabout' since routes converge
from the Middle East, from the Indus
Valley through the passes over the Hindu
Kush, from the Far East via the Tarim Basin,
and from the adjacent Eurasian Steppe.
o Afghanistan is
an Islamic
republic consisting
of three branches of
power (executive,
legislative, and
judiciary) overseen
by checks and
balances. The
country is led by
President Ashraf
Ghani, who replaced
Hamid Karzai in
2014.
EXISTING ETHNIC GROUPS
IN THE COUNTRY
Ethnic Groups Share Population
Pashtun (Pashto) 42%
Tajik 27%
Uzbek 9%
Hazara 8%
Aimaq 4%
Turkmen 3%
Balochi (Baluch) 2%
Other Groups 5%
EXISTING LANGUAGES IN THE
COUNTRY
 Afghanistanis a multilingual country in
which two languages – Dari and Pashto
 – are both official and most widely
spoken.

 Dariis the official name of the 

Persian language in Afghanistan. It is
often referred to as the Afghan
Persian. Although still widely known
as Farsi ("Persian") to its native
speakers, the name was officially
 Both Persian and Pashto are Indo-European
languages from the Iranian languages sub-
family. Other regional languages, such
as Uzbek, Turkmen, Balochi, Pashayi and Nuris
tani, are spoken by minority groups across the
country.
 Minor languages include Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi,
Ashkunu, Kamkata-viri, Vasi-
vari, Tregami and Kalasha-
ala, Pamiri (Shughni, Munji, Ishkashimi and Wa
khi), Brahui, Arabic, Qizilbash, Aimaq, and
Pashai and Kyrgyz. Linguist Harald
Haarmann believes that Afghanistan is home
to more than 40 minor languages, with
around 200 different dialects.
 Spoken Languages in Afghanistan
2018
Language

Dari 77%
Pashto 48%
Uzbek 11%
Turkmen 3%
Balochi 1%
Pashayi 1%
Nuristani 1%
Arabic 1%
English 6%
Urdu 3%
LANGUAGE PLANNING AND
LANGUAGE POLICY
 The official languages of the country are Dari
and Pashto, as established by the 1964
Constitution of Afghanistan. Dari is the most
widely spoken language of
Afghanistan's official languages and acts as
a lingua franca for the country. In 1980,
other regional languages were granted official
status in the regions where they are the
language of the majority. This policy was
codified in the 2004 Afghan Constitution, which
established Uzbek, Turkmen, Balochi, Pashayi,
Nuristani and Pamiri as a third official language
in areas where they are spoken by a majority
of the population.
LANGUAGE OF EDUCATION AND
PUBLIC DISCOURSE
 Education in Afghanistan includes K–
12 and higher education, which is greatly
supervised by the Ministry of
Education and Ministry of Higher
Education in Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghanistan
is going through a nationwide rebuilding
process and, despite setbacks, institutions are
established across the country. By 2013 there
were 10.5 million students attending schools
in Afghanistan, a country with a population of
around 27.5 million people.
As a crossroads in Central Eurasia, it is no surprise
that Afghanistan is characterized by considerable
social and linguistic diversity. Table 1 displays
information on most of the languages of
Afghanistan by language family, branch and sub-
branch, estimated number of speakers and
language status according to the 1980
Constitution. The four status types in the table
derive from Kieffer (1983) based on provisions of
the 1980 Constitution for official and national
languages, and based on estimated number of
speakers and manner of use in local contexts.2
Afghanistan exhibits large-scale societal
multilingualism, and considerable individual
plurilingualism 3 in West Iranian, East Iranian,
Indic, Turkic, Mongolic, and Dravidian languages
(Barfield, 2010; Bashir, 2006; Kieffer, 1983, 2006).
The 1980 Constitution gave equal official
status to Pashto, the language of the Pashtun
ethnic group, and Dari Persian, the language of
several of Afghanistan’s ethnic groups, which
is also the most widely known Language of
Wider Communication in Afghanistan. The
1980 Constitution designated as national
languages those languages apart from the two
official languages that could be used in
publishing or broadcast media, or as languages
of instruction (LOI) in schools. Kieffer (1983)
uses the term local languages for languages
that go constitutionally unrecognized despite
being used by a sizable population in a
particular context, and residual languages for
those whose transmission is endangered.
Some of the complexity of this
language ecology is the 21st-century
remnant of 19th-century Pashtun
nation-building, where intra-Pashtun
rivalry led to some Pashtun groups
being resettled in non-Pashtun-
speaking areas, with the aim of
weakening their power, which
established a Pashtun presence in
more regions of Afghanistan (Naby,
1984). Naby, who worked as a
teacher in schools in Mazar-eSharif in
the Uzbek-speaking northwest in the
The Pushtu language, although still an infrequently
heard language in places like Mazar-i-Sharif and
Kunduz, can nevertheless be used in government
offices almost interchangeably with Persian because
government appointees to these regions can count on
being able to staff their offices with indigenous Pushtu
speakers. In the same manner Kabul can justify its
insistence on the instruction of Pushtu in northern
schools not only because Pushtu is the national
language of Afghanistan and one of its two official
languages (with Dari/Persian), but also because a
significant, if minor portion of the students come from
Pushtun families. ... Afghan institutions such as public
schools have acted to instill in graduates a certain
sense of being Afghans, but the retention of Uzbek
language and culture appears to affect the attitudes
and activities of younger Uzbeks (Naby, 1984: 12).
In 1978, following Soviet-style language
policy, the Khalqi faction of the Communist
Party of Afghanistan announced a policy of
greater use of the non dominant languages of
Afghanistan for official purposes. This included
education and publication in Uzbek, Turkmen
and Baluch in addition to Dari and Pashto, and
according to some reports it included
languages of Nuristan as well. Thus, the anti-
regional, anti-rural, anti-Pashto effect of de
facto language policy in modern schools may
in part explain the source of anti-Dari feelings
that have arisen among unpersianized
Pashtuns. During the Taliban’s rule, for
example, Pashto is said to have replaced Dari
at Kabul University
You could go to every office, if your
language was Pashto. You could do
everything. Nobody asked you where you
were coming from and where you were
going. If you spoke Persian or Baluchi they
thought you were cursing at them. This is
how they were (Rzehak, 2009: 193).

Some argue that the Pashtun élite may

have used Pashtun linguistic and cultural
symbols as a means of maintaining
hegemony over unpersianized Pashtuns
(Hanifi, 2004). Seen in this light, anti-Dari
actions can be understood as part of an
intra-Pashtun dispute, between persianized
RECENT CHANGES IN LANGUAGE
POLICY
 The 2004 Constitution makes more particular statements
about Afghanistan’s languages than have any previous
constitutions. Table 3 lists its detailed provisions regarding
languages. Most significant perhaps is Article 17, which
commits the state to whatever measures are necessary to
promote education, which arguably means that in certain
districts languages other than Pashto or Dari should be
taught in schools, or ideally used as languages of
instruction. Indeed, the most recent draft of the national
strategic plan for education for the years 2010-2014 does
take the step of examining the implementation of bilingual
Dari-Pashto education nationally and the provision of
opportunity for speakers of non-dominant languages to
learn their languages in school as well. For example, there
is planning for the development of textbooks for grades 1
to 12 teaching in Turkmen, Uzbek, Pashai, Baluch, as well
as Pamiri and Nurestani languages to be completed by
2014 (Afghanistan Ministry of Education, 2010).
Since Articles 16 and 43 of the Constitution lay
out commitments both to the development of
all languages and to quality education for all,
certain tensions may arise from different
notions of quality and its relationship to various
language-in education models. The
commitment to quality basic education seems
to require an emphasis on teaching in
whatever language(s) children know best,
while quality preparation for higher levels of
education, which has been delivered largely in
Dari, seems to suggest the need for some
effective form of Dari learning. As we have
seen above, Dari and Pashto have both been
used as LOIs with the other language taught as
a subject, and the either-or logic of presuming
that only one can be chosen as LOI has
precluded a bilingual approach in which two or
CULTURAL INTEGRATION
 Afghanistan is a traditional society, dominated by ancient
tribal practices, Islamic culture and a well-established
suspicion of outsiders. A foreign force in such an
environment cannot defeat the insurgency by itself –
“only locals have the access to the population and deep
understanding of a particular insurgency that is
necessary”– and to secure sufficient legitimacy and trust
from the population, one must appear sympathetic and
receptive to it.
 Instead of cultural awareness/integration and local
engagement, ISAF activities have helped develop a
persona of disconnection from the population. This has
primarily arisen from an extraneous employment of
technology, which encourages an institutionalization of
risk aversion and thus separation from the local
population.
THE JOURNEY TOWARDS THE EMERGENCE
OF A NATIONAL IDENTITY
 An innate sense of the essence of their culture sustained
Afghans through 24 years of conflict and displacement.
Although they continue to cherish the diversity of regional
differences, individuals cling tenaciously to their national
identity, upholding traditional values and customs that
distinguish them from their neighbors. From the beginning of
the twentieth century, attempts to foster unity through nation-
building activities in mostly urban areas met with mixed
success; the latest attempts to cast Afghans in a puritanical
Islamic mould met with disaster. Years of discord stretched taut
the fabric of the society and national traits once honored
hallmarks of the culture were compromised. Yet the
fundamentals of the culture remain strong, changed in some
ways but readily recognizable as uniquely Afghan. Current
expectations aim to engage various cultural elements as
bonding vehicles to hasten reconstruction and strengthen
peace.
CHALLENGES IN THE CREATION
OF A NATIONAL IDENTITY
 Continued armed conflict and insecurity limit access to area and
opportunity to implement (large scale) development projects and
explore natural resources, and cause urbanization and
outmigration.
 A weakened economy and high level of corruption reduce
government income potential and private sector’s willingness to
invest.
 A disunited and at the same time highly centralized government
hampers reform processes and ability/ capacity to implement
agreed development programmes, further constrained by
fractured Parliament and civil society.
 Cultural and religious constraint and low education level (and
quality) limit women’s access to public participation and entrance
to a workforce
 Internal warfare and regional conflicts hamper Afghanistan’s ability
to reach the ambition of being the “Heart of Asia” for trade and
interaction.
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