Afghanistan embodies the notion of a crossroad in every sense of the word. A tripartite meeting place, it has made the regions which comprise modern Afghanistan frequent victims of marauding empires, revanchist neighbours and domestic sectarian tensions. The 20th century quickened the pace of conflict, and some would argue that strife has simply become a horrifically mundane reality for several generations of Afghans since a coup in 1978 set the country careening from one war to the next.
But western preoccupation with conflict can obscure the country's unique past; successive waves of invasion have woven a rich cultural tapestry, from the Greeks to the Timurid Empire of the caucuses, later transitioned to the Indian Mughals. Both Buddhism and Islam have long histories in the country, and it's truly a cultural mosaic, a reflection of its situation at the crossroads between the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent.
Afghanistan successfully fought off prying colonial hands during the 18th and 19th centuries, including a series of violent victories against the British Raj and Russian forces during the "Great Game" over domination of Asia that played out between the two powers. Three costly wars would ultimately yield the British a protectorate; a"buffer state" between India and Russia's central Asian plateaus to the north in what is now Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
While Nasser, Nehru and Nkrumah loom large in discourse over decolonization due to their success in forging a non-aligned path in a world increasingly polarized by the Cold War, Afghanistan's unique position at the turn of the century as a nominally independent state meant that it had to navigate similarly treacherous waters several decades earlier, and without the benefit of a coalition of similarly unaligned states. Afghanistan in the 20th century was also characterized by sectarian, ideological and political turmoil, but beneath this veneer is a cultural, religious and geographic nexus; its cultural fabric a rich, discordant cacophony that both transcends borders and reinforces them. The following photo essay seeks to shine a light on another Afghanistan, one beyond the headlines.
