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Kandahar, AfghanistanCapital of Kandahar province with a population of 250,000. The country's second largest city and chief trade center, Kandahar is a market for sheep, wool, cotton, food grains, fresh and dried fruit, and tobacco. It has an international airport and is linked by road with Kabul, Herat, Quetta, and the Central Asian Republics of the former USSR. Woolen cloth, felt, and silk are manufactured. The surrounding irrigated region produces fine fruits, especially grapes, and the city has plants for canning, drying, and packing fruit. Kandahar was founded by Alexander the Great (4th century B.C.). India and Persia long fought over the city, which was strategically located on the trade routes of central Asia. It was conquered by Arabs in the 7th century and by the Turkic Ghaznavids in the 10th cent. Genghiz Khan sacked it in the 12th century, after which it became a major city of the Karts (Mongol clients) until their defeat by Tamerlane in 1383. Babur, founder of the Mughal empire of India, took Kandahar in the 16th century. It was later contested by the Persians and by the rulers of emerging Afghanistan, who made it the capital (1748 - 1773) of their newly independent kingdom. British forces occupied Kandahar during the First Afghan War (1839 - 1842) and from 1879 to 1881. The old city was laid out by Ahmad Shah and is dominated by his octangular, domed mausoleum. There are also numerous mosques (one said to contain the Prophet Muhammad's cloak) and bazaars. Modern Kandahar adjoins the old city. It has a technical college. Together with Peshawar, Pakistan, Kandahar is the principal city of the Pashtun people. During the Soviet military occupation of 1979 to 1989, Kandahar was the site of a Soviet command. A major prize, it changed hands several times until the fall of the Najibullah government in 1992. Kandahar's troubled past By Eurasia analyst Malcolm HaslettKandahar is famous today as the headquarters of the Taleban. That has given it an image in the outside world of strict piety and distrust of foreigners. But that is not the image it has always had. Until the 1970s it was full of foreigners, many of them young Western hippies on their way to India. The attraction wasn't just hashish and opium, though there was plenty of that. There were colourful bazaars, and tombs and mosques, including the Mosque of the Sacred Cloak, - the cloak, it is believed, of the Prophet Mohammed himself. But Kandahar has a troubled past. Pashtun heartland Kandahar has been fought over down the centuries by successive waves of Persians, Turks, Arabs and Mongols. In the 18th Century it became the capital of Ahmed Shah, the Pashtun king who founded Afghanistan. His domed mausoleum still dominates the old city. Kandahar lies on the rich plains of southern Afghanistan, and it is very much part of the Pashtun heartland. It has always been a more traditional place than the capital Kabul, with relatively little evidence of Western clothing or other influences. After the pro-Communist coup of 1978 most of the tourists disappeared. Abandoned city The city was fought over bitterly in the long war between the Soviet army and the Islamic Mujahedin. After the Soviets withdrew there was a period of disorder and chaos, with several groups of Mujahedin vying for control. When the Taleban moved in 1994 they were widely welcomed as bringing order and stability, though some of their initial decisions like the banning of football - were so unpopular they had to be rescinded. Other changes stayed in force, however. The wearing of the veil became obligatory for women in public, and the only music allowed was devotional chanting. Otherwise life carried on much as before, until the recent air strikes. Now, it is reported, there is widespread damage and much of the population has left the city. |
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