ABSTRACT
Afghanistan is a landlocked, poverty-stricken, Sunni replica of Iran. An even more rugged country than its Western neighbor and less than half its size, Afghanistan encompasses some 250,000 square miles. The massive Hindu Kush mountain range, stretching laterally from the northeast to the southwest, descends from a height of 25,000 feet. Together with the longitudinal spurs, the mountains spread across 70 per cent of the country’s surface. Aghan amirs in the middle decades of the nineteenth century attempted, with Anglo-Indian help, to develop a regular force alongside the tribal levies. These modest efforts were carried forward by ‘Abd al-Rahman. But the first durable changes had to await the interwar years of the twentieth century when Afghanistan employed advisers from Turkey to reorganize the army and successively from Russia, Germany, Britain, and Italy to create an air force. In Daud’s decade, Afghanistan benefited from the inversion of the Cold War.
