afghanistan

Tell me about the camels. The

...

xxx

Tell me about the history of Afghanistan. There has been almost constant war because many nations have wanted to control the trading routes there. In the 6th-century BC, the conquerors were the Persians. In 334 BC, the conqueror was Alexander the Great from Greece who founded the city of Kandahar. In 50 AD, the Kushans from China conquered the land and brought Buddhism. In the 8th-century AD, the Arabs conquered the land and brought Islam. In 1220 AD, Genghis Khan from Mongolia conquered them.
Tell me about Mohammed Babur. In 1504 AD, Zahiruddin Mohammed Babur was the Afghan conqueror. He conquered India and founded the Moghul empire, which spread Islam to India. He was called "the Conqueror".
Tell me about the Anglo-Afghan Wars. They were three wars when the British conquered Afghanistan. They were in 1838, 1878, and 1919 AD. The British fought the Afghans to control the country to keep Russian from any where near India. Once the British lost in 1919 the Afghans made their first constitution and became a country.
Tell me about the Afghan Civil War and what many think about the United States. In 1978, the com-munists assasinated the president of Afghanistan. And then in 1979 the Soviet Union invaded. Afghans fought the Russians for 11 years and then the Russians left. For 13 more years there was civil war between lots of different Afghan groups. In 1995 the Taliban began to rule parts of the country. In 2002, the United States defeated the Taliban and the Afghans now rule Afghanistan. The Taliban were supporting Osama bin Ladin and all of his followers, called Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda were the ones that crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York. The owner of the Afghan restaurant we ate at said, "Nobody wants the Americans to leave because they ended the war." She was born in Afghanistan and visited recently. Her hero is Ahmadshah Masood.
Tell me about Ahmadshah Masood. He lead the army called the Northern Alliance against the Soviets and then the Taliban. He was assassinated by Al Qaeda two days before 9/11.

Afghanistan

Tell me about Afghanistan. It is right in the middle of Asia, so people have gotten to all different parts of Asia from there. A famous road is the Silk Road. It goes all the way through to China and caravans used to travel there. There are seven countries around Afghanistan: Iran (used to be Persia), Turkmeinistan, China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and India. The southern part is all desert. Right in the middle is a huge marsh called Gawad-i-Zirreh. There are many rivers that start in the mountains but just die out in the desert and they form the marshes. The middle of Afghanistan is the Hindu Kush mountains, which means Hindu killer. The Khyber Pass is a road that goes through the Hindu Kush to India. All the different armies that went through Afghanistan used the Khyber Pass. The Wakhan Corridor is in the Hindu Kush and it goes to China. In the north is an area called the northern plains. There they do sheep herding and cattle raising. The most famous place in the country is the Blue Mosque of Hazrat Ali in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif in the northern plains.
Tell me about the Afghan people. The major groups of people are Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Ai Maqs, and Nuristanis. The capital is Kabul, which has two million people. The other main cities are Kandahar, Herat, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Ghazni. In Kabul, the weather is very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. It gets up to 120-degreesF and it snows alot. There is an untrue quote by Mohammed Babur: "There is no place in the world with the most pleasing climate than Kabul."
Tell me about their languages. They speak Dari in the north and Pashto in the south.

Home

www.fretnotgospel.com/afghanistan.html

aa

Learning how to love everyone

Country of the Month         Restaurant

Jan 2003 - Armenia            La Mediterranee, Berkeley
Feb 2003 - Poland              Old Krakow, San Francisco
Mar 2003 - Ireland             Kells, San Francisco
Apr 2003 - Jamaica            Jamaica Station, Oakland
May 2003 - El Salvador      Balompie, San Francisco
Jun 2003 - Nepal                Kathmandu, Albany
Aug 2003 - Turkey             Bosphorus, Berkeley
Oct 2003 - Cambodia         Angkor Wat, San Francisco
Dec 2003 - Philippines        Aroma Cafe, Concord
Jan 2004 - Saudi Arabia      Rihab's Bakery, Belmont
Feb 2004 - Mexico             El Huarache Azteca, Oakland
Mar 2004 - Mongolia          Col. Lee's Mongolian BBQ, Mtn View
May 2004 - Switzerland      Fondue Fred's, Berkeley
Jul 2004 - Afghanistan        Da Afghanan Kabob House, Fremont
Sep 2004 - Portugal

Home

Tell me about the food. The place where we ate was about the best we've tried. It had meat kabobs and the best spinach in the world mixed with bite-sized pieces of chicken. There was really good yellow saffron rice. What made it so good was the meat cooked over fire. There was a really good flaky ice cream-tasting cake called balaklava. The restaurant was in Fremont were many Afghan people live.

Country of the Month

Tell me about the religions. They are 99% Muslim. There are two Muslim groups. Eighty percent are Sunnis, who fol-lowed kings and scholars after Mohammed. The rest are Shia who followed Muham-med's bloodline, like Hazrat Ali, his nephew.
Tell me about the Blue Mosque of Hazrat Ali. The mosque is all blue. Even though there was lots of war in the city around it, they kept it in perfect shape. There are many white doves there and the Muslims believe it is so holy that a grey dove would turn white in 40 days.
Tell me about the Gardens of Babur. There is a 500-year old garden in Kabul planted when Babur died. The Taliban cut down the trees, drained the pools, and put the gardeners in prison.

family in the desert

boys at the blue mosque

women owned bakery in kabul in 2003

ahmad shah massoud planning an attack on the taliban

president hamid karzai at the us congress

osama bin laden

babur the conquerer

northern alliance fighters

women wearing burqas

kabul in 2004

the taliban destroyed the 1,000 year old stone buddhas in bamiyan

selling to american soldiers

band-e-amir

market

the blue mosque

dust storm over army base

band-e-amir lake

hindu kush mountains

camel riders

nuts being sold

by Noah Arthur

warrug.com

snow leopard

markhor sheep

Tell me about the Taliban. They are very strict Muslims that thought every tiny bit of the religion should be practiced. When someone didn't practice it they were severely punished. Some were executed and beaten. They treated women like the women were animals. They made women wear the burqa. They did not let women go out without a male relative and they didn't let them have jobs. They didn't let girls go to school. If they found anyone who was not a Muslim they would execute them. They didn't let anyone listen to music or do art that was non-Islamic. Tell me about President Hamid Karzai. He is the president of Afghanistan now. He has been to the United States many times. Karzai wants the county to vote for president in 2005 and he is running.

What are Afghans world-famous for? They are famous for wool rugs, Afghan hunting hounds, and the afghan which is a soft blanket.
They are also known for war and burqas, which are veils that cover their whole face and head and body.

Tell me about the favorite sport in Afghanistan. The favorite sport is buzkashi, which is where people on horseback try to grab a headless carcass of a goat or sheep and carry it over a finish line. The others try to grab it away. I would like to see buzkashi because it is kind of gross. I would not like to play it because I don't know how to ride a horse.

pres. karzai and the new government
with massoud's portrait on the wall

Tell me about the bluetongue virus. The bluetongue virus is transmitted when a tiny female fly called a midge bites a sick sheep and drinks its blood and then bites a healthy sheep and drinks its blood. If a sick ewe has a lamb, the lamb gets the virus and its brain is smaller than most and these are called dummy lambs. Some of the symptoms are fever, mouth froth, erosions, sores with dead patches on the tongue, arched back, weight loss. There is a 50/50 chance of death. If the sheep survives they lose all of their wool. Two ways to control the virus are vaccines and insecticide dipping. Some other sheep diseases are hoof and mouth, congo-crimean hemorragic fever, and anthrax.

Tell me about some unique birds, butterflies and animals. So much war has caused many of the animals and plants to die out. In particular, the forests have been cut down. Some of the wildlife are wolves, gazelles, Afghan foxes, snow leopards, Asiatic black and brown bears, bactrian deer, dromedary and bactrian camels, stone marten which is a kind of weasel, markhor sheep, ibex, and the endangered Siberian crane. The dromedary has one hump and the bactrian has two. There are both kinds of camels because there is both desert and cold country. The dromedary lives in the desert and the bactrian lives in the mountains. There has been so much war that the people destroyed their wildlife preserves.

What do you admire about the Afghan people? I admire that now they don't have the Taliban or so much war. I admire that the war is done and they are making a regular country and the women don't have to wear burqas and can work. I think the Blue Mosque is beautiful. I admire that they don't complain about their hard climate. I admire how proud they are of their country even though it's hard to live there.

What do you pray to Jesus about Afghanistan? I pray that they will have freedom of religion, which means not having any religion forced on them like when the Taliban ruled. I pray that they will be able to hear the gospel of Jesus. I pray that they will have a better economy and not be so poor. I pray that God will not let any war happen in the country. And I pray that they won't keep cutting down their forests.

culicoides - midge

midges biting sheep

bluetongue symptoms

bluetongue controls