Afghanistan
Nathan Podgurny
Social Studies 10
Mr Van Asselt
Table of Contents
Population
Language
Ethnic Groups
Education-Literacy
Life Expectancy
Religions
Economy
Type of Government and Leaders
History
Summary
Afghanistan is located in Southern Asia, with mostly rugged mountains, and plains in the north and south west. It has cold winters, and hot summers. The capital city is Kabul, which has over one-tenth of the population. Being a very arid country, Afghanistan has very few rivers and lakes. However, some more notable ones are the Kabul river, which flows east into Pakistan, and the Band-e-amir lake, located in Afghanistan's only national park.
The flag of Afghanistan is one of only five flags in the world to feature a building on it. The black colour represents its troubled history as a protected state. The red represents the blood it shed for independence. The green represents hope and prosperity for the future. The Arabic inscription at the top reads, "There is no God but Allah and Muhammed is his messenger."
Population
Afghanistan has roughly thirty four million people, about the same amount as Canada. The above picture represents where the people are spread out through the country. It shows that most people live in the north to north-east, near Kabul. In the south, the only other urban area is Kandahar, the third largest city. In the past twenty five years, Afghanistan has doubled its population, from seventeen million to thirty four million. The average age dependency ratio is around 58% in the world. In Afghanistan, its around 84% in 2016.
Language
Ethnic Groups
The ethnic groups of Afghanistan are: Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, other (includes smaller numbers of Baloch, Turkmen, Nuristani, Pamiri, Arab, Gujar, Brahui, Qizilbash, Aimaq, Pashai, and Kyrghyz) This can cause many challenges in government, because each ethnic group would want to be in power. It also causes conflict between the people, because when someone believes very strongly in something, they may start fights over it. A prime example of this is in the Middle East, the shia and sunni people have been fighting each other for centuries. A possible solution to stop all the fighting is to let all these groups govern each other the way they want, instead of picking someone of different beliefs to rule over them. It would be impossible to create an accurate graph of the kinds of ethnicities, because the actual numbers are unknown.
Education-Literacy
In Afghanistan, about 38% of the population over fifteen years old can read and write. Half the males can read, but only 24% of the women can read. In Canada, around 99% of the people know how to read and write. This can cause challenges in Afghanistan, because when the soldiers go there to help them fight the taliban, they won't understand the reason the soldiers are there. Also, the people in Afghanistan will have a very limited view of the world around them, since they don't have any access to education. The people also have many barriers to education, such as a lack of materials, lack of trained teachers and little to no actual schools they can learn in.
Life Expectancy
Life expectancy at birth, is a measure of the overall quality of life in a country. It can also be considered a way of calculating the potential return on investment on human capital. In Afghanistan, the average life expectancy was around 60.72 years, one of the lowest in the surrounding area, as shown in the graph below. As shown below, Canada has a substantially higher life expectancy.
Having a low life expectancy, can bring up many challenges for a developing country like Afghanistan. It creates a vicious cycle.
The parents who don't have any education, give birth to children with a low life expectancy.
They won’t invest in their children's schooling, thinking it’s unnecessary.
When these children grow up and become parents, their own children will be poorly educated, and have a low life expectancy themselves.
Therefore, poor families never break out of this “low life expectancy” trap they are stuck in.
Having a low life expectancy, is closely related to education rates. Parents will not spend money on their education, if they don’t believe their children to live very long. Another reason is, education is very costly for them. It costs money they may not have to send kids to school, to buy books, or even to take them away from their farm. When the people don't have basic education, their life expectancy lowers quite significantly, since they may not have basic knowledge such as washing their hands.
Religions
In Afghanistan, the majority of the population is Islam, but it is split into two different parts. Sunni and Shiite. In Afghanistan, 90% of the people are Sunni. This is a 1400 year old rivalry, which has been going on all over the middle east. The split happened when the prophet Muhammad died in the year 632 AD. The Shiites believed that the successor should be someone of his bloodline, but the Sunni believed that anyone who represented his values would be acceptable. Even though both sides have very similar religious beliefs, they should not be confused for the same religion. For other religions, there are small groups of hindus, sikhs, parsis and jews scattered throughout the country.
Economy
From 2004-2014, Afghanistan had sustained nearly a decade of growth. In 2014 however, the economy. The country is still in a state of war, and relies heavily on international aid. Agriculture is the main source of income in the country. The opium flower is the main cash crop, and is the most exported good in the country. Other notable exports are : fruits and nuts, handwoven carpets, lambskins, textiles, and gemstones. Many of its exports have went down in recent years, except for the illegal trade in opium and heroin. (“[Washington Post],” n.d.) A country that relies heavily on agriculture, is highly dependant on the harvest. If its a bad harvest due due a drought, your entire country may suffer. Farmers often have low income, since as people make more money, they still may not spend much more money on food. Also due to technological advances, the prices of their products may drop, since their skills to make the goods are being replaced by machines(Problems of Agriculture – Market Fail…)
Type of Government
Afghanistan has a very similar government to Canada. They have a National Government of Assembly, which would be similar to our senate. They also have a parliament, which serves as the executive branch of government. In Afghanistan, they always have a very poor turnout for elections, in 2004 this being around 50%. The Afghan constitution declares that a new president every 5 years. The current president of Afghanistan is Hamid Karzai. As of right now, the government is not doing a good job to meet the needs of its people. The central government's power is being challenged by a growing insurgency, and its inability to deliver the services the people desire. Corruption is a major problem among officials, and among military leaders. They also have very limited human resources, since the schools are poorly equipped. Lastly, a lack of political mobilization has created a system of patronage in Afghanistan, and shows through in the government's lack of security.