TNAG-1066-FCO40-1316-Human-rights-in-Hong-Kong-1981 — Page 185

E/CN.4/1503

Annex II page 2

3. Throughout its history, Afghanistan, standing at the meeting place of three geographical and cultural regions, has been subject to influences and invasions from neighbouring territories. After parts of it had been encompassed in the Greek empire, the country suffered innumerable invasions by waves of central Asian peoples, Arabs, Turks and Mongols. Often occupied and sometimes fragmented, with little or no opportunity to build up a national

a national identity, it was at last taken over in 1747 by an Afghan, Ahmad Shah who constructed a new empire resting primarily upon the military power of the Afghan tribes. Subsequently, however, internal strife had as its consequence disunity between the three states formed out of civil war, and the introduction of two other external powers - Russia and Britain.

4.

The nineteenth century saw Afghanistan's foreign policy dominated by Russo-British rivalry, two Anglo-Afghan wars and the rapid territorial advance of Russia southwards. After а third Afghan War in the early years of this century, an Anglo- Afghan Treaty signed in 1919 and

1919 and a similar treaty signed with the Soviet Union shortly afterwards restored to Kabul control over its own foreign policy.

5.

In the next 30 years, a succession of governments made cautious moves towards modernization and democratization, under the titular power of the monarchy. By the early 1950s, Afghanistan, in need of substantial external aid, accepted large-scale, low-interest loans principally from the Soviet Union (which over the next 20 years was to provide the bulk of its foreign aid, as well as military assistance, arms and training facilities) and from the United States of America. Mohammed Daud, Prime Minister from 1953 to 1963, imposed vigorous measures, many of which flouted tradition, such as a campaign against the wearing of the veil, thereby arousing strong opposition (which he relentlessly crushed) from tribal and religious leaders.

It was under his foreign policy Afghan-Pakistan relations deteriorated to the point of total rupture, resulting in border closure by the latter which obliged landlocked Afghanistan to make new arrangements for the channelling of exports via the Soviet Union notwithstanding which the country's economic development was disrupted. Following Daud's resignation, subsequent governments increas- ingly found themselves up against opposition from students, the radical left and the traditional élite, the task of manag- ing the economy complicated in 1971 by acute famine - the worst ever recorded which struck after three successive seasons of drought had affected the central and north-western regions of the country, causing most severe hardship and migratory movement to Iran and Pakistan.

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