… On culture, governance, farming ─ a laughable ignorance rising from blind arrogance in a young nation of vacuous officials whose power is rooted in an equally arrogant and ignorant citizenry.
Compiled and edited with brief comment by Carolyn Bennett
ANCIENT CULTURES and geopolitics
AFGHANISTAN
In southwestern Asia bordered by Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan (north), China (far northeast), Pakistan (east and south), Iran (west), Afghanistan, its capital and largest city Kabul, sits among great mountains and deserts, fertile valleys and rolling plains.
Most Afghan workers farm the land. Many use old-fashioned farming tools and methods. Some of the people are semi nomadic roaming the grasslands in the summer with their herds of livestock and spending the rest of the year farming. Kabul is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan.
Almost all of Afghanistan’s people are Muslims, Islam linking 20 ethnic groups with distinct languages divided into several tribes.
IRAQ
In southwestern Asia at the head of the Persian Gulf bordered by Turkey, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria, Iraq is the world’s first known civilization. The ancient Greeks called part of Iraq and the surrounding region Mesopotamia (between rivers) because it rests between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Civilizations for thousands of years have depended on controlling flooding from the two rivers and on using their waters for irrigation.
Iraq became part of the Arab Empire in the A.D. 600s and absorbed Arab Muslim culture. Roughly, 75 percent of Iraq’s population is Arab. The economy of Iraq depends heavily on the export of oil.
IRAN
Set among snow-capped mountains, green valleys, and barren deserts in the Middle East region of southwestern Asia ─ bordered by Azerbaijan, Armenia, Turkmenistan and the Caspian Sea (north), Pakistan and Afghanistan (east), the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman (south), Turkey and Iraq (west), controlling a dozen islands in the Persian Gulf, about a third of its 4,770-mile (7,680-km) boundary, seacoast ─ Iran is one of the world’s oldest countries with history extending to the great Persian Empire, almost 5,000 years.
Many times in its long history, foreign powers have invaded and occupied Iran. The mid-600s brought one of the most important invasions; Muslim Arabs conquered the country. During 200 years of rule by Muslim caliphs (religious leaders), the Islamic faith spread throughout the country and in contemporary times most of its people are Muslim.
The discovery of oil in the early 1900s in southwestern Iran brought the country an enormous source of wealth.
PAKISTAN
Islamic Republic of Pakistan (capital Islāmābād) is bordered by Iran (west), Afghanistan (north), China (northeast), India (east and southeast), Arabian Sea (south). A Muslim nation in South Asia, religion was the chief reason for the establishment of independent Pakistan. Great Britain ruled the region that is now Pakistan in the 1800s and early 1900s and in granting independence to India in 1947, they separated Pakistan from India segregating along religious lines. The British carved Pakistan out of northwestern and northeastern India; the two sections of the new nation were over 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) apart. The majority of the people of both regions of Pakistan were Muslims. The majority of the people of the remaining territory of India were Hindus. Approximately 97 percent of Pakistan’s contemporary population practices Islam.
Sources World Book 1999. Britannica 2010
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