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Soraya Parlika, political and women’s rights activist, has died at the age of 75. She had, said Sahraa Karimi, Chair of the Afghan Film Organisation, who made a documentary about Parlika, “dedicated her life to the life of women of Afghanistan and never left her motherland even during the hard years of civil war and Taleban regime.” This earned her the respect even among many who opposed her for having been a leading member of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). AAN’s Thomas Ruttig looks back at her life.

Soraya Parlika was more than just an activist. Referring to her lasting achievements, Afghan news website Khabarnama described her as “a founder of freedoms and human rights for women of the country.” Judith Huber, a Swiss journalist who wrote an extensive portrait of her in 2003, described the “communist, Muslima and unfaltering women’s rights advocate” as “self-assured and proud,” “sparkling from energy,” humorous and with gripping oratorical skills” – a woman “with charisma.” (1)

The defining focus of Soraya Parlika’s decades of activism was women’s rights. However, as a former stalwart and leader of Hezb-e Dimukratik-e Khalq-e Afghanistan (People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan, PDPA), her politics were unmistakably leftist. She said: “To fight for women’s rights is politics. Without politics, the problems of women will never be solved.” She placed her feminism as part of a wider struggle, saying “I’m interested in women and in their life development, but not just women. I’m interested in all people.” She would stick to this even under the most forbidding circumstances, when women’s rights were rolled back under the mujahedin and Taleban regimes (1992-2001). In contrast to many from her part of the political spectrum, she prayed regularly. “I was raised religiously,” she said “and always remained religious.”

There have been many tributes to Parlika, including one from President Ashraf Ghani who had been her former political adversary. In 2002, as United Nations advisor to the Emergency Loya Jirga Commission, Ghani had tried to prevent “this communist” from becoming a member of the commission. In 2019, however, he said he was “saddened” by news of her death, that she had “bravely fought for the rights of women in the last four decades,” and that her name would “remain among the heroic women of this country.” Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah also issued a statement of commemoration.

Soraya Parlika is credited with various achievements resulting from her decades of activism. Of particular significance was the adoption under the monarchy of a law that gave Afghan women the right to 30 days’ maternity leave (other sources say 40 days). At the time, she was a member of Sazman-e Zanan-e Dimukratik-e Afghanistan (the Democratic Women’s Organisation of Afghanistan, DWOA), (2) which, although not legal, was allowed to operate publicly and had, in cooperation with the first women in government and parliament, successfully lobbied for this law. Some years later, in a quasi-governmental position when Parlika’s party was in power, the length of maternity leave was further extended.

Soraya Parlika’s Facebook profile photo.

Family background and education

This renowned women’s activist was born Soraya  – she later replaced it with Parlika, and used both names combined after 2001 (3) – in 1944 in a well-to-do Pashtun family from Kamari, a village in Bagrami district to the southeast of Kabul. (This still photo from Karimi’s documentary appears to show her there as an adult.) She was the only daughter, with three brothers, one younger (died 1991 in Kabul) and two older (the eldest brother died in the US in 2015). Her father, Muhammad Harif, was a high-ranking government official under the Afghan monarchy whose professional career between 1933 and 1973 led him to become the head of the construction department of the Ministry of Public Works; he died in 2007. Her mother, Bibi Shirin (died in 1994), worked in the house. The family lived in the capital Kabul but still owned land in their home village.

Kamari was also the place of birth of Babrak Karmal who became state and PDPA leader after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan over Christmas in December 1979 (AAN background here). Soraya’s second-eldest brother, Abdul Wakil, was finance minister under President Karmal and foreign minister in his last year and then under Najibullah, from 1986 to 1992, (4) and signed the Geneva Accords in 1988 that led to the Soviet withdrawal completed in 1989. Both families did not only come from the same village, but the families were related to each other: Soraya Parlika’s father was the brother of Babrak Karmal’s mother, making Parlika a first cousin to Karmal.

The political opening under King Muhammad Zaher (r 1933-73) and, in particular, the ‘decade of democracy’ that followed the relatively liberal constitution of 1964, came just at the right time for Soraya. Graduating from the prominent Zarghuna High School in central Kabul in 1963, she became part of an increasing number of women who enrolled at Kabul University.

She studied economics, obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1966 and started working in Kabul city’s housing department. She said about her choice: “The economy is the basis of each society. Only a solid economic situation allows a society’s development and political change.” In 1971, she took up an administrative post in Kabul University’s international relations department.

Soraya later said: “My mother, mainly, often said that not all Afghans lived as comfortably as we did. That motivated me to engage politically. I always carried this unconsciously in my mind.” She added that it was only later, under the Taleban, that she realised how advanced women’s rights had already been before the PDPA revolution.

Soraya Parlika at an international conference during the PDPA regime. Photo: AAWU Facebook page (undated).

From opposition to government

Soraya and her brother Abdul Wakil were among the early members of the PDPA  (there was no women among the 27 founding members). The party was founded on 1 January 1965 when she was 21. By that age, according to one profile, she was “already leading meetings of female party members.” According to Judith Huber, six months later, in June 1965, she and five other women founded the DWOA. It was led by Anahita Ratebzad, who was 12 year her senior, prominent as only one of four female members of parliament and very close to deputy party leader Karmal.

The DWOA supported female victims of domestic violence, tried to mediate with families and helped the women to go to court. It organised literacy courses, and tried to encouraged women to seek employment and to send their children to school. It mobilised women to take part in the 1965 parliamentary election, which Soraya was actively involved in, also going  to the countryside to teach women how to read and write. In 1968 she participated in demonstrations against a draft law proposed by conservative Islamic members to ban girls and women from traveling abroad to receive an education without a mahram. After one month of protests, including an occupation of the parliament, the bill was dropped.

After Soraya’s Parcham (Banner) faction of the PDPA came to power in a coup d’état in 1973 in an alliance with former prime minister Muhammad Daud, who became new head of state, she received a scholarship to study in Kyiv, then the capital of the Soviet Ukraine. With a Master’s degree in international economic relations, she returned to her job at Kabul University in 1977.

After the PDPA takeover in April 1978, Soraya became the leader of the now legalised DWOA, as Ratebzad moved to become education minister. But it was not for long: in August 1978 Soraya was thrown into jail by the Khalqis, Parcham’s intra-party rivals. The Khalqis had sidelined them, and accused them of plotting a counter coup. Soraya was tortured in the notorious Pul-e Charkhi jail in Kabul (AAN background here). Scars from cigarette burns were still visible on her hands, and she said she had more elsewhere on her body. When the Soviets sent troops to Afghanistan in late 1979, toppled the Khalqi leadership and brought Karmal to power, Soraya returned to the top position in the DWOA. But again, she was relegated to second position in Ratebzad’s favour in June 1981.

During this period, the PDPA government – thanks in large part to the DWOA and Soraya’s work – extended maternity leave to 90 days, with 180 days of possible additional unpaid leave. (5) Women were legally allowed to retire at the age of 55. These were big achievements, even though for women in the countryside and in mujahedin-controlled areas, these rights remained theoretical. Her advocacy also resulted in the establishment of nursery schools and kindergartens in workplaces. In that time, Soraya experienced the first attempt on her life. She was shot on her way home and severely wounded.

In 1986, Soraya moved to become the head of Afghanistan’s Red Crescent Society. In this capacity, she was instrumental in bringing the International Red Cross (ICRC) into the country, shuttling between Kabul and Geneva. She was removed from this post when the mujahedin took over power in April 1992.

Logo of the All-Afghan Women’s Union, established by Soraya Parlika in 1992.

Underground and civil society years

During the 1990s she remained in Afghanistan, in contrast to many PDPA members, including her brother Abdul Wakil, despite her being a well-known and easily recognisable figure. She turned down various offers from family members to join them in Europe. Judith Huber quoted her as saying: “How could I have borne leaving the Afghan women and only returned when they would be better? How could I have then talked with them with my head held high, looked into their eyes and discussed their problems and suffering as I do today?”

She changed her name into Parlika, which has no meaning in Dari or Pashto and seems to have been chosen for exactly that reason. She told a German news magazine that ‘Soraya’ was too common, and her activism could have put other women with that name into danger. She started her women’s rights work again, using the cover of the burqa to remain undetected.

In September 1992, Parlika founded Ettehadiya-ye Sarasari-ye Zanan-e Afghanistan (own translation: All-Afghanistan Women’s Union, AAWU; in some sources ‘Association’ and AAWA). (6) She had to operate undercover, talking to women in places where they could meet without raising suspicion, at shrines, weddings and funerals. There she would discuss the need to organise for the improvement of women’s living conditions. This led to the establishment of a network of underground home training courses, in literacy, handicrafts for income generation, health and hygiene and, later, English and computer skills. When the Taleban took power in Kabul in 1996 they closed almost all state-run girls’ schools and dismissed female teachers, so AAWU began to run home schools for girls, employing a number of the laid-off teachers. The schooling and the courses were held in private homes, which were changed weekly, with teaching often starting at 4am, to prevent detection.

Parlika continued living in a modest Mikrorayon apartment, with income from the family land in Kamari helping her survive. The author first met her during that time, when AAWU and other illegal political and social organisations used access to Pakistan to contact the UN and other members of the international community.

Within a week of the downfall of the Taleban regime in 2001, AAWU and Parlika – now using both her names as Soraya Parlika – came out into the open and planned a women’s march in Kabul. She told the Guardian: “We wanted to call women from all the streets of Kabul and go to the UN [headquarters in the city] and we were going to demand our rights. If we demonstrate we will throw off our burkas and we will throw them out for ever.” De facto interior minister Yunos Qanuni, whose faction of the ‘Northern Alliance’ had just captured Kabul, warned her that they could be “attacked by al-Qaeda” and the women were persuaded not to march. According to the BBC, AAWU held several smaller meetings city-wide instead. The Guardian described it as “the fastest growing women’s organisation in Afghanistan.“

The association successfully pushed for girls from home schools to be integrated into state schools at the appropriate age level (rather than the age when official schooling had been interrupted). She proudly told visitors that girls from home schools performed much better than those who had been able to continue schooling in the country (7) or abroad. She started a campaign for women’s equality to be included in the future Afghan constitution, demanding mandatory education for girls through secondary school, equal representation in parliament and the judiciary, equal pay with men, a minimum marriageable age of 18, the criminalisation of domestic violence, sexual harassment and abuse, and a ban on baad (the practice of giving women or girls as brides as ‘compensation’ for crimes committed by one family against another).

At the end of 2001, Time magazine selected her as one of its global ‘people of the year’. At the same time, she was appointed to the 21-member Preparatory Commission for the 2002 Emergency Loya Jirga after female Afghan employees of the UN mission in the country voted for her in a non-representative snap poll against another candidate favoured by later president Ghani. This Loya Jirga was tasked with organising the transition from an interim to a fully-elected government (read AAN background here).

Parlika at the Constitutional Loya Jirga in Kabul 2003 (to the left, in profile; to the right: later presidential candidate  and women’s affairs minister Massuda Jalali). Photo: Thomas Ruttig.

In 2002, Parlika was elected to the board of the Afghan Civil Society Forum, one of the most active Afghan umbrella groups. Over the following years, she participated in the establishment of an independent journalists association and in work for a new media law. (8) She supported Afghan businesswomen and campaigned for measures to prevent the mass self-immolation of women. This brought her much acclaim, particularly among Afghan women and abroad, including a correspondence with Senator Hillary Clinton. In 2005, she was a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize as an Afghan participant of the worldwide 1000 Peace Women initiative. In 2011 and 2014, Parlika was elected by civil society organisations as a member of delegations representing them at the Bonn and London donor conferences for Afghanistan (AAN background here and here).

Parlika also went back into party politics. She participated in the failed attempt to bring together the various political groups established by former PDPA members into a single party (see the chapter “The ex-PDPA Left“ in this 2005 paper by the author). This resulted in what critics called the premature foundation, in early 2003, of Hezb-e Muttahed-e Melli-ye Afghanistan (the National United Party of Afghanistan, NUPA) under former PDPA-general and super-governor of Greater Kandahar, Nur ul-Haq Ulumi. Parlika was elected as one of the two deputy heads of the party. In 2005, she campaigned for parliament as one of 68 NUPA candidates, on a women’s rights platform, but failed, in an atmosphere of increasing violence against women. However, Kabul’s women elected her as a delegate to the 2004 Constitutional Loya Jirga.

Throughout her political career, Parlika remained true to her communist ideas, calling the April 1978 coup that brought the PDPA to power a “revolution.” A German radio correspondent wrote in 2005 when she was running for parliament: “Soraya Parlika does not deny her political roots.” But she was not uncritical, admitting that the PDPA initial reforms – among them land distribution and co-education – were “too fast” and too radical.

Her prominence as a women’s rights advocate and leftist put her at risk. In September 2003, armed men raided the AAWU office, smashing furniture and stealing the membership list. Phone threats followed. In 2006, she told a US media outlet that she had been shot at twice in the post-2001 years (one media report here).

A struggle unfinished

“I will continue my activities until Afghanistan has democracy, peace, equality between women and men, social development and the involvement of women in political, economic and social affairs,” she once said. In her last years she was sceptical about the prospects of her country, and particularly of peace talks with the Taleban. As early as 2012 she told the authors of a paper published by the German Heinrich Boell Foundation: “I am not optimistic at all. We do not know the agenda of the talks and this worries all women in Afghanistan. Women are at risk of losing everything they have gained.”

After struggling for many years with cancer, she finally left the country to join her family Switzerland after suffering a stroke, where she died, in Geneva, on 20 December 2019.

Like many leading Afghan women’s rights activists, Soraya Parlika put her political work ahead of her personal life. In one interview with Judith Huber she said of her decision not to marry: “I just did not find the time for it. Always when I wanted to marry a new problem occurred and I forgot about marrying. My [political and social] activities were more important to me.” She will be remembered for a lifetime of women’s rights activism, and according to film-maker Sahraa Karimi, for her selflessness:

Parlika was a very strong woman; she fought against her illness for many years, at the same time fighting against injustice. Her main priority in life was the women and girls of Afghanistan, their wellbeing, access to education, awareness about their rights. She was a true and unique woman who really lived the values that she deeply believed in.

Soraya Parlika, women’s rights activist, born 1944 in Kamari village, Bagrami district, Kabul province; died 20 December 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland.

Edited by Rachel Reid and Kate Clark

Correction included 16 January 2020: According to family information, the family was of Pashtun (not Tajik) ethnicity, and the father’s name was Muhammad Harif not Hanif. We added the name of the late mother and her, her late husband’s and two brothers’ dates of death, and a detail on the relation between the Karmal and Parlika families and corrected detail on Abdul Wakil’s role in the PDPA and his ministerial assignments.

Read another obituary by Malek Setez (in Dari) here.

For further reading on the subject of women’s rights in Afghanistan, go to this 2019 (updated) AAN dossier.

Poster of the documentary film about Soraya Parlika’s life by Sahraa Karimi.

 

(1) When not specifically pointed out otherwise, the biographical information comes from the following sources: portraits by Judith Huber (in: Risse im Patriarchat: Frauen in Afghanistan, Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 2002) and by Suhaila Muhsini (“Profile: Suraya Parlika – Champion of Women’s Rights,” Institute for War & Peace Reporting, ARR issue 129, 3 March 2005), the Afghan Bios website and notes from several meetings the author had with Soraya Parlika. As noted, there is also a documentary film about Parlika’s life by Afghan filmmaker Sahraa Karimi, who was appointed head of the Afghan Film Authority in May 2019. Her film was shown at the 16th Dhaka International Film Festival in 2018 and received the ‘best documentary’ award.

(2) There are contradictory sources about whether the DWOA was independent or a PDPA affiliate from the very beginning. While official PDPA sources claimed the DWOA as its ‘mass organisation’, various other sources – including Soraya Parlika herself – said there were non-PDPA members in DWOA. This was also supported by Afghan poet and contemporary of the events, Rahnaward Zaryab (see his article here).

(3) This is similar to the National Unity Government Chief Executive who resigned himself to the ‘western’ need to have a ‘first’ and a ‘second’ name and added a second ‘Abdullah’ to his original first. Many Afghans, particularly women, have only one name. Many chose a second name (takhallos) which is different from western ‘family names’ (although some Afghans have started using them as family names now.) As authorities have only now stared registering births more regularly, Afghans had been able to change their names.

(4) In 1986, Babrak Karmal left the country to exile in the USSR after Najibullah was appointed new party leader, which happened on the initiative of the Soviet leadership and against Karmal’s will. After Karmal officially remained  in the position of head of state for a while, his (non-PDPA) vice president Haji Muhammad Chamakanai then officially took over in an acting position between from 20 November 1986 and 30 September 1987.

(5) The current Ministry of Justice website shows the maternity leave law, published in the official gazette on 5 June 1979, as still in force. According to Article 1, maternity leave is 90 days. According to Article 2, the mother can have altogether 270 days of unpaid leave if she requests it. According to Article 3, unpaid leave does not harm her promotion.

(6) It seems Parlika made AAWU’s name resemble that of the All-Afghan Women’s Council (AAWC), into which DWOA was restructured in 1986 under President Najibullah’s programme to “broaden the base of his government” and placate non-PDPA and non-leftists. AAWC included non-PDPA members and was led by 1960s democracy activist Massuma Esmati. AAWU initially operated out of the destroyed AAWC office in Kabul’s Shahr-e Nau in 2001 before it was able to rent another office with German funding. In the 1990s, AAWU’s name had an addendum, Dakhel-e Keshwar (inside the country), to reflect that it was able to operate in Afghanistan, in contrast to the many exile organisations.

(7) In contrast to most reports, there were state-run schools open for girls during the Taleban time – but only a limited number. For an example, see my chapter in this book: Bittlingmayer UH, Grundmeier AM, Kößler, R, Sahrai, D, Sahrai, F (eds): Education and Development in Afghanistan: Challenges and Prospects, Bielefeld: transcript, 2019).

(8) Again in 2013, see this AAN background.

 

 

 

 

 

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As 2020 begins, we wanted to take a look back at what you were reading on the AAN website in 2019. Dominating the dispatches that were most read on our English language site were those analysing the Afghan presidential elections and the negotiations between the United States and the Taleban. Our Dari and Pashto readers were interested in these topics as well, but also reading dispatches to do with human rights, Afghan culture and pieces aimed at giving broader historical or social contexts. How Uzbeks are portrayed in western writing topped the Dari-Pashto list of top reads in 2019. AAN’s readership increased last year: the number of Pashto and Dari readers doubled and we received – for the first time – more than one million visits to the English website in a single year. AAN’s Kate Clark looks back at 2019 and forward to 2020 (data compiled by Sudhanshu Verma).

What was most read on AAN’s English website in 2019

We published 98 dispatches – our term for our in-depth, but ‘every day’ publications – last year. Topics ranged from the taboo on naming Afghan women in public to detailed reporting on the elections, from militias to migration, obituaries and book reviews to possible war crime trials and memories of the Soviet invasion and celebrations of Independence Day. We had in-depth reports on security in particular provinces and also published two special research series: one on how Afghans in districts under insurgent control or influence access basic services – schooling, healthcare and telecoms – and the other on what people think about peace, peace talks and how to end the conflict.

To ensure we cover a broad range of topics at AAN, we make sure we publish dispatches falling into seven thematic categories. Last year, the majority of our most-read dispatches fell into just two categories, War and Peace and the Political Landscape – a reflection of how much 2019 was dominated by two political ‘events’, the talks between the United States and the Taleban and the presidential elections. In terms of the seven categories, this is how the twenty most-read dispatches on the AAN website broke down:

• War and Peace: 7 dispatches in the top twenty most-read
• The Political Landscape: 7
• Rights and Freedoms: 2
• Context and Culture: 2
• International Engagement: 0
• Regional Relations: 0
• Economy and Development: 0
• Dispatches introducing long reports: 3

NB: one dispatch was about both elections and peace, so the total adds up to 21.

Among the top-twenty were also three dispatches which introduced longer, more substantial reports on: the ideology of the Taleban (published 2017); Pashtunwali (published 2011) and; an Afghan Bibliography which details publications on a range of topics to do with Afghanistan. (1)

The twenty most-read English-language AAN dispatches in 2019

1. Afghanistan’s 2019 elections (2): Who is running to become the next president?

Ali Yawar Adili

11 February 2019

Political Landscape

Afghanistan’s 2019 elections (2): Who is running to become the next president?

2. Afghanistan’s 2019 elections (6): Presidential campaign kicks off amid uncertainty

Ali Yawar Adili

28 July 2019

Political Landscape

Afghanistan’s 2019 elections (6): Presidential campaign kicks off amid uncertainty

3. Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (11): A first look at how E-Day went

Thomas Ruttig and Jelena Bjelica

28 September 2019

Political Landscape

Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (11): A first look at how E-Day went

4. Widespread Violence yet Perpetrators go Unpunished: A new UN report on violence against Afghan women

Jelena Bjelica and Thomas Ruttig

29 May 2018

Rights and Freedoms

Widespread Violence yet Perpetrators go Unpunished: A new UN report on violence against Afghan women

5. “Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”: First steps in Afghan peace negotiations

Thomas Ruttig

4 February 2019

War and Peace

“Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”: First steps in Afghan peace negotiations

6. Pashtunwali – tribal life and behaviour among the Pashtuns

Lutz Rzehak

21 March 2011

Pashtunwali – tribal life and behaviour among the Pashtuns

7. US-Taleban talks: An imminent agreement without peace?

Thomas Ruttig and Martine van Bijlert

30 August 2019

War and Peace

US-Taleban talks: An imminent agreement without peace?

8. Afghanistan Analyst Bibliography 2019

Christian Bleuer

1 April 2019

Afghanistan Analyst Bibliography 2019

9. Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (9): Presidential poll primer

Ali Yawar Adili, Jelena Bjelica and Thomas Ruttig

25 September 2019

Political Landscape

Afghanistan’s 2019 Election (9): Presidential poll primer

10. Symbolism of a Day: A century of changing independence day celebrations in Afghanistan

S Reza Kazemi

18 August 2019

Culture and Context

Symbolism of a Day: A century of changing independence day celebrations in Afghanistan

11. Deciding To Leave Afghanistan (1): Motives for migration

Lenny Linke

8 May 2016

Rights and Freedoms

Deciding To Leave Afghanistan (1): Motives for migration

12. Why the Taleban Should Read the Afghan Constitution

Ghizaal Haress

9 April 2019

Political Landscape

Why the Taleban Should Read the Afghan Constitution

13. The Results of Afghanistan’s 2018 Parliamentary Elections: A new, but incomplete Wolesi Jirga

Ali Yawar Adili

17 May 2019

Political Landscape

The Results of Afghanistan’s 2018 Parliamentary Elections: A new, but incomplete Wolesi Jirga

14. “Faint lights twinkling against the dark”: Reportage from the fight against ISKP in Nangrahar

Andrew Quilty

19 February 2019

War and Peace

“Faint lights twinkling against the dark”: Reportage from the fight against ISKP in Nangrahar

15. Trump Ends Talks with the Taleban: What happens next?

Kate Clark

8 September 2019

War and Peace

Trump Ends Talks with the Taleban: What happens next?

16. The Myth of ‘Afghan Black’ (1): A cultural history of cannabis cultivation and hashish production in Afghanistan

Fabrizio Foschini and Jelena Bjelica

7 January 2019

Culture and Context

The Myth of ‘Afghan Black’ (1): A cultural history of cannabis cultivation and hashish production in Afghanistan

17. AAN Q&A: What came out of the Doha intra-Afghan conference?

Thomas Ruttig

11 July 2019

War and Peace

AAN Q&A: What came out of the Doha intra-Afghan conference?

18. Ideology in the Afghan Taliban: A new AAN report

Anand Gopal and Alex Strick van Linschoten

29 June 2017

Ideology in the Afghan Taliban: A new AAN report

19. Khost Protection Force Accused of Fresh Killings: Six men shot dead in Zurmat

Kate Clark

21 January 2019

War and Peace

Khost Protection Force Accused of Fresh Killings: Six men shot dead in Zurmat

20. AAN Q&A: Between ‘Peace Talks’ and Elections – The 2019 Consultative Peace Loya Jirga

Jelena Bjelica and Thomas Ruttig

26 April 2019

Political Landscape + War and Peace

AAN Q&A: Between ‘Peace Talks’ and Elections – The 2019 Consultative Peace Loya Jirga

 

The photograph accompanying one of our most-read English dispatches, “Ideology in the Afghan Taliban: A new AAN report”. It shows the Kherqa-ye Sharif (the Shrine of the Holy Cloak) in Kandahar. The cloak belonged to the Prophet Muhammad and was displayed to a crowd by Mullah Omar when he was declared amir ul-mumenin in the spring of 1996. Photo: Thomas Ruttig (2005).

 

What was most read on AAN’s Dari and Pashto website in 2019

The picture for the ten most-read dispatches on our Dari and Pashto website, where we published 38 dispatches last year, was quite different. The elections and peace talks also featured, but the overall breakdown was of a rough, four-way split between dispatches dealing with culture and context; rights and freedoms; war and peace and; the political landscape. Compared to the English list, there were many more dispatches from previous years, with several also having been in last year’s top ten – those looking at the portrayal of Afghan Uzbeks, legal aid, sexual harassment and political parties. (The list below also gives the link to the English version of each dispatch.) (2)

1. From ‘Slavers’ to ‘Warlords’: Descriptions of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks in western writing

Christian Bleuer

17 October 2014

Culture and Context

From ‘Slavers’ to ‘Warlords’: Descriptions of Afghanistan’s Uzbeks in western writing

2. Afghanistan Election Year (1): Who’s Trying to Become the Next President?

Ali Yawar Adili

11 February 2019

Political Landscape

Afghanistan’s 2019 elections (2): Who is running to become the next president?

3. How to End the Afghan War? A new publication on peace reviewed

Kate Clark

2 June 2018

War and Peace

How to End the Afghan War? A new publication on peace reviewed

4. Harassment of Women in Afghanistan: A hidden phenomenon addressed in too many laws

Ehsan Qaane

2 April 2017

Rights and Freedoms

https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org/harassment-of-women-in-afghanistan-ahidden-phenomenon-addressed-in-too-many-laws/

5. Afghan Exodus: The re-emergence of smugglers along the Balkan route

Jelena Bjelica and Martine van Bijlert

10 August 2016

Rights and Freedoms

Afghan Exodus: The re-emergence of smugglers along the Balkan route

6. Legal Aid in Afghanistan: Contexts, Challenges and the Future

Sarah Han

18 April 2012

Rights and Freedoms

Legal Aid in Afghanistan: Contexts, Challenges and the Future

7. Inside and Outside the System: New AAN report on Afghanistan’s political parties published

Thomas Ruttig

6 May 2018

Political Landscape

Inside and Outside the System: New AAN report on Afghanistan’s political parties published

8. What’s in a Woman’s Name? No name, no public persona

Rohullah Sorush

8 March 2019

Culture and Context

What’s in a Woman’s Name? No name, no public persona

9. A Tomb in Kabul: The Fate of the Last Amir of Bukhara and his country’s relations with Afghanistan

Vladimir N Plastun and Thomas Ruttig

27 December 2018

Culture and Context

A Tomb in Kabul: The Fate of the Last Amir of Bukhara and his country’s relations with Afghanistan

10. The 2016 Insurgency in the North: Beyond Kunduz city – lessons (not taken) from the Taleban takeover

Obaid Ali

30 January 2016

War and Peace

The 2016 Insurgency in the North: Beyond Kunduz city – lessons (not taken) from the Taleban takeover

The AAN readership

For the first time, AAN had more than one million ‘visits’ in a year to its English language website – visits were up by 12 per cent compared to 2018. The number of individual readers coming to the site also increased, by almost a third. Meanwhile, the number of visits to AAN’s Dari and Pashto website almost doubled in 2019 compared to 2018 and the number of readers more than doubled. (3). The boost has come, it seems, because of interest in the elections and the peace process, with readers wanting to understand what is happening and what the consequences of these ‘events’ might be. As to the different countries which readers accessed the English website from, the scene was virtually unchanged from last year: Afghanistan still tops the list as the place where 41 per cent of our readers access the site (a proportion that has been roughly the same since 2014), followed by the United States (30 per cent) and then various European countries and India and Pakistan, at between three and seven per cent. (4)

The year ahead 

One of our last dispatches of 2019 was the 27th in a series analysing the presidential election which had been held in September. Entitled “The preliminary result, finally, but no end to controversy”, this dispatch heralded the fact that it will not be the last on this subject. Expect more, possibly many more dispatches in this series in 2020, as we cover the emerging first round results, allegations of fraud and a possible second-round run-off.

Dispatches on war and peace can also be anticipated in 2020; we hope for more of the latter than the former. There should also be developments on whether the Afghanistan ‘situation’ will be investigated by the International Criminal Court. In our last report from the ICC, in December 2019, we left the judges of the ICC appeal court going off to debate whether they should authorise such an investigation or not. Other issues will also continue to get our attention: trends in how the war is fought, including the harm done to civilians, the drug economy and developments in the Afghanistan’s political parties. Pieces on the near horizon include a report into the Afghans still in Guantanamo, a look at how well the newish local defence force, the Afghanistan National Army Territorial Force, is doing and an analysis of the political economy of Afghanistan, given its almost unique dependence on foreign aid and spending. We are also very much looking forward to publishing a history of elephants in Afghanistan.

AAN is now ten years old and to mark this, we will have a new website coming online. As to its content, in the year ahead, we hope to continue to bring you not only solid and insightful reporting on whatever 2020 brings to Afghanistan, but also insights into forgotten, but fascinating topics.

 

(1) Earlier surveys of what you were reading were:

 

“AAN’s most-read dispatches in 2018: So much war… and a little peace and justice”

Kate Clark

1 January 2019

AAN’s most-read dispatches in 2018: So much war… and a little peace and justice

“AAN’s 50 Most-Read Dispatches: War, headgear, politics…”

(This looked at the previous five years of dispatches)

Kate Clark

1 January 2017

AAN’s 50 Most-Read Dispatches: War, headgear, politics…

(2) Ten most-read Dari and Pashto dispatches, by category

• Culture and Context 3
• Rights and Freedoms 3
• War and Peace 2
• Political Landscape 2
• International Engagement: 0
• Regional Relations: 0
• Economy and Development: 0

(3) Visits to the English website in 2019: 1,019,613, up by 11.6%

English website readers in 2019: 233,701, up by 30.4%

Visits to the Dari and Pashto website in 2019: 70,124, up by 96.8%

Dari and Pashto website readers in 2019: 23,154, up by 110.9%

(4) AAN English website readership by country 2019:

• Afghanistan: 41% of readers
• United States: 30%
• UK: 7%
• Pakistan 6%
• Germany 5%
• India 4%
• Canada 4%
• Australia 4%
• France 3%
• Sweden 3%

Readership by country 2018 

• Afghanistan 40% of readers
• United States 29%
• UK 7%
• Germany 5%
• India 5%
• Pakistan 5%
• Canada 4%
• Australia 4%
• France 3%

 

 

 

This policy brief provides an overview of what the EU has done through its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions and operations since 2003, and which achievements and challenges it faces at the end of EU High Representative/Vice-President (HR/VP) Federica Mogherini’s mandate. It evaluates how the overall political context and the EU’s approach have evolved over time, and how this has affected the launch and implementation of CSDP actions. It looks at a range of criteria for evaluating the success of missions and operations such as effectiveness, degree of match between mission launch and EU interests at stake, responsiveness, coherence with wider policy strategies, coherence with values and norms, and degree of democratic scrutiny and oversight. It assesses some of the achievements as well as shortcomings of previous and ongoing missions and operations against these objectives. The brief identifies three underlying and cross-cutting problems hampering performance: (i) incompatible attitudes among Member States towards the use of force; (ii) resource disincentives and barriers to timely European solidarity; and (iii) gaps between early warning and early action. It outlines some selected initiatives launched and options discussed to address these shortcomings and improve the EU’s performance in crisis management operations.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

For several decades, European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Member States have worked closely to coordinate and, in some cases, jointly develop their military capabilities. Both NATO and the EU ask Member States to provide military capabilities to meet agreed force requirements. European states also cooperate increasingly closely over ways to increase efficiency and improve interoperability. Yet both EU and NATO force requirements suffer from longstanding capability shortfalls. Neither modest growth in defence spending nor deeper cooperation have yet been sufficient to fill these gaps. Spurred on, however, by the impact of the 2008 financial crisis and the recent deterioration in security in the east and to the south of Europe, EU Member States have sought to re-invigorate their approach to collaborating on the development of defence capabilities. They have overhauled existing measures and introduced new initiatives, notably the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD) and Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). While it is too soon to judge the effectiveness of these initiatives, they do significantly extend the scope for action in this field. Success, however, will only be assured if EU Member States support the new ‘top-down’ initiatives while also delivering on their own ‘bottom-up’ commitments to funding and deeper levels of cooperation.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The EU’s Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) has been a key focus of EU policy efforts in recent years, not just for security reasons, but also for economic ones. There have been a host of funds to strengthen and reinforce the EDTIB, and to ensure deeper cooperation, avoid duplication and underscore the interoperability of equipment. These funding streams have not been fully evaluated, but they are important symbols of the energy and commitment with which the EU has attempted to create an integrated pan-EU defence industry. There have, however, been challenges. The EU Member States remain predisposed to procuring weapons nationally or internationally, rather than regionally. There is a question as to whether these funds are great enough to be genuinely transformative, or whether in practice they are insufficient in relation to investment in the domestic defence industries. Finally, efforts to integrate the EDTIB also risk the EU being seen as protectionist, which may lead other major weapons suppliers such as the US to respond in kind.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

This policy brief provides a short overview of recent initiatives and developments in the EU’s institutional defence architecture, with a particular focus on changes proposed and implemented since 2016. Specifically, it looks at the new Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) framework, the Coordinated Annual Review on Defence (CARD), the European Defence Fund (EDF), the Military Planning and Conduct Capacity (MPCC), as well as proposals to establish a European Peace Facility (EPF) and to take more Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) decisions through qualified majority voting. It examines the institutional state of play at the end of Federica Mogherini’s mandate as EU High Representative and the implications of EU defence institutional innovation for existing governance structures, internal coherence and effective oversight. Finally, it identifies some of the challenges posed by the recent reforms and initiatives relating to the EU’s existing defence infrastructure, and briefly introduces proposals to address these challenges.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

This policy brief provides an overview of what the EU has done through its Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) missions and operations since 2003, and which achievements and challenges it faces at the end of EU High Representative/Vice-President (HR/VP) Federica Mogherini’s mandate. It evaluates how the overall political context and the EU’s approach have evolved over time, and how this has affected the launch and implementation of CSDP actions. It looks at a range of criteria for evaluating the success of missions and operations such as effectiveness, degree of match between mission launch and EU interests at stake, responsiveness, coherence with wider policy strategies, coherence with values and norms, and degree of democratic scrutiny and oversight. It assesses some of the achievements as well as shortcomings of previous and ongoing missions and operations against these objectives. The brief identifies three underlying and cross-cutting problems hampering performance: (i) incompatible attitudes among Member States towards the use of force; (ii) resource disincentives and barriers to timely European solidarity; and (iii) gaps between early warning and early action. It outlines some selected initiatives launched and options discussed to address these shortcomings and improve the EU’s performance in crisis management operations.
Source : © European Union, 2020 - EP

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Defence Agency (EDA) are embarking on new cooperative projects for exploring unknown and potentially hazardous environments: harnessing drones for the monitoring of disaster-stricken regions or toxic spill sites and making use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to navigate across the surface of asteroids or other terra incognita.

These two new joint projects have been authorised by the ESA Council and Steering Board of EDA. They are the latest in a long history of cooperation enabled by the ESA-EDA Administrative Arrangement, originally signed in 2011 and recently extended for a second time.
 

Innovation in disaster response

Space-based services have fast become essential to Europe’s safety and security. In 2017, a previous ESA-EDA Implementing Agreement demonstrated the use of space-based assets to respond to threats from toxic and hazardous materials. The project showed that space systems were beneficial to fast and accurate response to such threats in terms of situational awareness, early warning, detection and response planning.

Based on this success, the two agencies decided to extend their cooperation in this area, and in December signed an implementing agreement to carry out a next-stage demonstration project called Autonomous Drone Services (AUDROS).

By integrating space assets in sectors such as telecommunications, navigation and Earth observation, the partners will demonstrate the benefits of using autonomous and/or remotely piloted aerial vehicles to both detect toxic material and carry out rapid response to large-scale disasters. This activity will lead to the development of operational services that will deliver support to defence and security users on a permanent basis.
 

Flying into the unknown

ESA and the EDA are also cooperating in the development of new AI-based capabilities in the field of guidance, navigation and control (GNC) – knowing where an asset is and steering where it is going. Advanced, autonomous GNC is set to become an indispensable element of ambitious future space missions such as rendezvousing with asteroids and comets or the active removal of hazardous space debris from orbit. 
This joint project, dubbed ATENA, will develop AI-based systems with the capability of flying safely over unknown territory, such as an asteroid, to achieve enhanced navigation performance compared to current vision-based techniques based on feature tracking.
 

Deepening ESA-EDA cooperation

Through the two partners’ deepening cooperation, Europe is better equipped to implement priority objectives across cyber and maritime security, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, remotely piloted aircraft systems, secure satellite communications, autonomous access to space and ongoing Earth observation.

“The role of space-based services for security and defence actors is a recognised priority for Europe. The importance of space assets and applications for defence capabilities is reflected in the revised Capability Development Plan (CDP) approved by Member States at the EDA Steering Board in June 2018”, said EDA Chief Executive Jorge Domecq. “ESA is a natural and trusted partner for us. Over the years we have built a cooperation that has yielded numerous successful projects, through eight Implementing Agreements totalling over €5 million in shared investments, covering several priority areas.” 

For ESA, its partnership with EDA is a key component of the Agency’s relationship with the EU and of Agency commitments to the safety and security of Europe. “Through our political and technical dialogue, we are able to identify joint priorities hand-in-hand with users of space systems and security communities”, comments Jan Wörner, ESA’s Director General. “This virtuous dynamic is a key driving force of ESA’s space safety initiatives, recently endorsed and funded at our Space19+ Council at Ministerial Level.”

 

American Brutus 155 mm Truck-Mounted Howitzer

On 1 January 2020, EDA commenced its first deployment of civilian, fixed-wing Aeromedical Evacuation (AIRMEDEVAC) services to support Belgian Armed Forces operations in Niger in Africa. Belgian forces are active in several areas throughout Africa, including: Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.  In Niger, they are delivering training and operational advice to the Forces Armée Nigériennes (FANER) and operate in austere conditions with only limited medical support facilities.

To provide appropriate medical oversight, the deployment provides an aircraft based, primary life support capability, available 24/7 throughout the designated operational theatre, to move injured personnel from the main Damage Control Surgery Unit in the city of Maradi to definitive care facilities in neighbouring Gao, Chad or, in extremis, for repatriation to Europe.

EDA is no stranger to providing direct support to operations and maintains an entire unit dedicated to operational support, training and exercises. The niche services provided by the Agency, such as those within the EU SatCom Market, offer an attractive and easily accessible turn-key capability to many Member States’ planners. In national and CSDP operations and missions, the provision of certain key capabilities can be challenging. Typically operations or missions are deployed on short notice, in remote areas. In many cases, capabilities are not available and outsourcing is necessary to provide services from private companies. Experience has shown that contracting on the spot under time pressure is not a cost-effective solution. Having in place ready-to-use arrangements is very beneficial in order to reduce the administrative burden and achieve economies of scale.
 

Framework contracts

In 2019, EDA concluded several framework contracts with international aeromedical providers to cover fixed and rotary wing AIRMEDEVAC services in Africa and Europe. The project’s objective was the provision of in-theatre AIRMEDEVAC services to evacuate patients from the point of injury to an initial Medical Treatment Facility (Forward AIRMEDEVAC normally conducted by rotary wing platforms) or fixed-wing transfer between in-theatre Medical Treatment Facilities (Tactical AIRMEDEVAC) to be used in frame of national and/or international defence and/or security operations. The project is designed around military technical requirements developed by EU Military Staff and Member States experts and endorsed by the EU Military Committee.

The EDA AIRMEDEVAC contracts will run until January 2023 for a maximum value of 120 million Euro. The project currently involves four participating Member States (AT, BE, DE and NL)  but is also attracting interest from other EU agencies and bodies and look set to grow with further work in hand to examine the provision rotary wing Forward AIRMEDEVAC services later in the year.

The Belgian Defence Staff offered their own comment on the new capability: “This type of contractual vector offers ‘ready-to-use’ solutions allowing quick response to operational needs. EDA is advantageously taking care of procurement process, contracting, invoicing, etc. whilst the customer still keeps the right to take part in the evaluation of tenders by each reopening of competition and also remains responsible for controlling the performance of the contract once signed. The process with EDA is highly professional and quick, offering time and budget savings”.

Aside from direct support to operations, the unit also supports fixed, rotary and unmanned training and exercise activities.  Since 2009, it has developed a wide portfolio of advanced tactics courses for  European helicopter crews, employing simulator based and live training events covering hot and cold weather operations, both day and night, including weapon drops and support to special forces. Similarly, the Agency continues to support fixed-wing air transport operations under the banner of the European Air Transport Force (EATF) Programme, including capacity building activities for specific fleets (C-295, C-130) and initial training of Medium Altitude, Long Endurance (MALE) drone pilots and operators. 
 

More information:

• Contracts signed for the provision of aero medical evacuation services in Europe and Africa (EDA webnew, February 2019)
• EDA factsheet on AIRMEDEVAC

 

A dome-shaped ancient Buddhist shrine, the Topdara stupa to the north of Kabul was described by 19th century British explorer Charles Masson as “perhaps the most complete and beautiful monument of the kind in these countries.” Since Masson’s visit in 1833, the Topdara stupa saw few visitors and had fallen into neglect until recently, in 2016, when an Afghan cultural heritage organisation began its preservation and excavation work. When AAN’s Jelena Bjelica visited the stupa in spring 2019, she found its beauty and grandeur largely restored. In this dispatch she pieces together the history of the stupa from various historical and contemporary records (with input from Jolyon Leslie).

The Topdara stupa, repairing the drum and excavating the base

As one approaches Parwan’s provincial capital Charikar on the main highway from Kabul, the Topdara stupa can be seen on the left, set against the Koh-e Safi mountains. The stupa stands like a crown on an area of high ground above the village of Topdara, surrounded by orchards and barley fields. On an early April morning when AAN visited, staff from the Afghan NGO, the Afghanistan Cultural Heritage Consulting Organisation (ACHCO)  were busy doing preservation and excavation work on the site.

ACHCO’s work on the stupa began in 2016. Three years later when AAN visited, the stupa’s drum had been repaired and preserved, and almost the entire base of the stupa excavated. The structure, however, is still scaffolded as preservation work is ongoing. The drum – the dome-shaped upper part of the stupa – was damaged by Masson when he opened it up in the 19th century (see his drawings of the stupa as well as a photo from the late 1950s on page 83 in this 2017 British Museum publication).

A view of the Topdara stupa in 2016 before the ACHCO began the preservation and excavation work. Photo: Robert Nickelsberg (ACHCO), 2016.

The Topdara Stupa in 2017. The drum of the stupa covered with scaffolding has been completely repaired and preserved. Photo: ACHCO, 2017.

The front (east-facing) view of Topdara stupa from April 2019 after ACHCO excavated the base of the stupa. Photo: Jelena Bjelica, 2019.

The back (west-facing) view of Topdara stupa from April 2019 after ACHCO excavated the base of the stupa. Photo: Jelena Bjelica, 2019.

The principal structure at Topdara is the stone stupa and its drum, which measures 23 metres across and stands almost 30 metres high above the surrounding fields. The drum is ornamented with double ‘S’-shaped curves, which give it a decorative band of 56 identical niches framed by rounded arches. The arches are supported by engaged piers, or little pillars, in a classical style, over which pointed ‘hoods’ project. These hoods are, in turn, separated by slender pilasters formed from small pieces of schist, a mineral rock. Each niche has a small aperture in the centre where figures can be fixed, now long disappeared. Facing east above this frieze is a tri-lobed arch niche where three figures of the Buddha are thought to have once been mounted. According to this 2017 British Museum publication, this assumption is based on the remains of a stucco halo of what is thought to have been ‘the principal image’ of a standing Buddha, with what would probably have been two smaller seated Buddhas on each side. (1) The frieze is aligned with a ceremonial stair that faces the valley where the capital of the Kushan empire, Kapisa, once was.

The drum stands on a square base, which measures 36 metres on each side, that ACHCO has recently excavated. They discovered that the base is also ornamented with classical style pilasters and has two pairs of stairs, on its east and west points. The base was an integral element of the rituals followed by Buddhist pilgrims, who would have circumambulated around the stupa.

A narrow outer plinth or base surrounds the main platform on all sides, also articulated with engaged piers made from schist fragments. Traces of stone paving have been found around this outer plinth, indicating that this level might also have been used by pilgrims for circumambulation. According to ACHCO, the stupa would have been plastered and painted, with gilded parasols on the apex of its dome, flanked by flags and banners that would have been visible by pilgrims progressing along the slopes below.

In 19th century English sources, stupas were generally referred to with the term ‘tope’, which may or may not derive from the Dari word for hill or mound, tappa. The name of the village and the stupa, Topdara, could then mean Valley of the Stupa. For example, English orientalist H.H. Wilson (1786-1860) notes in the first chapter of the book Ariana Antica (1841):

The edifices which have of late years attracted so much attention in the north-west of India and in Afghanistan, have been known by the general appellation of Topes, a word signifying a mound or tumulus, derived from the Sanscrit [sic] appellation Sthupa [sic], having the same import. [Ariana Antica pp 28-9.]

According to Masson’s explanation in the second chapter of the same book:

The term Tope, which is applicable to the more prominent and interesting of the structures under consideration, is that in ordinary use by the people of the regions in which they most abound. A tope is a massive structure comprising two essential parts, the basement and perpendicular body resting thereon. The latter, after a certain elevation, always terminates after the manner of a cupola, sometimes so depressed as to exhibit merely a slight convexity of surface, but more frequently approaching the shape of a cone.

Speaking about the Topdara stupa, one of the three stupas he examined “to the north of Kabul, and in the districts of Koh Daman and the Kohistan,” Masson wrote: “The next [tope] occurs at Dara, about twenty-five miles from Kabul, and is perhaps the most complete and beautiful monument of the kind in these countries, as it is one of the largest.”

Little is known about the history of the Topdara stupa regarding who commissioned it, when it was built and how it was used. Archaeological research in Afghanistan has been episodic and the number of properly excavated sites in country is still tiny, compared to neighbouring Iran or Pakistan. Serious archaeological explorations in Afghanistan only began with the creation of the Délégation Archéologique Française en Afghanistan (DAFA) in 1922, which had obtained a monopolistic licence from the country’s then-ruler, Amanullah (more about him in this AAN dispatch). Subsequent wars, both World War II and the 40 years of conflict in Afghanistan since 1978, prevented the follow-up of much in-depth archaeological research. Masson’s written accounts from the 19th century, therefore, still offer an invaluable insight into the distant past of Afghanistan and its region.

Charles Masson (1800–53), explorer and collector of coins

Charles Masson was born in 1800 as James Lewis in Aldermanbury, which today is in the heart of the City of London. He grew up in a diverse community among Italian and French émigrés (see the British Museum publication, The Charles Masson Archive: British Library, British Museum and Other Documents Relating to the 1832– 1838 Masson Collection from Afghanistan). Although little is known about his early life, he was an educated man who started out knowing both Latin and Greek. The 2017 British Museum publication noted that Masson “certainly had a flair for languages, later learning to speak Hindustani and Persian. He also acquired some Pashto […]”.

After a quarrel with his father, James Lewis enlisted as an infantryman in the army of the British East India Company in 1821. He sailed to Bengal, where he served in the Third Troop of the First Brigade, the Bengal European Artillery, until 1827 when he deserted his regiment, then stationed in Agra, and took on the alias of Charles Masson. Under his assumed name he began a journey on foot from Agra through Rajasthan. He reached Peshawar in June 1828 and from there, several months later, travelled the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan with an unnamed ‘Pathan’ friend.

During his visits to Afghanistan he explored stupas mainly in the pursuit of coins. In the early 19th century, numismatics – the study and collection of coins – was popular in Great Britain, as was the deciphering of history through coins.

The first Buddhist site Masson visited in Afghanistan was Bamyan in late 1832, which he visited only once. Between 1833 and 1835, however, he surveyed and recorded over a hundred other sites around Kabul and Jalalabad, along the Kabul river, and in Wardak. He collected over 30,000 coins belonging to different periods of Afghanistan’s distant history and recorded the details of the stupas with the help of a camera lucida (an instrument in which rays of light are reflected by a prism to produce an image on a sheet of paper, from which a drawing can be made).

In January 1835, Lord Ellenborough, the British Governor General of India, requested a royal pardon for Masson, as he deemed him useful for the exploration of Afghanistan, a country of interest to Britain, which was soon to intervene for the first time (in the 1839-42 First Anglo-Afghan War). Masson was granted a royal pardon later that year. Lord Ellenborough’s plea described Masson as follows:

He is possessed of much science and ability. He has acquired and communicated much useful information respecting the condition of the People and Territories bordering on the Indus, and is now engaged in prosecuting his enquiries more of a Scientific than a Political nature to the north of the Hindu Kush… This person, whose private character appears to be unimpeached, except as regards the crime of desertion … seems disposed to atone as far as he can for that crime by useful contributions to the ancient history and to our present knowledge of the nations in the vicinity of the Indus.

All Masson’s finds went to the British East India Company, in return for its funding of his exploration of ancient sites in Afghanistan. The finds were sent on to the India Museum in London. When this closed in 1878, the British Museum was given all archaeological artefacts and a portion of the coins.

Masson’s accounts about the stupas

Masson’s written accounts of his explorations offer little on the history of the stupas he opened. But it was pioneer work nevertheless – like the contemporary French explorations in Egypt, it predated the establishment of archaeology as a science by almost 40 years.

Masson ventured to Charikar for the first time in June 1833. The 2017 British Museum publication on Masson writes that:

… a primary object of his ‘rambles’ in Kohistan was to find Alexandria ad Caucasum [a colony of Alexander the Great, one of many designated with the name Alexandria] or as Masson put it “to ascertain if any vestiges existed which I might venture to refer to Alexandria ad Caucasum, the site of which, I felt assured, ought to be looked for at the skirts of the Híndu Kush in this quarter.

Upon arrival in Charikar he soon discovered the Topdara stupa. In his 1842 Narrative of Various Journeys in Balochistan, Afghanistan and the Panjab, he wrote that 58 kilometres north of Kabul and 5 kilometres south-west of Charikar:

[…] we came in a line with Topdara, celebrated for the magnificent tope it contains… Passing through [the village], we proceeded to the Tope, and I occupied myself for some time in making sketches of it. About the monument were numerous caper-trees of spices similar to that of the Baloch and Persian hills. Proceeding a little up the dara, which had a fine brook running down it, whose volume of water was considerably augmented by the earthquake of last year [June 1832], we found a convenient place to rest in, and were supplied by the villagers with mulberries.

On this first visit, Masson simply sketched the stupa and took a few bearings from a hill overlooking the plain. He opened the stupa in the same year. In Ariana Antica (pp. 116–17) he wrote:

[…] I examined it in 1833, and found in the centre a small apartment, formed by slate-stones, and containing the same materials as the mass of the building; amongst them I detected a fragment of bone, but no more useful result: the inner surfaces of the slate-stones had been covered with red lead [probably red ochre]. This was the first tope I opened, and subsequent experience led me to believe I had not proceeded far enough in the examination of the structure; in all events, it would have been satisfactory to have continued it.

The 2017 British Museum publication says that “Masson tunnelled into the dome at a point fairly high up the drum on both the east and west sides”, judging by “the visible holes that pierce the arcade of arches and pilasters.” The holes have now been repaired by ACHCO.

Although Masson’s chapter in Ariana Antica does not provide historical information about this particular stupa, it offers some valuable general observations about these structures in Afghanistan. For example, he said:

Topes must be considered as fronting the east, both because many of their basements are provided with flights of steps at that point, and because others of them have niches facing the east, over their ornamental belts. That these niches once held statues is almost certain, from the holes or apertures seen in them, as is observed in the smaller niches among the caves and temples of Bamian, which we know were occupied by statues or idols, from their mutilated remains still to be seen in some of them.

The Topdara stupa’s drum is ornamented with double ‘S’-shaped curves, which give it a decorative band of 56 identical niches framed by rounded arches. Photo: Jelena Bjelica, 2019.

Masson also observed that stupas had been built on elevations overlooking the valleys. He wrote:

The locality and position of these structures demand attention. The favourite sites selected for them are at the skirts of hills, on elevations separated from each other by ravines. The topes of Kabul, Chahar Bagh [west of Jalalabad], and Hidda [sic – correct: Hadda], are remarkable for the distinct nature of their situation with reference to each other.

He also noticed [Ariana Antica, pp 48-9] that:

Water is constantly found near topes and their appendages, and it would appear to have been a leading principle in the selection of their sites, that springs of water should be at hand. It was, of course, indispensable to the conveniences of the communities secluded in the caves, and to their performance of their rites and ablutions; and it was also necessary that it should be pure and flowing from the rock.

The Topdara stupa, as Masson also described on his first visit, is also located in the vicinity of a mountain stream. During our visit in April 2019, the noisy stream, swollen from the melted snow from surrounding peaks, echoed through the nearby barren slopes. The Topdara stupa in its glory days might have been a truly meditative and peaceful site.

European discovery and explorations of Afghan Buddhist remains

Masson’s discoveries of Buddhists sites in the mid 19th century are probably the first relatively detailed accounts of this cultural heritage in Afghanistan. In fact, Europeans seem to have only become aware of the extensive Buddhist remains of Afghanistan, in particular those close to the main route between Peshawar and Kabul through the Khyber Pass, in the 1820s, the decade before Masson visited. The earliest travellers to report on the archaeological sites were William Moorcroft (1767–1825), veterinarian and superintendent of the East India Company, and George Trebeck (1800–25), geographer and draftsman, who were together on an expedition in search of new equestrian breeding stock. (2)

Some ten years later the Buddhist heritage in Afghanistan was still questioned by Europeans. In 1833, for example, Alexander Burnes (1805-41), a British explorer and diplomat associated with the Great Game and killed during the First Anglo-Afghan War in Kabul, published an article in the Journal of Asiatic Society about the Bamyan Buddhas. There he offered several different interpretations about the origins of the giant statues. He writes:

There are no reliques of Asiatic antiquity which have more roused the curiosity of the learned than the colossal idols of Bamiyan. […] It is stated that they were excavated about the Christian era by a tribe of kafirs (infidels), to represent a king named SALSAL and his wife, who ruled in a distant country, and was worshipped for his greatness. The Hindus assert them to have been excavated by the Pandus, and that they are mentioned in the great epic poem of the Mahabharat. Certain it is that the Hindus on passing these idols at this day hold up their hands in adoration, though they do not make offerings, which may have fallen into disuse since the rise of Islam. I am aware that a conjecture attributes these images to the Buddhists, and the long ears of the great figure make it probable enough.

Even in 1841 the Buddhist remains in Afghanistan were still not being fully recognised as such. An officer in the navy of the East India Company, who in 1836 was appointed to take part in a mission to Afghanistan led by Alexander Burnes, John Wood (1811–71), wrote in his book A Journey to the Source of the River Oxus: “the road by Bamiyan, although circuitous, rewards a stranger with a sight of its colossal idols, caves, and other records of the existence of a race of men unknown either to history or tradition.”

A sixth century travelogue about a journey from China to the Buddhist sites in today’s Afghanistan and Pakistan, entitled “Si-Yu-Hi” or “Record of the Western Countries” by Huan Tsang, a Buddhist monk, finally indisputably confirmed to Europeans that the statues in Bamyan were indeed Buddhas, when the text was translated into English in 1906.

It was in the end the de facto work of Charles Masson that largely uncovered the Buddhist remains in Afghanistan. Although the excavations by a medical officer from the Austro-Hungarian empire in Sikh services, Johann Martin Honigberger, in the 1830s were lauded in the 19th century, in hindsight they turned out to have been rather modest. Recent discoveries of documents point out that Honigberger only documented seven, while claiming that he examined 20 stupas. (3) Masson’s finds were much more numerous and better documented. Only in Ariana Antica, for example, he published small illustrations of a selection of 48 key sites. But this, according to the 2017 British Museum publication, “barely skims the surface of his unpublished records held in the India Office Collection of the British Library.”

H.H. Wilson in Ariana Antica said the two men “have been most distinguished for their researches amongst the topes.” He then proceeded to analyse the stupas discovered in Afghanistan and compared them with those scattered over the then-vast British Empire. He concluded:

[…] all are agreed that the topes are monuments peculiar to the faith of Buddha: there is some difference, not very material, as to their especial appropriation. Lieutenant Burnes, Mr. Masson, and M. Court, adopting the notions that prevail amongst the people of the country, are inclined to regard them as regal [sic] sepultures; but I am disposed with Mr. Erskine and Mr. Hodgson, and, I believe, with those learned antiquaries who have treated of the subject in Europe, to regard them as dahgopas on a large scale, that is, as shrines enclosing and protecting some sacred relic, attributed, probably with very little truth or verisimilitude, to Sakya Sinha or Gautama, or to some inferior representative of him, some Bodhisatwa, some high-priest or Lama of local sanctity.

Topdara – out of focus for almost 200 years

DAFA began formal excavations in Afghanistan in the 1926, focusing on Hadda, near Jalalabad. There, between 1926 and 1928, Jules Barthoux worked on a site containing the ruins of eight monasteries and around 500 stupas. The excavation yielded approximately 15,000 sculptures, only a relatively small portion of which were transferred to the National Museum in Kabul and the Guimet Museum in Paris. Other sculptures were kept in an open-air museum at Hadda, which was destroyed and looted during the fighting in the time of the Soviet occupation (1979-89).

Topdara was not the focus of DAFA’s research. However, in the Afghanistan Quarterly Review from 1953,  the founder of the Afghan Historical Society (Anjuman-e Tarikh-e Afghanistan) and the then-curator of the National Museum (est. 1931), Ahmad Ali Kohzad (1907–83) did mention the site. Kohzad wrote that the excavations of 1921 and 1922 had discovered “new sources of evidence concerning the local religion and the civilization of the Kushan era in Bagram, including small elephant statues pertaining to the guardian of the mountain.” (4) “This mountain” he said “is located on the western edge of Kapisa. In Buddhist times a great Buddhist temple had been built at the foot of this mountain, the ruins of which, according to M. Fouche, still exist at Topdara, in front of Tcharikar.”

The stupa was photographed in 1967 by Japanese sinologist and archaeologist Seiichi Mizuno, who had been to Afghanistan and Pakistan to supervise the excavation of Buddhist sites between 1959 and 1967. See his picture of Topdara on page 83 of this 2017 British Museum publication). The Topdara stupa was, however, never properly excavated until 2016, when ACHCO started its work. Whether the site hides a great Buddhist temple under the dirt, as suggested by Kohzad, remains to be seen.

The history of the Topdara stupa is still unknown. However, given its location near the site of the ancient city of Kapisa (around or in what is now Bagram, a small bazaar town mainly known for the gigantic air base nearby), ACHCO thinks the stupa may have been commissioned in around 400 CE. (5) Buddhism thrived in and around Kapisa for several centuries, as indicated by the many Buddhist monuments in this area, some explored and excavated, others unattended. Topdara seems to have been one of many stupas along the main road from Kabul to the ancient city of Kapisa, now Bagram, which included the Tepe Iskander stupa located 15 kilometres north of Kabul, and the site three kilometres south of the district centre of Mir Bacha Kot, also known as Saray-e Khwaja) (see here and here). A better-researched and documented history of the Topdara stupa, and the civilization it was part of, is, however, yet to be written.

Edited by Thomas Ruttig and Martine van Bijlert

(1) The 2017 British Museum publication, “Charles Masson and the Buddhist Sites of Afghanistan: Explorations, Excavations, Collections 1832–1835” edited by Elizabeth Errington, describes the drum of Topdara as such:

The drum is decorated with an arcade of ogee arches and Indo-Corinthian pilasters, with an upper tier of Indo-Persepolitan pilasters in the spandrels. There is a dowel hole in each archway for attaching a statue. On the east side, above this frieze, is a recessed tri-lobed arch (width 3.7m), which still contained the remains of the stucco halo of the principal image. This was probably a standing Buddha, flanked by a smaller kneeling figure on either side.

(2) According to H.H. Wilson, the first stupa that came to British attention in the region was discovered at Sarnath, in India, where an urn and a Buddha statue had been discovered by a local in 1794. This stupa was opened in 1835. Wilson also mentions explorations in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), accounts of which had been published in 1799.  On Afghanistan stupas, Wilson said:

The use of the term tope in connexion with monuments of this shape was first adopted when the next building of the class was discovered in Upper India. In 1808 the embassy to Kabul, conducted by Mr. Elphinstone, when upon their way back to India, arrived at a part of the country between the Indus and the Jhelum, in which, according to the notions of Colonel Wilford, the capital of Taxiles [now known as Taxila, in today’s Pakistan], the ally of Alexander, was situated. A party left the camp to explore the neighbourhood for relics of antiquity, in confirmation of this opinion; and they met with this edifice, the Tope of Manikyala, a solid circular building of masonry, surmounted by a dome, and resting upon a low artificial mound.

(3) Honigberger spent around five months in Afghanistan in 1833. He gives a short rendering about this part of his journey in his Früchte aus dem Morgenlande oder Reise-Erlebnisse nebst naturhistorisch-medizinischen Erfahrungen, einigen hundert erprobten Arzneimitteln und einer Heilart, dem Medial-Systeme (Vienna 1851), translated into English under the title Thirty-five years in the East. Adventures, discoveries, experiments, and historical sketches, relating to the Punjab and Cashmere; in connection with medicine, botany, pharmacy, etc. (London 1852, online here). He only stated that “At Cabul … and Jellalabad … I opened a great many cupolas (tombs)” but he did not give their exact locations. He further mentioned that his collection from then had been sent to and published by the Asiatic Society in Paris in 1835. Another part of his collection which had been sent to Vienna was lost.

According to a 2017 British Museum publication, Honigberger claimed “to have opened a total of 20 stupas in the Kabul and Darunta regions, but he only documented the seven stupas containing relic deposits: Shevaki 1, Kamari 2, Seh Top 2, Kotpur 1, Barabad, Bimaran 3 and 5.” The publication further said:

However, Masson provides information on a further ten sites, bringing the total of identified Honigberger excavations to 17: the stupas of Korrindar and Topdara in the Koh-i-Daman to the north of Kabul (Masson 1841, Topes pl. IXc–d); Guldara on the southern side of the Shakh Baranta ridge and, west of Jalalabad, the Darunta sites of Kotpur 3, Passani 2, Bimaran 2, Deh Rahman 2, Surkh Tope and Nandara 1 and 2.

(4) These ‘elephant heads’ were called ‘Pilo Sara’ and ‘Pilo Solo’ in Sanskrit and Chinese before the Islamic era. In current-day Afghanistan, ‘Fil’ (colloquial ‘pil’) is also the word for elephant in Dari and Pashto.

(5) Although Buddhism could have been established in Afghanistan at any time during the last two or three centuries BCE, it is not until the advent of the 1st century CE that there is any tangible chronological evidence in the form of dated inscriptions and the inclusion of coins in the relic deposits (see here).

 

 

Iranian Raad Air Defense Missile System