The Price of Freedom
In this day of time, freedom comes easy to most Americans because most have never known anything different. For millions of other people in the world it's far from that. On my birthday, January 1, 1983 Afghanistan was being invaded by the soviet army, lived under the Talaban terrorist regime, for decades, and never had the opportunity to have a presidential election until about two weeks ago from this day on December 21, 2004.
Afghanistan is a middle Eastern state located in the southwest region of central Asia. It's territory covers 252,830 square miles, an area roughly equal to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark combined (Grau 2). Their border is 3,366 miles long and it is shared with the Soviets, Iran, Pakistan, India, and China. The population of this country is 17 million and the averaging population density is some 65 people per square mile (Tamarov 22).
Soviet troops (in right row) withdrawing from Afgh...
Honor guard of the Afghan National Army during the...
Afghan Schoolchildren in KabulThere are roughly 20 different nationalities in Afghanistan belonging to various language groups.
The History of Afghanistan is one of resistance to various conquerors, and armed bands. It is intrusting that Alexander the Great, while conducting his conquest toward the
Bromley 2
east, took five years to break the resistance of the Afghan tribes. Ten Centuries later, Arab conquerors met the desperate resistance of the Afghan tribes. Six times they launched an offensive against Kabul and the area of the central plateau. Each time they were forced to withdraw, having suffered heavy casualties (Grau 7). Even the English invaded Afghanistan in 1838, but after occupying them for 3 years a guerrilla warfare was launched against the British. This led to a massive rebellion in Kabul in November of 1841 that resulted in the destruction of the occupation army and the remaining British forces withdrew (Robinson). The British being...