North-West Frontier: Kohistan, Hindu Kush, Pamirs

Author(s):  
Mike Searle

The Hindu Kush Mountains run along the Afghan border with the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Following the First Anglo-Afghan war of 1839– 42 the British government in Simla decided that the North-West Frontier of British India had to have an accurate delineation. Sir Mortimer Durand mapped the border between what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1893 and this frontier is known as the Durand Line. Unfortunately it is a political frontier and one that splits the Pathan or Pushtun-speaking lands into two, with the North-West Frontier Province and Waziristan in Pakistan to the east and the Afghan provinces of Kunar, Nangahar, Khost, Paktiya, and Kandahar to the west. The border regions north of Baluchistan in Quetta and Waziristan are strong tribal areas and ones that have never come under the direct rule of the Pakistani government. Warlords run their drug and arms businesses from well-fortified mud-walled hilltop fortresses. During the period that Lord Curzon was Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905 the entire border regions of British India were mapped out along the Karakoram, Kashmir, Ladakh, and south Tibetan Ranges. During Partition, in 1947, once again an artificial border was established separating mostly Muslim Pakistan from India. Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, gave Sir Cyril Radcliffe the invidious task of delineating the border in haste to avoid a civil war that would surely have come, and on 17 August 1947 Pakistan inherited all the territory between the Durand Line and the new Indian frontier, the Radcliffe Line. In the north, the disputed Kashmir region still remained unresolved and the northern boundary of Pakistan ran north to the main watershed along the Hindu Kush, Hindu Raj, and Karakoram Ranges. To the west, Afghanistan was a completely artificial country created by the amalgamation of the Pathans of the east, Hazaras of the central region, the Uzbeks in the Mazar-i-Sharif area, and the Tadjiks of the Panjshir Valley along the border with Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. The British lost three wars trying to invade this mountainous land between 1839 and 1919, and the Soviet Union which occupied Afghanistan for ten years from 1979 also withdrew across the Oxus River in failure in February 1989.

Author(s):  
Ivan V. ZYKIN

During the years of Soviet power, principal changes took place in the country’s wood industry, including in spatial layout development. Having the large-scale crisis in the industry in the late 1980s — 2000s and the positive changes in its functioning in recent years and the development of an industry strategy, it becomes relevant to analyze the experience of planning the spatial layout of the wood industry during the period of Stalin’s modernization, particularly during the first five-year plan. The aim of the article is to analyze the reason behind spatial layout of the Soviet wood industry during the implementation of the first five-year plan. The study is based on the modernization concept. In our research we conducted mapping of the wood industry by region as well as of planned construction of the industry facilities. It was revealed that the discussion and development of an industrialization project by the Soviet Union party-state and planning agencies in the second half of the 1920s led to increased attention to the wood industry. The sector, which enterprises were concentrated mainly in the north-west, west and central regions of the country, was set the task of increasing the volume of harvesting, export of wood and production to meet the domestic needs and the export needs of wood resources and materials. Due to weak level of development of the wood industry, the scale of these tasks required restructuring of the branch, its inclusion to the centralized economic system, the direction of large capital investments to the development of new forest areas and the construction of enterprises. It was concluded that according to the first five-year plan, the priority principles for the spatial development of the wood industry were the approach of production to forests and seaports, intrasectoral and intersectoral combining. The framework of the industry was meant to strengthen and expand by including forests to the economic turnover and building new enterprises in the European North and the Urals, where the main capital investments were sent, as well as in the Vyatka region, Transcaucasia, Siberia and the Far East.


Pakistan ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 131-144
Author(s):  
Mariam Abou Zahab

This chapter attempts to analyse the dynamics of the Pashtun–Punjabi nexus and the areas of competition and cooperation between Sunni sectarian groups and the Pakistani Taliban. It outlines the links between Sunni sectarian groups and the Afghan Taliban, the impact of the collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the implications of the relocation of Punjabi jihadi/sectarian groups in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). It also focuses on the consequences of the storming of Islamabad's Lal Masjid in July 2007, and it investigates the re-emergence of sectarian groups in Karachi and in the Punjab and its implications for Pakistan. The Punjab and Karachi have been the primary hubs of sectarian violence in Pakistan since the 1980s, but in the post-9/11 environment the Sunni-Shia conflict has assumed a new dimension.


1964 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 652-655 ◽  

The ninth annual Conference of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Parliamentarians was held in Paris on November 4–8, 1963. Addressing the parliamentarians, Mr. Dirk U. Stikker, Secretary-General of NATO, outlined the three essential aspects of the evolution in international relationships presently confronting the Alliance: first, relations between East and East—the rivalry between the Soviet Union and Communist China; secondly, relations between East and West—the questions arising from the Soviet Union's agreement to sign a partial test-ban treaty and the relations between the West and the uncommitted world; and, thirdly, relations between West and West—relations within the Atlantic Alliance itself.


Author(s):  
Ali Satan ◽  
Meral Balcı

In 1947, a British diplomat conducted a visit to the places travelled rarely by local and foreign travelers, The Black Sea Coast between Samsun and Giresun in the North, the Malatya-Erzincan train line in the South, the Sivas-Erzurum train route in the West, Erzincan-Şebinkarahisar- Giresun in the East, and reported what he saw to London. In secret report, there provided military, political, ethnographic and historical information. In rapidly changing life conditions in the world, this secret report, which was written seventy years ago, set us on a historical journey. In the year, which the secret report was written, Turkey preferred being part of Western bloc in newly established bipolar international system and British diplomats were trying to understand how Britain and the Soviet Union were looked at in the regions they visited. In the secret report, there were also striking observations regarding the activities of the newly formed opposition party (Democratic Party) in Anatolia, the distance between the Turkish elites and the Anatolian villagers, and the military-civilian relationship in Anatolia.


Antiquity ◽  
1982 ◽  
Vol 56 (216) ◽  
pp. 8-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. R. Allchin

The city of Taxila, more properly Takṣaśilā, was one of the most important in ancient India. It is frequently mentioned as one of the two great cities of Gandhara (approximately the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan), along with its neighbour Puṣkalāvatī (modem Charsada north of Peshawar) some 80 miles (130 km) to the west. It was first identified in modern times by Major General Sir Alexander Cunningham in 1863, after he had visited the extensive series of mounds lying near the village of Shah Dheri, east of Hasan Abdul, in the Punjab province of Pakistan (Cunningham, 1871). His identification was soon confirmed by the discovery there of early inscriptions referring to Taxila by name.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 86-95
Author(s):  
С. П. Донченко

The whole period of the Soviet Union’s existence and the first years of independence of Ukraine didnot write and talked about the military conflict in the winter of 1939–1940. The reason for the strategicdefeat of the huge Soviet Union in the war with a small Finland. In the Soviet Union, they tried to createsuch a notion as the «Soviet people,» the relocation and mixing of a large number of people throughout thespace of the USSR. Therefore, no one has ever defined participants in events by nationality or territoriallocation. Ukrainians also did not stand out. It was only when Ukraine became independent that therewas a need to determine the participation of Ukrainians in the Soviet-Finnish war and their role. Duringthe Soviet-Finnish war, the North-West front was commanded by the future Marshal and Hero of theSoviet Union, Ukrainian Timoshenko Semyon Konstantinovich. Future Marshal and Hero of the SovietUnion, Ukrainian Kulik Grigory Ivanovich, as Deputy People’s Commissar for Defense of the USSR,participated in the preparation of Army and Artillery Parts for the Soviet-Finnish War. The commanderof the 70th division was Ukrainian Kirponos Mikhail Petrovich. Participated in the combat operations ofthe pilot-as and Hero of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian Kravchenko Grigory Panteleevich. Future Marshaland Hero of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian, Moskalenko Kirill Semenovich, during the Soviet-FinnishWar, was the head of the artillery 51st Perekopskaya Rifle Division of the Odessa Military District. Thefuture Colonel-General of the Tank Army and Hero of the Soviet Union, Ukrainian Kravchenko AndriyGrigorievich, during the war, was Chief of Staff of the 173th Motorized Infantry Division. In the threemonth conflict, nearly 40,000 Ukrainians died. Among those who fought in this war and received thehighest award – the Order of Lenin – Vasyl Petrenko from Poltava region. On the side of the USSR twodivisions participated in the war, which were completed in Ukraine. These are the 44th and 70th InfantryDivisions. The first of them fell into the environment and almost all died, trying to break away from theFinnish ring. Those who escaped were subjected to a martial law court. Division commander, chief ofstaff, chief of the police department and commissar were shot. In general, several thousand participantsin this war suffered repressions. Instructive that the Finnish side arranged the graves of the dead Sovietsoldiers. The city of Suomussalmi has a monument to the soldiers of the 44th Division, at the time whenthe names of the heroes were for gotten in the homeland.


1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 24-32
Author(s):  
Michael Mandelbaum

Of all modern machines, indeed of all the artifacts of modern culture, the bomb is the most frightening. It is the most dangerous of all human inventions. The American, European, and Soviet people have always known how dangerous it is. They have, nevertheless, left nuclear weapons in the hands of the nuclear priesthood. (In the Soviet Union this has not been a matter of choice.) In the 1980s some in the West resolved to take control of the bomb. They began to demand that disarmament replace deterrence as the principal nuclear business of the Atlantic alliance.Probably from 1945 onward the average American or European would, if asked, have said that he wanted to do away with all nuclear arsenals rather than refine or increase them. But the average Westerner was not asked, and did not say so, at least not in any way that influenced public policy. In the 1980s citizens of the West did begin to say so, publicly, loudly, and in growing numbers. For the first time, a mass movement dedicated to shaping the nuclear future appeared on both sides of the Atlantic.In this, as in other things, the North American and the European wings of NATO differ. Opposition to the alliance's nuclear weapons policies made itself known earlier in Europe than in the United States. Both European and American anti-nuclear weapons activists aimed ultimately to lift the nuclear siege that the world must endure as long as these weapons exist. But each rallied around a more immediate issue, and the issues were different. The Europeans opposed the stationing of 572 intermediate-range missiles on the continent, which the NATO governments deemed necessary to offset comparable Soviet weapons. In the United States a proposal to freeze the deployment, testing, and manufacture of all weapons by both superpowers attracted wide support.


2008 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121
Author(s):  
Sultan -i- Rome

This paper presents a study of riwaj (customary law) in the traditional society of the present-day Provincially Administered Tribal Areas (PATA) of the North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan. Under riwaj only males could own land; women had no right to inherit land. During the Swat State era (1915-1969), on the whole, the traditional practice remained the law of inheritance and ownership of land under which the women folk were not entitled to inherit. However, during the reign of Miangul Jahanzeb in some cases the women were given the right to inherit and own land. The pattern of land ownership remained the same, in general, after the merger of the state in 1969. In this scenario, The West Pakistan Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1962 (W. P. Act V of 1962), with exception to the proviso of section 3 and 7, was extended to the area on 15 January 1976. Although extension of The West Pakistan Muslim Personal Law (Shariat) Application Act, 1962, brought no practical change for the time being, its extension along with the land settlement carried out by the provincial revenue department, in most of the study area, were destined to bring the required change.


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