Bamyan Province also spelled Bamiyan, Bāmīān or Bāmyān (Persian: ولایت بامیان)[5] is one of the thirty-four provinces of Afghanistan with the city of Bamyan as its center, located in central parts of Afghanistan.
The terrain in Bamyan is mountainous or semi-mountainous, at the western end of the Hindu Kush mountains concurrent with the Himalayas. The province is divided into eight districts, with the town of Bamyan serving as its capital. The province has a population of about 495,557[6] and borders Samangan to the north, Baghlan, Parwan and Wardak to the east, Ghazni and Daykundi to the south, and Ghor and Sar-e Pol to the west. It is the largest province in the Hazarajat region of Afghanistan and is the cultural capital of the Hazara ethnic group that predominates in the area.
It was a center of commerce and Buddhism in the 4th and 5th centuries.[5] In antiquity, central Afghanistan was strategically placed to thrive from the Silk Road caravans that crisscrossed the region, trading between the Roman Empire, Han Dynasty, Central Asia, and South Asia. Bamyan was a stopping-off point for many travelers. It was here that elements of Greek and Buddhist art were combined into a unique classical style known as Greco-Buddhist art.
The province has several famous historical sites, including the now-destroyed Buddhas of Bamiyan, around which are more than 3,000 caves, the Band-e Amir National Park, Dara-e Ajhdar, Gholghola and Zuhak ancient towns, the Feroz Bahar, Astopa, Klegan, Gaohargin, Kaferan and Cheldukhtaran.
Archaeological exploration done in the 20th century suggests that the geographical area of Afghanistan has been closely connected by culture and trade with its neighbors to the east, west, and north. Artifacts typical of the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron Ages have been found in Afghanistan.[7] Urban civilization is believed to have begun as early as 3000 BC, and the early city of Mundigak (near Kandahar in the south of the country) may have been a colony of the nearby Indus Valley civilization.[8]
After 2000 BC, successive waves of semi-nomadic people from Central Asia began moving south into Afghanistan; among them were many Indo-European-speakingIndo-Iranians.[9] These tribes later migrated further south to India, west to what is now Iran, and towards Europe via the area north of the Caspian Sea.[10] The region as a whole was called Ariana.[9][11][12]
Bamyan Murals inside Buddah
The people shared similar culture with other Indo-Iranians. The ancient religion of Kafiristan survived here until the 19th century. Another religion, Zoroastrianism is believed by some to have originated in what is now Afghanistan between 1800 and 800 BC, as its founder Zoroaster is thought to have lived and died in Balkh.[13][14][15] Ancient Eastern Iranian languages may have been spoken in the region around the time of the rise of Zoroastrianism.
Afghanistan's significant ancient tangible and intangible Buddhist heritage is recorded through wide-ranging archeological finds, including religious and artistic remnants. Buddhist doctrines are reported to have reached as far as Balkh even during the life of the Buddha (563 BC to 483 BC), as recorded by Husang Tsang. It became the site of an early Buddhist monastery. "Buddhism was by this time in an expansionist mode, offering religious practices that spoke to the masses and an appealing style of illustrative art, backed by the subtle philosophy of the Mahayana sect" [17] Many statues of Buddha were carved into the sides of cliffs facing Bamyan city. The two most prominent of these statues were standing Buddhas, now known as the Buddhas of Bamyan, measuring 53 and 40 meters high respectively, which were the largest examples of standing Buddha carvings in the world. They were probably erected in the 4th or 5th century A.D. They were cultural landmarks for many years and are listed among UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.
In the 1980s, during the Soviet-Afghan War, the Hazara rebel leader Abdul Ali Mazari began a resistance movement against the Soviets in the region, Shura-e-Itifaq-e-Islami. In the early 1990s, there was an agreement to run Bamyan under a council of "local ethnic and political groups". Later in the 1990s, the Taliban took control of the region and made their own government; one notable figure of this group was Mohammed Akbari, who effectively worked with the Taliban after meeting with one of their delegations in 1998. He would later serve as an Afghan Parliament member in the 2000s, after the Taliban government was dissolved. Some Hazaras allied with them. Bamyan was the main location for a rebellion against the Taliban, an alliance of armed Shiite groups named the Hizb-e Wahdat. This lead to a struggle in the western province of Bamyan, Yakawlang, which was regarded by both sides as being key to control northern and central Afghanistan.[20]
21st century
In 2000, the Taliban lost control of the district to local militias, but quickly took it back. To curb future rebellions, in early 2001 the Taliban arrested 300 civilian adult men and executed them publicly. The Supreme Leader of the Taliban at the time, Mullah Mohammad Omar, was claimed to have stopped more retribution acts in the area, but he did not forgive the rebellion. In March, Omar ordered the Taliban to destroy the Buddhas of Bamiyan, claiming they were symbols of idolatry. UNESCO called it a "crime against culture".[20][21]
Later in 2001, the U.S. and NATO invaded Afghanistan, and local militias in Bamyan sided with them to fight against the Taliban.[20] There was evidence that Taliban fighters started massacring many Hazaras there in October.[22] The Taliban fled the region in December.[23] NATO eventually created a new government there.[20] In 2003, it was recognized as one of the safest provinces in the country, which allowed for civil rebuilding.[24] Over the next few decades, women's rights would be restored.[20][25][26] It became the area of the country most visited by tourists, and it elected Afghanistan's first female governor of a province, Habiba Sarabi, who created the Band-e-Amir National Park.[27] A small number of troops from New Zealand would be stationed there, and the Taliban insurgency started targeting them in 2008.[20][28] and the U.S. made a "protective belt" around the province that stopped anyone outside, including other Afghanis, from coming into Bamyan. Control of the belt was given to local militias, which caused conflict between various ethnic groups. A local Hazara named Haji Hekmat Hussein, who participated in the 2001 massacre, acted as a parliamentary candidate in the U.S.' new government, was secretly a Taliban intelligence officer. He would be arrested and jailed, but was released in 2020 as a part of the Doha Agreement between the U.S. and Taliban.[20]
By 2009, the regional Afghan National Police, who fought against insurgents, started running out of money, and had to be aided by U.S. and New Zealand troops.[29] By 2011, the Taliban in Bamyan started gaining strength, and there was concern over their future plans as NATO began their phased withdrawal from the country.[30] In 2021, the Taliban started an offensive to retake Afghanistan. They made significant advances by July, and two districts, Saighan and Kahmard, had been taken. There was an effort by police and local militias to keep the Taliban 60 miles away from Bamyan city, which the Afghanistan government believed could be the start of a turnaround for their miltiary in the region.[31] In August 2021, Ashraf Ghani's government collapsed, and the Taliban took Bamyan on August 15.[20][32][33] Initially, there was a conflict between different Taliban members in the area of whether or not policies put in place in the province to show the new Taliban government would be more liberal or moderate in its ideology. Other Taliban members resented the locals who embraced those ideals in the prior 20 years.[20] In July 2022, the Taliban forbid humanitarian aid into the province.[34] In August 2023, the Taliban banned women from entering Band-e-Amir National Park.[35]
Bamiyan has been particularly famous for its potatoes. The region is also known for a "shuttle system" of planting, wherein seed potatoes are grown in winter in Jalalabad, a warm area of eastern Afghanistan, and then transferred to Bamyan for spring re-planting.[37]
Tourism
Prior to the Soviet invasion of 1979, the province attracted many tourists.[38] Although this number is considerably fewer now,[39] Bamyan is the first province in Afghanistan to have set up a tourist board, Bamyan Tourism. A feature of this developing tourist industry is based on skiing. The province is said to have 'some of the best "outback skiing" in the world[40] and in 2008 an $1.2 million project to encourage skiing was launched by the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) with the help of NZAID, New Zealand government's international aid agency.[38] The province hosts the Afghan Ski Challenge, a 7 km downhill race over ungroomed and powdered snow,[41] founded by Swiss journalist and skier Christoph Zurcher. Tissot, the Swiss watch manufacturer, is the principal sponsor.[42]
Bamyan Province is home to the region's only university, Bamiyan University in the city of Bamyan. The school was founded in the mid-1990s, and largely destroyed under the Taliban and by US airstrikes.[43] It was later refurbished by New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Teams[44] following the fall of the Taliban.
^Note: "Predominantely" or "dominated" is interpreted as 99%, "majority" as 70%, "mixed" as 1/(number of ethnicities), "minority" as 30% and "few" or "some" as 1%.
^Bryant, Edwin F. (2001). The quest for the origins of Vedic culture: the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press, ISBN978-0-19-513777-4.
^Afghanistan: ancient Ariana (1950), Information Bureau, p3.
^M. Witzel (2000), "The Home Of The Aryans", Festschrift J. Narten = Münchener Studien zur Sprachwissenschaft, Beihefte NF 19, Dettelbach: J.H. Röll, 283–338. Also published online, at Harvard University (LINK). p. 48. "The Vīdẽvdaδ list obviously was composed or redacted by someone who regarded Afghanistan and the lands surrounding it as the home of all Indo-Iranians (airiia), that is of all (eastern) Iranians, with Airiianem Vaẽjah as their center."
^Skaff, Jonathan Karam (2012). Sui-Tang China and Its Turko-Mongol Neighbors: Culture, Power, and Connections, 580–800. Oxford University Press. p. 190. ISBN978-0-19-973413-9.
^Recknagel, Charles (2001-12-31). "Afghanistan: Dream Of Hazara University Destroyed By War (Part 2) - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty 2011". Rferl.org. Retrieved 2011-02-13
Afghanistan
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