Tank (at its foot) with the Zhob line of communications to Quetta, and with Wana on the southern flank of Waziristan. The Gomal route is of immense importance, both as a commercial and strategic line, and in both particulars is of far greater significance than either the Kurram or the Tochi.
(2) Of the interior lines of communication, those which connect the great cities of Afghanistan, Herat, Kabul and Kandahar, are obviously the most important. Between Kabul and Herat there is no “royal” road, the existing route passing over the frequently snow-bound wastes that lie below the southern flank of the great Koh-i-Baba into the upper valleys of the Hari Rud tributaries. It is a waste, elevated, desolate region that the route traverses, and the road itself is only open at certain seasons of the year. Between Kabul and Kandahar exists the well-known and oft-traversed route by Ghazni and Kalat-i-Ghilzai. There is but one insignificant water-parting—or kotal—a little to the north of Ghazni; and the road, although unmade, may be considered equal to any road of its length in Europe for military purposes. Between Kandahar and Herat there is the recognized trade route which crosses the Helmund at Girishk and passes through Farah and Sabzawar. It includes about 360 miles of easy road, with spaces where water is scarce. There is not a pass of any great importance, nor a river of any great difficulty, to be encountered from end to end, but the route is flanked on the north between Kandahar and Girishk by the Zamindawar hills, containing the most truculent and fanatical clans of all the Southern Afghan tribes. Little need be said of the 65 m. of route between Kandahar and the Baluchistan frontier at New Chaman. It is on the whole a route across open plains and hard, stony “dasht”—a route which would offer no great difficulties to that railway extension from Chaman which has so long been contemplated. A very considerable trade now passes along this route to India, in spite of almost prohibitive imposts; but the trade does not follow the railway from New Chaman to the eastern foot of the Khojak. Long strings of camels may still be seen from the train windows patiently treading their slow way over the Khojak pass to Kila Abdullah, whilst the train alongside them rapidly twists through the mountain tunnel into the Peshin valley.
The variety of climate is immense, as might be expected. Taking the highlands of the country as a whole, there is no great difference between the mean temperature of Afghanistan and that of the lower Himalayas. Each may be placed at a point between 50° and 60° F. But the Climate.remarkable feature of Afghan climate (as also of that of Baluchistan) is its extreme range of temperature within limited periods. The least daily range in the north is during the cold weather, the greatest in the hot. For seven months of the year (from May to November) this range exceeds 30° F. daily. Waves of intense cold occur, lasting for several days, and one may have to endure a cold of 12° below zero, rising to a maximum of 17° below freezing-point. On the other hand the summer temperature is exceedingly high, especially in the Oxus regions, where a shade maximum of 110° to 120° is not uncommon. At Kabul, and over all the northern part of the country to the descent at Gandamak, winter is rigorous, but especially so on the high Arachosian plateau. In Kabul the snow lies for two or three months; the people seldom leave their houses, and sleep close to stoves. At Ghazni the snow has been known to lie long beyond the vernal equinox; the thermometer sinks to 10° and 15° below zero (Fahr.); and tradition relates the entire destruction of the population of Ghazni by snowstorms more than once.
At Jalalabad the winter and the climate generally assume an Indian character. The summer heat is great everywhere in Afghanistan, but most of all in the districts bordering on the Indus, especially Sewi, on the lower Helmund and in Seistan. All over Kandahar province the summer heat is intense, and the simoon is not unknown. The hot season throughout this part of the country is rendered more trying by frequent dust storms and fiery winds; whilst the bare rocky ridges that traverse the country, absorbing heat by day and radiating it by night, render the summer nights most oppressive. At Kabul the summer sun has great power, though the heat is tempered occasionally by cool breezes from the Hindu Kush, and the nights are usually cool. At Kandahar snow seldom falls on the plains or lower hills; when it does, it melts at once.
At Herat, though 800 ft. lower than Kandahar, the summer climate is more temperate; and, in fact, the climate altogether is far from disagreeable. From May to September the wind blows from the N.W. with great violence, and this extends across the country to Kandahar. The winter is tolerably mild; snow melts as it falls, and even on the mountains does not lie long. Three years out of four at Herat it does not freeze hard enough for the people to store ice; yet it was not very far from Herat, and could not have been at a greatly higher level (at Kafir Kala, near Kassan) that, in 1750, Ahmad Shah’s army, retreating from Persia, is said to have lost 18,000 men from cold in a single night. In the northern Herat districts, too, records of the coldest month (February) show the mean minimum as 17° F., and the maximum 38°. The eastern reaches of the Hari Rud river are frozen hard in the winter, rapids and all, and the people travel on it as on a road.
The summer rains that accompany the S.W. monsoon in India, beating along the southern slopes of the Himalaya, travel up the Kabul valley as far as Laghman, though they are more clearly felt in Bajour and Panjkora, under the high spurs of the Hindu Kush, and in the eastern branches of Safed Koh. Rain also falls at this season at the head of Kurram valley. South of this the Suliman mountains may be taken as the western limit of the monsoon’s action. It is quite unfelt in the rest of Afghanistan, in which, as in all the west of Asia, the winter rains are the most considerable. The spring rain, though less copious, is more important to agriculture than the winter rain, unless where the latter falls in the form of snow. In the absence of monsoon influences there are steadier weather indications than in India. The north-west blizzards which occur in winter and spring are the most noticeable feature, and their influence is clearly felt on the Indian frontier. The cold is then intense and the force of the wind cyclonic. Speaking generally, the Afghanistan climate is a dry one. The sun shines with splendour for three-fourths of the year, and the nights are even more clear than the days. Marked characteristics are the great differences of summer and winter temperature and of day and night temperature, as well as the extent to which change of climate can be attained by slight change of place. As the emperor Baber said of Kabul, at one day’s journey from it you may find a place where snow never falls, and at two hours’ journey a place where snow almost never melts!
The Afghans vaunt the salubrity and charm of some local climates, as of the Toba hills above the Kakar country, and of some of the high valleys of the Safed Koh.
The people have by no means that immunity from disease which the bright, dry character of the climate and the fine physical aspect of a large proportion of them might lead us to expect. Intermittent and remittent fevers are very prevalent; bowel complaints are common, and often fatal in the autumn. The universal custom of sleeping on the house-top in summer promotes rheumatic and neuralgic affections; and in the Koh Daman of Kabul, which the natives regard as having the finest of climates, the mortality from fever and bowel complaint, between July and October, is great, the immoderate use of fruit predisposing to such ailments.
The term Afghan really applies to one section only of the mixed conglomeration of nationalities which forms the people of Afghanistan, but this is the dominant section known as the Durani. The Ghilzai (who is almost as powerful as the Durani) claims to be of Turkish origin; the Population.Hazaras, the Chahar-Aimak, Tajiks, Uzbegs, Kafirs and others are more or less subject races. Popularly any inhabitant of Afghanistan is known as Afghan on the Indian frontier without distinction of origin or language; but the language division between the Parsiwan (or Persian-speaking Afghan) and the Pathan is a very distinct one. The predominance of the Afghan in Afghanistan dates from the middle of the 18th century, when Ahmad Shah carved out Afghanistan from the previous conquests of Nadir Shah and called it the Durani empire.
The Durani Afghans claim to be Ben-i-Israel, and insist on their descent from the tribes who were carried away captive from Palestine to Media by Nebuchadrezzar. Yet they also claim to be Pukhtun (or Pathan) in common with all other Pushtu-speaking tribes, whom they do not admit to be Afghan. The bond of affinity between the various peoples who compose the Pathan community is simply the bond of a common language.
