AFFGANISTAN

Two-thirds of the country is mountainous, with extensive desert or steppe surfaces and a dry continental climate. Nomadic and transhumant pastoralism (sheep) predominates. Cultivable areas are limited (cereals, cotton, sugar beet); mineral potential is considerable (coal, metals, sulfur), but only oil is exploited. Economic development, hindered by Anglo-Russian rivalry (Afghanistan is a buffer state), is delayed by the scarcity and primitiveness of communications (caravan trade, lack of railways); hence the volume of trade is insignificant (fruit, woolen goods exported in exchange for cotton goods and tea).

The population (7-12 million) is predominantly of Iranian stock, Sunni Muslim, and nomadic. The state is ruled by an Emir, appointed by hereditary right. Attempts to modernize along Western lines have met with little success.

The capital is Kabul (150 thousand inhabitants), near the Indian frontier.

2. CATHOLICISM IN AFGHANISTAN

The first records of groups of Christians in Afghanistan are found in the Book of the Laws of the Nation (ed. Fr. Nau, in Patrologia syriaca, I, 2, pp. 606 ff.), which flourished between 154 and 222. From the 5th century onward, the Christians of Afghanistan shared the fortunes of the Nestorian Church. They survived, even after the Muslim conquest in the 7th century (Kabul was not taken until 871), as respectable minorities at least until the 9th century, and then, until the second half of the 19th century, as fiercely independent tribes in Kafiristan (i.e., “land of the infidels”). Later, when the bloody Mongol domination of Genghis Khan (from 1221 in Afghanistan) allowed