Asia Society presents; 12

The. Age of those IATA president this is a series of interviews with experts on Asian affairs designed to strengthen our understanding of Asian people and ideas. You're a host on this transcribed series of the noted author and award winning broadcaster league rail. Here now is Mrs. Graham. The part of the age you know we're going to talk about on this program is Afghanistan. Fairly exotic country as far as most of us are concerned because I don't think it's many tourists go there perhaps it's onto the country has a union on its northern border. The one thing it has a population of but close to 13 million in area it's about 250000 square miles and it's almost 7000 miles and you're young. It has rather rugged terrain extremes in weather and people want to spend as much time there as guests. Well that's one of the questions I'd like to ask them.

They are a husband and wife Dr. and Mrs. Dupree is an anthropologist and an associate of the American University's feels dad spend a great deal of time in Afghanistan and caring for my country about a year ago. It's quite a bit in this country on that subject. And his wife Nancy is an author who has worked with the Afghan to his organization and has written several historical guidebooks to that country. Do you like his dad. Doesn't sound like a very comfortable country to be in arw. It all depends we don't have a lot of things that you can do here but. We are. Gordon We have great butyl who surround the house and servants to help us out and the people are great fun to be with.

The type I'd like to be out there would like to go out and picnics and happy comfortable life. I have to live as you have planned it is fine but I've read about Afghanistan that there are such rugged conditions from the point of view of geography. I mean the mountain just 20000 feet in vast deserts and plains. Right that's true and what makes you so very and so is one of the things in development in Afghanistan. They are building roads highways so that you can ride along comfortably without what it used to be in many of the books that you probably read which. Well I think too much. But you know that going in.

I think yes I'm afraid we don't get a negative report about other countries. That's why we like the idea of this programs that we can give a clearer picture there of those remote parts of the room. Doc you do pretty I guess you spent more time in Afghanistan than your wife is I first world guys than 1949 and have been going back ever since I've spent probably a little over 10 years I can I keep forgetting myself it but I will be going back the next Jew with my wife of course for another two years and this will be my six extended tour in Afghanistan. Why did you choose to go or was that your assignment as part of the American University's staff nor was strictly an accident I plan to be a Far Eastern specialist and then came 1949 50 and China closed out and as I was walking down the halls of Peabody Museum at Harvard where I was a student at the time I bumped into someone from the American Museum of Natural History looking for a student to accompany him to Afghanistan on a summer expedition and I told him to look a little further and ever since I've been going back

or one of the people my GYN is down there rather reserved and not too fond of strangers until they really get to know them. That's an interesting comment of course and the many of the books indicate this there are hospitable because they are curious and they are this hospitality can quickly become hostility if the stranger in their midst does not have some function to perform in one way or another. If you are just visiting the country and wandering about as some people do I understand that the entire hippie population from the pole is now moved to Kabul since the Nepalese have sold them out Kabul being the capital of Afghanistan. Who are the people the people are quite friendly and curious as they have a right to be supporters an Afghan who showed up that showed up outside Burlington Vermont or crossroads in North Carolina which is more of this where I come from I'm sure the population would be quite curious and not a little. A little hostile at times

really strange looking creatures happen to drop in value for practically outer space so they are there to subdue the hostility I think is certainly justifiable. But let my my party begin to do their Again their geography their rather Hamden geographically I suppose the mountains making it impossible to get around in the country for many years and I understand too that there are the women of Afghanistan have led a sheltered kind of life been kept in seclusion a great deal. So they probably are not to open our well or has changed his changing is changing very very quickly in the very edges and out in the countryside and not work out. Now when we go into a village as we do because my husband is an archaeologist. When we first come in and of course go behind their walls. But you can hear them giggling and they're terribly curious.

They do not come out to meet the men of the expedition but when I go into their homes and I think they have so many questions or so curious about the funny clothes I wear I wear them and so forth and they're also very pleased when asking questions about their clothes and the way they make their own cloth beautiful embroideries. And if you're going to the normal camps it's just absolutely want they want to know how I do my hair up and they pull it down so I think you have a problem. Do you speak with him in Persian. Yes to 9 which is that. That's mostly use Persian and the other two. That's spoken by people or people that's spoken by Afghans. The largest ethnic group when you have all the Turks and so on and so forth but the but the general language is understood all through

the country. Farsi praise the religion Islam is right. Is everyone a member of that religion. There's a small Jewish community a small Hindu Sikh community. But mostly. So don't you get pretty understand that 1964 was the year when political progress really began taking place because of the new constitution. Would you describe that place. Yes there have been quite a bit of progress since the Second World War but this culminated in the writing of a new constitution in 1964 Democratic elections in 1965 and some in many areas and in my mind they are as fair as any I've ever seen in Asia and also as fair as many I've seen in the United States I have a vision of that. The Constitution is a remarkable document in that the Afghans used Islam as a weapon

for progress. Too many Westerners and too many Muslims look on Islam as a backward anti-modern religion and this of course is very fault it's a most progressive forward looking delusion. You have modern interpreters of the religion just as in Christianity we can embrace everything from the snake cult so the Tennessee Kentucky North Carolina North Carolina mountains to the existentialism of bar through Kirkegaard it depends on who's interprets the religion in them. We've mentioned the the villagers briefly before and we have to and looking at Afghanistan and many peasant tribal societies. Remember that two major segments of the population have to be considered independently. The literate group about 5 percent of Afghanistan in the non literate society now the non-literate society lives in a world of its own. And this is the world which has been the least changed in all of Africa Asia but it's the one that will have to be touched before changes permanently attitudes must be changed. As for

not change so much as alter the acceptance of what the people themselves wish to define as modernization and a new constitution tried to do that it uses Islam as a weapon just as we used to do Christian. He tossed codes of ethics political philosophy in our Constitution and are still trying to make it work. May I ask you why you use the word weapon might you not say I combed of behavior or form of ethics may make it sound as like such a hostile instrument or live in a hostile world I'm afraid and we have our religion we like to think of any hostile situation. More wars have been fought over religion I think than anything else in the name of religion a vice I use weapon just loosely because it is a way a way to introduce in a very positive way. I'm not trying to escalate the constitutional process and I've got a start and I probably should have used the term weapon but no I guess I thought that might be misinterpreted. Found they used religion to frighten people into doing certain things.

You will find that many of the vested interests religious leaders in the Muslim world do exactly this this is one reason I did use the term weapon. Conservative vested interest groups and Islam do you Islam and misinterpretations of Islam as weapons to hold the population down for a quick example. Most of us look on Islam as a pre-determined mystic religion. If God will something will happen this is very false. Islam literate Islam not Village Islam now as it is interpreted by your religious leaders who are conservative. Islam means submission but submission to their way of life. After you have examined this way of life these codes of ethics and accepted free will entirely but this is not the way we look at Islam this is not the way that most of your conservative religious leaders in Islam interpret it for the people they like to maintain control of the mass of misinterpretations surrounding or they lived in France where I know it is too enormous to even consider specially right now.

But you say that Islam is being used in the best sense of the word. Innes and you bring a sense of that word to bring political progress to the country. Now the shocking part of what would be called a constitutional monarchy isn't it. Yes he holds all the power still but he has the whole constitutional monarch when Arkle processes are developing using the Constitution and the new basic laws which are more or less like our Bill of Rights that are being passed now. The question I think on everyone's mind at this point is if this Shah has been in control since 1933 is the same one. Yes he actually didn't come into control until 1963. Until that time his uncle and his first cousin had been prime minister and because of a better problem with pocky Stalin the king was able to dismiss his first cousin who had done quite a bit for the country in the economic development cess and use the economic infrastructure that had

developed sense of Second World War as a springboard now for your political and social changes that are taking place. One who got the king to put this constitution into effect. I mean if it's something he was forced to do by certain groups it would be this spring from his own benevolence and good spirit. The King and his advisors he's had a very fine group of young Western educated advisors around him for the same group of advisors. I actually worked with his the king's first cousin and Prime Minister before the present commoner prime ministers have come into the into the picture so. It's been a combination of the King's own desire to see change in his country. Listening to the advice of the highly trained Western liberal call of this I think in the finest sense of the term overturned. I just want to get back to the Afghan tourist organization for a moment before we can do is important political question that your husband told us about before we began this broadcast that is how the Soviet Union and the United States managed to get along at least when that

while they are both in Afghanistan. But as far as tourism goes that would help the country enormously but do they have much tourism. Are we growing and doubling every year. A lot of this is because of the better accommodations which the government is building all the time. Better roads how cows publicity. So that and somehow I think there are so many people traveling now they're having that far east and they're looking for something new. So it's not only the hippies we get but great groups of 200 at a time. Coming and finding possible to travel and get the money for the transportation that's a long distance from New York. And while I look after my family.

But how do you hitchhike a ride up in the air. I mean they will go where I can on your own and they come with me. But how do they get from this continent that they sponsor great courses hospitality for the taking. That sounds like the Buddhist monks who have to spend it here begging. Another thing you said which I think is so startling down to debris is the fact that both the United States and the Soviet Union are helping Afghanistan that itself is not stopping the rivalry to influence Afghanistan is present on both our sides and yet it seems to be working out smoothly and quite cleverly. Would you explain how that's possible.

Most of it is due to the. Afghans themselves they have always been truly will look you in the First World War the Second World War and if a third world war comes about there will certainly I think maintain their neutrality in that because they know that fallout will respect no boundaries if it gets through two nuclear phases. Because of their neutrality and because of the fact that they sit on the edge of a mirror of nations that are aligned with the rest of the United States and and with security pacts and in a central and Doro. The Afghans have been ruled by the Americans. We wanted to get them in the military pacts they refused the Russians of course wanted to get them in their sphere of influence and so they do border they have a 50 100 mile boundary with the Soviet Union on a small about 50 kilometer boundary with communist China actually so I've got a stance on a very strategic position no matter how you define and spatter Geordi your politics in the mid 20th century. So

all the Americans and the Russians both tried to come into Afghanistan gain friends and influence people. Well the competition that they can call economic competition Afghanistan was called in by a certain people in the late 1950s and early 60s as an economic career because the Soviets themselves. Granted to prove that economic penetration could successfully subvert simple economic penetration could successfully subvert political organization and the country would slowly fall into their grasp. By this economic penetration technique the Americans were of course to counter this if possible. Well what's happened in my opinion is that the Afghans have been playing all both so are many sides to survive for several centuries now and so they're experts and when they were so aware as the Americans and Russians both went to Afghanistan to try to gain influence in the country. Actually it's the Afghans who did all the influence

gaining and now both Americans and Russians. Except I think the the valid positions that Afghanistan takes and that these positions are primarily relate to their own neutrality their own independence and their own development in the economic political and social sense and we're both contributing to this. We have. More or less lost the competitive edge in Afghanistan and we are both cooperating this would not be called de jure but it certainly de facto cooperation between the United States and Russia aid efforts in Afghanistan both sides will root in these rooms chemic one to the other. The Americans and Russians both build airfields in fact we cooperated in building the called an international airport where the Russians put down the runways and built the buildings and we put on all of the electronics and electrical equipment and we certainly had to cooperate with the Soviet technicians in putting up these buildings you just don't build the electric electrical system in separately from the actual

construction. So people still ask me however what I am talking about the American. American Russian and Afghan interaction was in this part of the world. Ask me who is running the USA or USSR what you know honestly I have to say the Afghans are winning and I think the best which should be this is the way our development program was designed so that these developing nations could develop independently and if they see fit neutral and have their own foreign policies and stand on their own two feet listening to being such a rare example of peaceful coexistence between the Soviet Union and ourselves I say rant because I don't know if it exists anyplace else. You know any other part of the room where we both give help where you have a similar situation not not similar to my knowledge I know that we are in several countries with assistance but most of the countries in which both the Americans and the sort of gits are participating in aid programs either show a pro restor

pro Soviet policy or at least a face to the world in this direction. And so therefore they needed the competition aspect still exists and this aspect so close to the Soviet border the development of actual cooperation. As I say whether it's defined or articulated that way by either side is unique I think. Happening in the world but it should not be. A unique happening I think that both the United States and the USSR can learn quite a bit from what happened in the Afghan situation. Well since you don't want to be unique and neither does anybody else. What would you say is in this situation that made it come to pass that perhaps doesn't exist elsewhere so that it wouldn't be as easy to develop this if you tried in some other part of the several sayings warmly of the Afghans were were never really a colony. It was more or less created artificially in the last century as a buffer zone between Czarist Russia and British ambitions of British of

course being in India at the time it was a buffer zone and therefore it did not have to undergo the horrifying start of firing affects of a colonial bureaucratic administration which. I think that one of the big drawbacks to much of the development that exists in the developing world today if you'll notice most of the Afro-Asian world. Have been colors of one European power and other Some of course are still are but the this is simply one ingredient I think that that helps but the the other is that the Afghans have stores we insist on maintaining a move who post the views of the Cold War and I think that the term they use be to Rafy is very important it means without size it doesn't move in the philosophical or in the in the governmental sense in the sense of idiology it means neutral be to Rocky without sides in Cold War issues I don't want to get involved in the in the day to day month to month political harangues

between east and west. In the very brief time we now have left we did want to touch on Pakistan. I understand that the Afghans tend to think of the Pakistan independent state as opposed to India. Are they do they are they are quite neutral people do they still go in this direction when it comes to that. Actually until 1963 Pakistan was probably the primary potential enemy of the Afghans because of the border problem that existed people living on both sides of a Frontiere artificially drawn by the British in 1893 and never really accepted by the Afghans. So this in 1963 however was the change in government. The new constitution now Pakistan-Afghanistan are having the best relations it ever had and since the existence of Pakistan began in 1947. And I guess one conclusion we can draw from this is that don't underestimate an Afghanistan A Afghanistan nation. People that may seem backward or

don't do things as we do often have the. Ability to survive and conquer which we little suspect. I think you're both very enthusiastic about this country both right now and eager to go back. And so I don't think they can get a better tour is represented near misses the break. I thank you both very much for being here and I'd like to say that our guests on this program discussing Afghanistan. Have been Dr. and Mrs. Dr. Dupree was an anthropologist is an associate of the American University's feel staff. Spend a great deal of time in Afghanistan as you can see. His wife Nancy had is an author. And worked for the Afghan tourist organization. I do hope that when you both return from Afghanistan next time you come back and give us another report. And meantime this is really Graham saying goodbye. With the suggestion that although East is East and West is West the time has come for the twain to meet.

You have just heard the ages of society presents with Lee Graham. This program is produced by members of the staff of the ages society an educational nonprofit nonpolitical organization which was formed in 1957 to improve Asian American relations. This transcribed feature of your city station comes to you through a public service grant of the Asia Society. If you would like to comment on this program or would like further information about the work of the ages as I do you are how you can become a member. Please write to Mrs. Lee Graham WNYC New York 100 0 7. We hope you enjoyed this broadcast and we invite you to join us again next week at the same time for another edition of Asia Society presents. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.