Afghanistan, Evolution, and War Save for later Reblogpost

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The topic that I will be discussing is the Taliban, the evolutionary motivations for the war in Afghanistan and the treatment of women in that country. For several thousand years Afghanistan has been at the crossroads of differing local hegemonic powers. The country has been racked by Forty years of near continuous warfare. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the plays of both state and non-state actors over what appears to be a relatively strategically unimportant part of the world follow logical evolutionary rules that transcend the purported purposes of those actors.

            Ultimately, the goal of any science should be to improve human life. Hominins are participating in an infinite game that has both definite and indefinite rules. Honesty in reference to these rules, the conditions governing all players, and the possible outcomes all players can hope to achieve will allow for better policy decisions by all those involved. Anthropology is not immune to the problems of physics, it will always be beset by the measurement problem and the effects of observation. Any predictions made will, of course, be subject to the variability of the constituent parts of the predictions and their desire to prevent sub-optimal outcomes.

The forces of polygyny and the lack of available mates and certain nations, primarily the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Qatar, make the need for those nations to find a place for expansion to prevent internal unrest. Resource availability, in the form of capital flow from the United States coupled with a desire to make an ally out of a traditional enemy’s friend, namely, the United States and India; encourage Pakistan to prevent an end state to the war in their neighboring country. This demonstrates a manner in which counterintuitive evolutionary processes (local instability) can serve long term reproductive goals. The correlation between per capita GDP and female enfranchisement, ideology, and threats to reproductive security encourage brutal policies towards women in Afghanistan, and encourage the involvement of exigent State actors.

            Genetically, Afghans are a parquetry of various Indo-European lineages. Afghans are considered to be comprised of five main ethnic groups: Turkmen, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, and Pashtun. These have only a flirting acquaintance with genetic reality, and present-day Afghans are some of the most genetically diverse people in Eurasia.[1] This is at least in part owing to the geography of Afghanistan. To the West and Southwest the relatively flat five provinces, in counter-clockwise orientation, are, Herat, Farah, Nimroz, Helmand, and Kandahar. At least six major (depending on how one counts major) rivers flow through these provinces, providing an opportunity for transportation, irrigation, and to resupply the trade networks and invaders that have gone through what is now Afghanistan for millennia. As the terrain moves to the North and East, mountains and valleys permeate the landscape. Vegetation in Afghanistan is sparse at present from a combination of war, clearing land for opium poppy production, and exporting timber to Pakistan. Vegetation tends to be more common on in valleys and passes between Afghanistan’s several mountain regions, many of which are snowcapped well into the spring.

            The plethora of high mountain chains interspersed with passes and, relative to the area, forested or arable land make Afghanistan the perfect geography for disparate peoples wishing to control or run from the many historical hegemonic powers that have fought over the region. The earliest evidence of homo sapien occupation dates to approximately 30 thousand years before present. Afghanistan is on the Eastern tip of the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex, with evidence of Neolithic farmers and herders dating to 6,000 B.C. What has been reconstructed of these ancient inhabitants’ language has lead linguists to believe their language is related to Basque. Present day Afghanis show genetic markers from across the Indo-European genetic lineage generally, and from all of Eurasia, though in somewhat less pronounced admixtures.[2] This has been magnified by the many invasions as the great Empires rose over the past four-thousand years, Cristofaro et al. (2013) demonstrate that gene flow into Afghanistan has been taking place for much longer, and that there is a high correlation for genetic markers, particularly Indo-European genetic markers, with latitude, longitude, or both. This makes sense to degrees, as different groups would move across the Eurasian landmass in and along climactic zones they were comfortable with, but the frequency is not in-line with other Indo-European populations of the present day. Afghanistan’s most prolific sub-haplogroup is C3b2b1-M401, and is found throughout populations in the country. Of the various recognized “ethnic” groups, the Pashtun are the most homogeneous, and the Turkmen the least. Haplogroup G2c-M377 reaches 14.7% in the Pashtun ethnic group, and is virtually absent from all other ethnic groups. This is likely due to migration from Persian populations in later stages of area’s history.

            Y-chromosome diversity is markedly different than mt-DNA and general genetic diversity in Afghanistan. The Kyrgyz and Pashtun exhibit the lowest levels of Y-Chromosome diversity in Afghanistan. There are nine main Y-chromosome haplogroups in Afghanistan. They, along with their percentage of occurrence, are as follows: R-M207 (34%), J-M304 (16%), C-M130 (15%), L-M20 (6%), G-M201 (6%), Q-M242 (6%), N-M231 (4%), O-M175 (4%), E-M96 (3%). Y-Chromosome markers do not follow a logical or even distribution pattern. In a patrilineal society with even genetic division I would expect Y-chromosome markers to follow along geographic or regional boundaries with some overlap. This is not the case. Disparate parts of the country may have high concentrations of the same marker or not. There may be two or several markers in one area and one in another.[3]

            This modern art-esque distribution can be explained by the many centuries of fighting over Afghanistan’s landmass and thus its people. The Taliban are merely the most recent in a host of local powers that have sought outside help through which they could control the country,[4] and therefore have reproductive access to the region’s women. In biological terms, a population that is so genetically diverse is a rich resource, indeed. Though it is abhorrent, it makes sense that the Taliban would attempt to control “their” women in a form of mate guarding. It is an open secret that the Taliban are highly dependent on foreign fighters from outside their immediate geographic sphere. Countries such as Qatar and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia are able to use Afghanistan as a pressure release valve for those males who are not able to find a mate due to the monopolization of females via polygyny. This is a continuation of the process that has created the unusual pockets of Y-Chromosome markers present in Afghanistan. When a group maintains control of a given area for a period of time, it is able to add or concentrate its Y-haplogroups in that area. Control is not absolute, nor is the amount of sharing with foreign fighters; because there has been a long historical record of conquest, repulsion, and affiliation with exigent powers, Afghanistan already has an odd mix of Y-Chromosome markers.

            This is in marked contrast with Pakistan, which borders Afghanistan to the Southwest. The Y chromosome marker R1A1 has a prevalence rate of 55% among Pakistani males and 60% of the mitochondrial lineages in Pakistan are represented by haplogroup M.[5] There is a price for this lack of genetic diversity, Pakistan has one of the highest rates of breast cancer in Central Asia as well as colon cancer, and both have been linked, especially in Pakistan, to heritability; 8% of the deaths in Pakistan are from cancer alone,[6]’[7] and considering the other factors such as low grade civil conflict, homicide, poor nutrition, and the likelihood that cancer is probably undiagnosed in the poorer reaches of the country, this is quite high. Thalassaemia syndromes, genetic blood disorders in which globin proteins are created at either a reduced rate or not at all are found in approximately 4% of the global extant hominin population. In Pakistan, this rate is 5%. Additionally, 2% of the Pakistani population carry genes that are responsible both types of the disorder.[8] The body of literature on Pakistani genetic disorders is quite large, and it is clear that this is a problem that is well known and researched by oncologists and geneticists. Endogamy is the norm in Pakistan, where 60-90% of the marriages take place between close relatives or those within a tribal lineage.[9] Though I could find no genetic research on kin preference and support for the Taliban in Pakistan, research has shown that Pakistanis are more likely to support Taliban groups that are drawn from their same ethnic quarters.[10]

            Using Glatzer’s definition of tribe, we can understand how tribal society in Afghanistan causes evolutionary forces to work in ways that may seem counterintuitive or at odds with political stability. Glatzer states, “a social segment based on a genealogical concept of social structure. According to such concept the society is segmented by a principle of descent from a common ancestor or from common ancestors.” Glatzer goes on to tell us that he does not define the tribe as a political entity but a form of social organization.[11] This is true, though as he, Blank,[12] and Stanton[13] point out, tribal organization is central to all political organization in Afghanistan because tribal relationships are the focal point of all social bonds and trust. This makes sense, though literacy in the country has risen since 1979, when it was 18.2% of the adult population, in 2015 it was still only 38.2%, and in rural areas this is likely to be much lower.[14] This means that any Afghani that does know how to read and wishes to deal with any other Afghani is unlikely to be engaging with someone who is also literate. Written contracts are not something that would have much credence given this social reality. Reputational contracts, a term I just brilliantly coined, would, however. An Afghani can easily check on the reputation of another Afghani, or his tribal unit, and probably is aware of the reputation before asking. Does the person engage in duplicity? Who are their relatives and what other interests do I have with them? These are important questions in a mostly preliterate society with spotty contract enforcement. It may be difficult for Americans, who are often exhorted to “read the fine print,” to understand, but a little thoughtfulness can make the process clear. Just as automotive dealerships and insurance companies have found themselves highly regulated, at least in part due to lack of trust caused by complex and unenforceable business contracts, Afghanis cannot count on a contract or law they cannot read (and therefore understand) even if there were courts that could readily enforce them (there aren’t). One of the secrets to the Taliban’s persistence has been to rigidly enforce Sharia law in property disputes. This has caused certain Afghani landowners and businessmen, even in areas the Taliban does not control, to use Taliban judges to settle such disputes, often in one day. This is temporally the opposite of the property settlement in present day Afghani government courts which will probably take over a year and numerous bribes to reach a conclusion.[15] As an aside, this may explain why early written law codes, Sharia, Leviticus, et cetera are so absolutist and (by our standards) occasionally brutal. Simplicity and lack of nuance are necessary to bring disagreements to a quick resolution in a society with low levels of literacy and a preference for reputational standing over codified meaning.

            As we have demonstrated, Afghanis belief in tribal homogeneity does not reflect genetic reality. This, too, is partly responsible for the innate difficulty in Afghanistan adopting State society political practices and why it has been termed “the Graveyard of Empires” by military historians. As Blank tells us, Afghanis simply do not view political or military alliances as transactional the way State societies do.[16] Whilst any large power is concerned with controlling territory, an Afghani is concerned with controlling their reputation. Afghani fighters are notorious for switching sides, but this is because of the social and genetic realities of fighting in the area. Afghani informants would often incorrectly identify other Afghanis as Taliban to the Central Intelligence Agency to kill rivals in inter-tribal conflicts or other affairs.[17] An Afghani fighter may be a part of an pro-government alliance, the Taliban, an unaffiliated alliance, and back to the government all within the space of a few years. To the State mind, a person is trustworthy or not. The reality of Afghanis are they are trustworthy in a given situation with numerous variables that are poorly understood (including by the agent themselves). It was not uncommon for Northern Alliance Fighters to ask that an attack be delayed because of a relative being present with the Taliban and needing to leave.[18] It isn’t simply the U.S., Soviets, or British that have to contend with these issues, all outside meddlers must.

            These shifting factors are what previously made the Taliban so successful and have made the United States lengthy escapade in Afghanistan so tepid. An Afghani is not interested in building a linear hierarchy in the form of a central government because to do so would be to destroy the hierarchy he is trying to climb. Large Tribal alliances are formed under the auspices of a charismatic ruler. When the ruler dies, the alliance immediately falls apart. Similar conditions have been observed in the Trobriand Islanders and other pre-State societies.[19] Pakistan’s ability to function as a State, albeit a corrupt and autocratic one, is likely a function of the bonds of kin preference and low levels of genetic diversity. This provides just enough psychological “glue” to hold the government together with the aid of U.S. dollars to fight the Taliban. It is, of course, an open secret that the Pakistani government funds the Taliban with U.S. dollars, and this, too, is not surprising. Whilst Nation-States typically do not like instability on their borders, in the case of Pakistan it is a win-win situation. Refugees flowing into Pakistan from Afghanistan represent much needed gene flow into the country. Pakistani men who fight in the Tehrik-i-Taliban (Pakistani Taliban) have the opportunity to obtain a more genetically diverse mate than they otherwise could not locally. Afghan custom allows for the grafting of certain individuals into the tribe if their deeds are sufficiently heroic. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Qatar are known to provide fighters to Afghani Taliban groups, and this makes sense as well.[20]’[21] Both Nations allow for polygyny, and polygynous states are always more violent. Saudi Arabia has approximately 3 million unmarried men over the age 15 (the age of majority for males in the KSA). This is roughly twice the number of unmarried women.* Large numbers of single young men tends not to be a recipe for a stable society, and it is not surprising that the KSA has contributed fighters to the Taliban for at least 20 years. Particularly since the increase in the number of unmarried women in the KSA seems to be largely attributable to women staying with their parents and working, the modern, Saudi equivalent of being emancipated, Saudi men do not have the opportunity to marry even among the “single” women that are available.[22] It follows then that as increasing U.S. pressure mounted on the KSA for assisting the Taliban, making it a less politically tenable and respectable pursuit, the KSA decided to invade Yemen. Marriage rates have also been dropping in Qatar, whilst divorce rates have been rising. Approximately 93.5% of married Qatari men only have one wife, 5.5% have two wives, and 0.5% have three or more wives. Yet the Qatari marriage rate has held steadily at 1 women per 100 less than Qatari men over the last 20 years.[23]’[24] When we consider that polygynous marriages should cull double or triple (possibly more) the number of single women relative to single men in their respective cohort, this does not seem feasible. Even if only 5.5% of Qatari men have two wives, they remove as many women from the marriage market as 11% of their monogamous countrymen.

            The answer probably lies with Afghanistan. Afghanistan has a differentiated sex cohort that is not logical given the conditions the country faces. In 1945 there were 113 men to 100 women. In 1977 the ratio was 103.35 to 100. 1990, 104.8 to 100. In 2015, after over 13 years of warfare, Afghanistan had 106.38 men for every 100 women.[25] This does not make sense. Though the Taliban has targeted women in the past, in 2010 its Layeha, or official code of conduct, formally forbade the practice. It also forbade kidnapping, though the practice has definitively increased, unfortunately accurate numbers are simply unavailable.[26] I was in Croatia in 2000 when Slobodan Milosevic surrendered and it seemed as if my generation of men (I was 22 at the time) was simply gone. All military aged men appeared to be in the military. In 2000 Croatia had a gender imbalance of 92.83 men to 100 women, and in 2015 it was a 92.99 male to female ratio.[27] Jenny Nordberg has documented the bacha posh, or girls who chose to pretend to be boys to prevent violence or trafficking to befall them. All estimates of the exact number of bacha posh are merely guesses, however, there cannot be so many as to explain such a large gender disparity in a country that has been in continuous warfare over thirty of the last forty years. Nordberg tells us that every Afghan seems to know of some family that had one girl that was raised as a boy, though this is only in Kabul.[28] Whilst female infanticide does take place in part because girls are often seen as a burden, and various outside and local ideologies place them at a disadvantage, this should not outweigh the number of men outright killed in battle. Serbian Forces intentionally targeted civilians, dropped artillery on residential areas on purpose, and rounded up whole families and killed them. Though the Taliban engaged in intentional mutilation and occasional terror killings that may have given the Western World more of terror factor, they could not have approached the lethality of modern State built weaponry left over from the Soviet Union. The Serbs were trying to annihilate the Croats on purpose. A difference of 13.5 per 100 men to women after eight years of the Balkan wars compared with thirty of the Afghani wars is inexplicable. Even in China, where the Chinese Communist Party’s ill thought out one child policy has resulted in a rash of abortions of female babies and female infanticide, the gender imbalance is only 106 to 100.[29]

            Women are obviously leaving Afghanistan, and men are entering it. This is nothing new, we know this from the DNA typing that has been done. Y-Chromosome markers do not follow a discernible pattern in Afghanistan; sometimes they are highly concentrated, sometimes they are spread thin. The same markers appear thin in some areas and are over a wide swath in others, all divorced from geographic concerns.[30]’[31] This is the exact opposite of mtDNA, which follows explicit patterns along geographic lines and even correlates with latitude and, to a lesser degree, longitude.[32] The polarized difference in Y-chromosome versus mtDNA distribution is the reverse of what should be found in a patrilocal tribal society, the Y-chromosome markers should be relatively stable and mtDNA should shift as tribal alliances, and who is trading for wives with whom, changes. The rational explanation is that when Afghan women do marry locally, it tends to be consanguineously, just as they do in Pakistan. Afghan women, however, often leave Afghanistan to marry in somewhere else, possibly a theocratic kingdom that allows for polygyny and whose culture is notoriously closed off from the rest of the world. Afghanistan is a known point for women to be trafficked into from source nations.[33] This would be a logical occurrence for a country with a disproportionate number of men. Just as in the legal transportation industry, whenever something is brought in somewhere, carriers prefer to bring something out; smugglers prefer to do likewise. It should be noted that in 2017 it was estimated that 9,000 metric tons of opium were produced in Afghanistan.[34] Be that as it may, while there is likely some overlap between opium and human smuggling, opium is a far easier commodity to move in or out of a country. Whilst most of the same networks and some of the same tools may be used, women that need to be kept alive do not as readily translate. It is likely that some of the same vehicles used to bring foreign women into Afghanistan are being used to bring local women out. Nordberg’s work provides at least some evidence for this when she tells us that the bacha posh are pretending to be boys for fear of being kidnapped.[35] In many ways it makes little sense for a girl to pretend to be a boy in Afghanistan. The notorious practice of bachabauzi, or the use of prepubescent boys for sexual servitude is quotidian in Afghanistan. The Afghan government officially banned boys from living with or near Afghan Army or Police Barracks. There have been several high-profile arrests of Afghan military and Police for engaging boys in bachabauzi, with Afghanistan’s known and obvious penchant for corruption, it can be concluded that the practice is wide spread and not easy to eradicate.  The Taliban creation story, often repeated, is that Mullah Omar was originally moved to bring his Talibs to bear on the post-Soviet government when a tank duel between two Kandahar commanders took place over ownership of a young dancing boy. Though this is what the Taliban claim, their track record is somewhat different. Bachabauzi certainly has taken place among their commanders, and in 2010 the Taliban updated their Layeha from proscribing the “young” (without beards) from being taken for Jihad to prohibiting those without beards from living in their camps at all.[36] Few, if any, bacha posh could engage in their deception without the complicity of their families. Why would a family hide their daughter’s gender, only to risk her being taken as bachabauzi and then discovered? If she survived, she would certainly be consigned to a life of sexual servitude. Though the risk of what might happen to a girl under those circumstances is great, these families are making the rational decision to conceal their daughters gender so that they will not be taken from the country as a whole, never to be seen again.

The outflow of women coupled with the inflow of male foreign fighters are the only reasonable explanation for the abnormal gender ratio, the stability of mtDNA, and the irrational mapping Y-chromosome markers. Men, as they obviously have for millennia, enter the country to fight, and are incorporated in whatever tribe is allied with the Taliban (or whomever) at a given time. As tribal alliances shift with perceived battlefield and political success, the unstable platform causes periodic “dumps” of concentrated alleles coupled with further erratic spotting. Though the Afghan tribes claim homogeneity, we have already observed from DNA evidence that this is not remotely true. Though women are clearly being spirited out of the country, the Taliban’s persistent insistence on their control is a function of ideology mirroring biological needs. Though we may find the analogy distasteful, women are a resource, and in a landmass with a disproportionate number of men, it is unsurprising that they would need to be closely guarded. In a Western style society a woman living in such disproportion could go be endlessly mobile. Just as the Helmand, perhaps the least tactically advantageous province (from the Taliban’s point of view) has been one of the most hotly contested areas because it is the prime land for the cultivation of opium, women in Afghanistan must be kept under severe social control to maintain the influx of foreign fighters that prop the Taliban up. The Taliban cannot allow girls to be educated, or even literate, as it would give them the ability to negotiate terms with the various actors that are engaged in a struggle over them once leaving Afghanistan. Additionally, women who are being trafficked into other societies that are literate would have more opportunities to escape, or even understand what is happening to them. Women are not being taken out of the country for long walks on the beach, they are being used to provide wives for men in polygynous societies. Just as Afghani heroin is particularly prized, from a genetic point of view Afghani women, due to their genetic diversity, are of especially high quality. Surrounded by nations with terrible issues caused by consanguinity, Afghanistan provides a prime opportunity for males of lower local social status to obtain reproductive access that has a higher genetic value even if it has a lower cultural value. This is akin to Americans increasingly buying Japanese cars in the 1970’s and 1980’s when it was clear they were better quality but there were social exhortations not to do so and the vehicles were by no means a way to signal social status. They may have seemed to signal the opposite. Particularly for a Pakistani man, movement to Afghanistan may represent a significant potential loss in standard of living, his offspring, however, would have a much higher likelihood of survivability and possible freedom from genetic diseases.

Afghanistan is not the Graveyard of Empires, it is the womb of their vassal states. The entire social system is predicated on this, and it has been for quite some time. Were the United States to wholly extricate itself from the region (including financial support for Pakistan), Pakistan would simply invade. Iran would begin to provide fighters under the pretext of supporting their Persian ethnic “brethren” and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would likely withdraw from Yemen and continue sending men to fight in Afghanistan whilst simultaneously claiming that it isn’t. The pipeline of Afghani brides to Qatar would continue, and Pakistan would accept aid from China in return for “not” allowing more Uyghur Muslims to cross into China or encouraging the ones that are already there to enter Afghanistan. The fabric of the regional system is dependent on an unstable Afghanistan, and that includes Afghanistan itself.

No amount of “nation building,” education, or ideology will change the evolutionary needs of South Asia. The Afghanis themselves are only loosely connected to their own ideology and the natural forces at play in the region are too strong to be stopped by political will. The Pakistani Government has been complicit in encouraging a war on their border and endangering their own internal stability for 18 years at the time of this writing for that very reason. The only actor in this drama with any interest in stability is the United States, and we lack the resolve to do anything that does not involve our partners in stability. The only exception to this may be Afghani women themselves, but they would require economic and political stability to be maintained for a lengthy period of time to gain the social capital to effect stability in their own Nation. Afghanistan will continue to be fought over for years to come not because the physical terrain is of strategic importance, but rather, the genetic terrain.

*Arab States tend to designate between “spinsters,” too old to reproduce, and single, which may also mean divorced or widowed. “Spinster” is an official, legal designation, and does not necessarily mean the woman has actually hit menopause. It is typically somewhere between 30 and 32. Though it does not reflect biological reality, this likely effects an Arab man’s view of a woman’s marriageability. 

[1] Cristofaro, J. D., Pennarun, E., Mazières, S., Myres, N. M., Lin, A. A., Temori, S. A., . . . Chiaroni, J. (2013). Afghan Hindu Kush: Where Eurasian Sub-Continent Gene Flows Converge. PLoS ONE, 8(10). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0076748

[2] Ibid

[3] Lacau, H., Gayden, T., Regueiro, M., Chennakrishnaiah, S., Bukhari, A., Underhill, P. A., . . . Herrera, R. J. (2012). Afghanistan from a Y-chromosome perspective. European Journal of Human Genetics, 20(10), 1063-1070. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2012.59

[4] Lee, J. L. (2018). Afghanistan: A history from 1260 to the present. London: Reaktion Books.

[5] Ayub, Q., & Tyler-Smith, C. (2009). Genetic variation in South Asia: Assessing the influences of geography, language and ethnicity for understanding history and disease risk. Briefings in Functional Genomics and Proteomics, 8(5), 395-404. doi:10.1093/bfgp/elp015

[6] Hashmi, A. A., Ali, R., Hussain, Z. F., Faridi, N., Khan, E. Y., Bakar, S. M., . . . Khan, M. (2017). Mismatch repair deficiency screening in colorectal carcinoma by a four-antibody immunohistochemical panel in Pakistani population and its correlation with histopathological parameters. World Journal of Surgical Oncology, 15(1). doi:10.1186/s12957-017-1158-8

[7] Rashid, M. U., Muhammad, N., Amin, A., Loya, A., & Hamann, U. (2016). Contribution of BRCA1 large genomic rearrangements to early-onset and familial breast/ovarian cancer in Pakistan. Breast Cancer Research and Treatment, 161(2), 191-201. doi:10.1007/s10549-016-4044-0

[8] Ahmed, S. (2017). Genetic Haemoglobin Disorders in Pakistan. National Journal of Health Sciences, 2(3), 95-99. doi:10.21089/njhs.23.0095

[9] Ibid

[10] Kaltenthaler, K., & Miller, W. (2015). Ethnicity, Islam, and Pakistani Public Opinion toward the Pakistani Taliban. Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 38(11), 938-957. doi:10.1080/1057610x.2015.1066214

[11] Glatzer, B. (2002). The Pashtun Tribal System. In D. K. Behera & G. Pfeffer (Eds.), Concept of tribal society (Vol. 5, pp. 265-282). New Delhi: Concept Pub.

[12] Blank, J. (2013, June 04). How to Negotiate Like a Pashtun. Retrieved April 20, 2019, from http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/06/03/how-to-negotiate-like-a-pashtun/

[13] Stanton, D. (2017). Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan. New York, NY: Scribner.

[14] Knoema. (n.d.). Afghanistan Adult literacy rate, 1970-2018. Retrieved May 06, 2019, from https://knoema.com/atlas/Afghanistan/topics/Education/Literacy/Adult-literacy-rate

[15] Johnson, T. H., & Dupee, M. C. (2012). Analysing the new Taliban Code of Conduct (Layeha): An assessment of changing perspectives and strategies of the Afghan Taliban. Central Asian Survey, 31(1), 77-91. doi:10.1080/02634937.2012.647844

[16] Blank, J. (2013, June 04). How to Negotiate Like a Pashtun. Retrieved April 20, 2019, from http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/06/03/how-to-negotiate-like-a-pashtun/

[17] Stanton, D. (2017). Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan. New York, NY: Scribner.

[18] Ibid

[19] Mosko, M. S. (1995). Rethinking Trobriand Chieftainship. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1(4), 763. doi:10.2307/3034960

[20] Pajhwok. (2019, April 14). Foreign Militants Fighting in Taliban Ranks: Paktia Governor. Retrieved May 01, 2019, from http://www.outlookafghanistan.net/national_detail.php?post_id=23387

[21] Roggio, B. (2018, December 18). Taliban Acknowledges ‘Thousands’ of Foreign Fighters in Their Ranks. Retrieved May 01, 2019, from https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/12/19/taliban_acknowledges_thousands_of_foreign_fighters_in_their_ranks_114048.html

[22] Wagner, R. L. (2016, November 27). Marriage rate among Saudis dropping | Rob L. Wagner. Retrieved May 02, 2019, from https://thearabweekly.com/marriage-rate-among-saudis-dropping

[23] Doha News. (2015, May 31). Report: Marriage rates among Qataris hit 10-year low. Retrieved May 02, 2019, from https://dohanews.co/report-marriage-rates-among-qataris-hit-10-year-low/

[24] Saeed, M. (2015, May 31). When it comes to love and marriage, more Qataris taking their time. Retrieved May 02, 2019, from https://dohanews.co/when-it-comes-to-love-and-marriage-more-qataris-taking-their-time/

[25] Knoema. (n.d.). Afghanistan Male to female ratio, 1950-2018. Retrieved May 02, 2019, from https://knoema.com/atlas/Afghanistan/topics/Demographics/Population/Male-to-female-ratio

[26] Johnson, T. H., & Dupee, M. C. (2012). Analysing the new Taliban Code of Conduct (Layeha): An assessment of changing perspectives and strategies of the Afghan Taliban. Central Asian Survey, 31(1), 77-91. doi:10.1080/02634937.2012.647844

[27] Knoema. (n.d.). Croatia Male to female ratio, 1950-2018. Retrieved May 02, 2019, from https://knoema.com/atlas/Croatia/topics/Demographics/Population/Male-to-female-ratio

[28] Nordberg, J. (2015). The underground girls of Kabul: In search of a hidden resistance in Afghanistan. New York, NY: Broadway Books.

[29] Knoema. (n.d.). China Male to female ratio, 1950-2018. Retrieved June 30, 2019, from https://knoema.com/atlas/China/topics/Demographics/Population/Male-to-female-ratio

[30] Lacau, H., Gayden, T., Regueiro, M., Chennakrishnaiah, S., Bukhari, A., Underhill, P. A., . . . Herrera, R. J. (2012). Afghanistan from a Y-chromosome perspective. European Journal of Human Genetics, 20(10), 1063-1070. doi:10.1038/ejhg.2012.59

[31] Malyarchuk, B., Derenko, M., Denisova, G., Wozniak, M., Grzybowski, T., Dambueva, I., & Zakharov, I. (2010). Phylogeography of the Y-chromosome haplogroup C in northern Eurasia. Annals of Human Genetics, 74(6), 539-546. doi:10.1111/j.1469-1809.2010.00601.x

[32] Cristofaro, J. D., Pennarun, E., Mazières, S., Myres, N. M., Lin, A. A., Temori, S. A., . . . Chiaroni, J. (2013). Afghan Hindu Kush: Where Eurasian Sub-Continent Gene Flows Converge. PLoS ONE, 8(10). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0076748

[33] U.S. State Department. (2019). Afghanistan. Retrieved May 01, 2019, from https://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/countries/2018/282596.htm#

[34] Felbab-Brown, V. (2017, November 21). Afghanistan’s opium production is through the roof-why Washington shouldn’t overreact. Retrieved May 02, 2019, from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2017/11/21/afghanistans-opium-production-is-through-the-roof-why-washington-shouldnt-overreact/

[35] Nordberg, J. (2015). The underground girls of Kabul: In search of a hidden resistance in Afghanistan. New York, NY: Broadway Books.

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