The hope and exhilaration felt among Afghans as the last Soviet troops retreated from their nation in early 1989 gave way to frustration within months. Disparate Afghan groups had struggled valiantly against a common enemy, but the extent of the discord and rivalries which characterized their efforts became ominously noticeable.

Islam as a measure of national identity is challenging a century of inroads by secular institutions. orthodox Afghan methods of conflict resolution guided by the spirit of equalitarianism and respect for others are being severely thwarted in an environment surfeited with modern weaponry supplied by outsiders pursuing a numerosity of regional agendas centered on Afghanistan.

The Afghan area thus evolved as a zone of cultural transition with a complex ethnolinguistic population as varied as its geography which encompasses fertile mountain valleys in the east, plains and grasslands in the north, a central mountain core, and deserts and semideserts in the west and southwest. The inhabitants of these different areas take pride in these cultural differentiations and follow their own customs, distinct tribal norms, religious variations, divergent attitudes toward family and gender, and contrasting subsistence life-styles.