Pashto Language Blog

The Afghan flag

Throughout history there have been many different flags in Afghanistan. It is probably the first country to have so many different flags since its establishment. One of the reasons that there have been so many different flags used by the government of Afghanistan throughout the history of Afghanistan is that almost every regime changed the national flag and shows the diverse ideologies of the people or the political groups. For example Habibullah Kalakani, also known as Bacha-e-Saqaw (son of a water carrier) who was the emir of Afghanistan in the year 1929, changed the flag during his rule which was less than a year. Looking back at the recent history of Afghanistan you can see a competation of flag changing.

For this post, we will introduce you to the current official flag of Afghanistan. Based on the article nineteen of the constitution of Afghanistan, the current flag of Afghanistan is comprised of three equal strips of black, red, and green. This current flag was adopted in 2004 and is still in use. In the center of the flag is the national emblem of Afghanistan. At the top of the emblem is the Shahada or declaration of faith which is translated as “There is no God but Allah, Muhammad is his messenger.” In the center of the emblem is a mosque with two flags of Afghanistan. Below the mosque is the date in solar Islamic colander showing the year 1298 which is the year Afghanistan got its independence.

The color of the tree strips are interpreted as follow: The black strip means the ages of darkness when Afghanistan was not independent. The red stripe means fighting for independence and bloodshed that accord during all the years before achieving the independence. The last green strip means prosperity, and independence.

You might be wondering why we are introducing to you a single word in this post. Well, the short answer is because it is very important to know this word if you want to know more about Afghans. Understanding the meaning associated with this word will enable you to understand the issue of honor in Afghan society. By simply giving you the dictionary meaning of this word, we will be leaving out many concepts that this word is associated with in Afghan society.

When talking about Ghairat, it is usually translated as “honor” into English, however, honor which is another very important concept to be learned about Afghan society is Ezat (عزت). These two concepts can be very much connected and they both can be gained by doing similar, or sometimes the same things in Afghan society, but still they are two separate concepts.

Ghairat is primarily surrounded around the protection and control of women in a nuclear family, or in an extended family, or even sometimes in a clan or tribe. So, the protection and control of female members of the family, the protection of other members of the family which includes the extended family and sometimes even the clan, the protection of one’s property, rising against oppression, defending the powerless, fighting for your rights, and in some cases taking revenge constitutes a person’s Ghairat.

Let’s look at a couple of examples to understand the definition above. Suppose a female member of an Afghan family decides that she wants to be a fashion model. The other members of the family, especially the male, members of the family do not agree with her and does not allow her because it is not acceptable in the society and will bring shame on the family, but she doesn’t care and becomes a model. In this case she has damaged the Ghairat of the male members of the family and in order for them to be considered people-with-Ghairat, they need to stop her and punish her, and otherwise it affects their status in the society. Similarly if someone oppresses you, and you don’t defend yourself while you can, then you are considered someone without Ghairat.

These are the major issues surrounding Ghairat, but there are many other things that can affect one’s Ghairat and honor in the Afghan society. For instance, not working very hard to provide for one’s family, mistreating one’s parents, fighting with women, mistreating a guest, not keeping your words, and there are many other little things that can affect one’s Ghairat. It is determined by the people of the society how much Ghairat someone has.

In Afghan culture, to tell someone that he/she does not have Ghairat is considered one of the biggest insults. If one doesn’t have Ghairat in Afghan society one will not be considered honorable; and if he/she is not honorable in this society, he/she could be alienated by most of the members and life can become very hard.

In English we have prepositions, the words that come before a noun and show its relationship to the other words in a sentence such as in, on, for. In Pashto the prepositions are not used alone. These words that do the job of a preposition in Pashto are called postpositions. As the name suggests, post positions are the words that come after a noun in Pashto and show its relationship to the other words in the sentence.

In English if we want to say “I am going to Kabul” we notice that the preposition “to” occurs before the noun “Kabul” in the sentence. on the contrary, if we say the same sentence in Pashto “za Kabul ta zam” we can see that the postposition “ta” occurs after the noun Kabul. in order to get used to post positions, it sometimes helps to write the literal meaning of a couple of Pashto sentence with post position and memorize them. For example the literal meaning of the sentence above will be “ I Kabul to go” this way you will remember the structure easier.  The following are examples of post positions in Pashto.

sara (سره)  = with  za ahmad sara zam. (زه احمد سره ځم .)  I am going with Ahmad.

Lapaara (لپاره)  = for   da sta lapaara day. (دا ستا لپاره دی.)  This is for you.

Ta nagde (ته نږدې) = near khaar ta nagde osaigam.     (ښار ته نږدې اوسیږم.) I live near the city.

Khowata (خواته)  = towards zamaong khowata raaza. (زمونږ خواته راځه.)  Come towards us.

Ghonday (غوندې) = like    hagha taa ghonday day. (هغه تا غوندې دی.)  He is like you.