In late 1895, Abdur Rahman, the emir of Afghanistan, ordered the conquest of a number of remote valleys north-east of Kabul that bordered British India. Their capture was fairly straightforward. Scattered in mountainous villages, the locals struggled to put up a fight. The region – then known vaguely as Kafiristan, “land of the infidels” – was swallowed by the burgeoning Afghan state within months, emerging into the 20th century irrevocably as the province of Nuristan, “land of light”.
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