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Chapter 1 sets a new paradigm of research and applied practice based on the ontology of oneness; introduces medical ethnomusicology; lays a foundation for the study of music, health, and healing through the harmony of science and religion; introduces music-prayer-meditation dynamics, neuroplasticity, cognitive flexibility, entrainment, holistic embodiment (or embeingment), and the Human Certainty Principle as culture-transcendent processes and principles that undergird musical healing; challenges moral and cultural relativism, focusing on the importance of applied work to benefit the whole of humanity; introduces maddâh devotional music and the culture of Badakhshan, Tajikistan as the primary cultural example of musical healing. Core theoretical and philosophical frameworks are established that draw on local beliefs and practices, ethnomusicology, health science, neuro- and cognitive science, and quantum physics.

This chapter examines what led to the 1958 ban of opium in Badakhshan. After 1945, Afghanistan began a concerted effort to be ratified by the international drug control regime as a legal producer of opium for the global pharmaceutical trade. Although there was some support for Afghanistan, Mohammad Daud Khan abruptly announced a ban and eradication of all opium in Badakhshan province in 1958. This chapter examines the internal and external forces that shaped the implementation of the ban, and the consequences of the ban. Internally, Daud chose to eradicate crops in Badakhsan, not in three other opium producing provinces, mainly because it was inhabited by Tajiks, an ethnic minority which could not threaten the stability of the Afghan government. Daud also recognized that the international community was well aware opium’s importance to the Badakhshan economy, and would increase economic development aid and assistance to the Afghan government.

The Hindu Kush Mountains run along the Afghan border with the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Following the First Anglo-Afghan war of 1839– 42 the British government in Simla decided that the North-West Frontier of British India had to have an accurate delineation. Sir Mortimer Durand mapped the border between what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan in 1893 and this frontier is known as the Durand Line. Unfortunately it is a political frontier and one that splits the Pathan or Pushtun-speaking lands into two, with the North-West Frontier Province and Waziristan in Pakistan to the east and the Afghan provinces of Kunar, Nangahar, Khost, Paktiya, and Kandahar to the west. The border regions north of Baluchistan in Quetta and Waziristan are strong tribal areas and ones that have never come under the direct rule of the Pakistani government. Warlords run their drug and arms businesses from well-fortified mud-walled hilltop fortresses. During the period that Lord Curzon was Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905 the entire border regions of British India were mapped out along the Karakoram, Kashmir, Ladakh, and south Tibetan Ranges. During Partition, in 1947, once again an artificial border was established separating mostly Muslim Pakistan from India. Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy, gave Sir Cyril Radcliffe the invidious task of delineating the border in haste to avoid a civil war that would surely have come, and on 17 August 1947 Pakistan inherited all the territory between the Durand Line and the new Indian frontier, the Radcliffe Line. In the north, the disputed Kashmir region still remained unresolved and the northern boundary of Pakistan ran north to the main watershed along the Hindu Kush, Hindu Raj, and Karakoram Ranges. To the west, Afghanistan was a completely artificial country created by the amalgamation of the Pathans of the east, Hazaras of the central region, the Uzbeks in the Mazar-i-Sharif area, and the Tadjiks of the Panjshir Valley along the border with Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. The British lost three wars trying to invade this mountainous land between 1839 and 1919, and the Soviet Union which occupied Afghanistan for ten years from 1979 also withdrew across the Oxus River in failure in February 1989.

You have no doubt heard about blood diamonds, and know that they are not rare red versions of the gemstone, but illicitly mined diamonds used to finance and prolong armed conflicts in some African countries. But have you heard of blue blooded stones? An elaborate marking system known as the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme is currently used, although some claim inefficiently, to sort good diamonds (for example, from Botswana) from blood diamonds that should not be allowed into the market. No such scheme is needed for the blue stones named lapis lazuli, as there is only one mine in the world that produces highquality stones—the Sar-e Sang mine in the Kokcha valley in the Badakhshan province in north-eastern Afghanistan—so there is never any doubt about where they come from. The mine is in such a remote area that even prolific travellers like Marco Polo and Sir Richard Burton never made it there, although Polo refers to them in his travels when crossing the river Oxus (also known as the Amu Darya) of which the Kokcha is a tributary: ‘a mountain in that region where the fi nest azure in the world is found.’ A Scottish explorer, John Wood, visited in 1837, but if his book Journey to the Source of the River Oxus is to be believed, it wasn’t exactly a Sunday School excursion either: ‘If you wish not to go to destruction, avoid the narrow valley of Koran [Kokcha],’ he summarized. One who finally made it there was the British journalist Victoria Finlay, author of the wonderful Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox , and, although reaching the mine in the beginning of the 2000s, this was still quite an achievement. Why would anyone endure various kinds of hardships just to see a mine where you can whack out blue stones from the interior of a mountain? Perhaps because these rare stones have achieved tremendous value over the ages, being the hallmark of kings and aristocracy, or because the trade in them covered such distances even in ancient times, or maybe because this mine is possibly the oldest in the world that is still being worked, having been in business for 5,000–6,000 years.

Postwar recovery is an elusive term. Often it is identified with words like reconstruction or nation and peace building and may be related to historical events such as the American Civil War or the Marshall Plan. Perhaps, however, the term is elusive because its distinct parts offer it a host of meanings. Post is a prefix that means after or later, war is the exertion of violence or hostility, and recovery is a restoration or return. As such, postwar recovery might be read as “after exerting violence, return later and restore hostility.” While this may be a word game, the semantics of postwar recovery, at face value, provoke some very difficult questions. At least, what is war, what is peace, and in the absence of both, what is to be recovered? In the past, recovery has encompassed almost every level of society, from institutions and government to economies, industry, infrastructure, and housing. At its best, recovery has embodied aspirations for future peace; at its worst, it has remained the harsh reality of sifting through ashes to find what is left. As part of the geographic study of war and peace, this introduction to the field of postwar recovery presents a brief history of its modern development by emphasizing the intersections of territorial sovereignty, international intervention, and subnational spaces. The chapter concludes by discussing its application in the field from the perspective of international practitioners. Part of the analysis reflects calls for further study on issues relevant to both geography and postwar recovery such as the impact of Non-Governmental Organizations on the “front lines” of geopolitics or issues of migration, a major propellant of which is violent conflict. Suggesting potentials for synthesis of postwar recovery and geography, the analysis alludes to different scales of recovery and through a case study of northern Afghanistan presents regional elements of postwar environments and their impact on field level recovery. The history of postwar recovery parallels that of political geography and has seen the task of civilians to restore, with limited assistance, what was lost in war become a multibillion-dollar industry infused with state responsibilities, international intervention, and structured civilian participation.