The Definitions.

To understand what is happening in Afghanistan, I believe that you must first have a basic understanding of some of the words that you here all the time in writing and in the other forms of media. Here are some words that I found that I thought would be good to really understand.

Definitions.

All Definitions are from wikepidia.com

Jihadi international.

Jihadi or jihadi international is a political neologism referring to an individual who participates in advancing Jihad

Jihad.

an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād is a noun meaning "struggle." Jihad appears frequently in the Qur'an and common usage as the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of Allah (al-jihad fi sabil Allah)".[1][2] A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid, the plural is mujahideen.

Allah.

Allah (Arabic: الله‎, Allāh, IPA: [ʔalˤːɑːh]  ( listen)) is the standard Arabic word for God.[1] While the term is best known in the West for its use by Muslims as a reference to God, it is used by Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, in reference to "God".[1][2][3] The term was also used by pagan Meccans as a reference to the creator-god, possibly the supreme deity in pre-Islamic Arabia.[4]

 

Caliphate.

The term caliphate (from the Arabic خلافة or khilāfa) refers to the first form of government inspired by Islam. It was initially led by Muhammad's disciples as a continuation of the political authority the prophet established, known as the 'rashidun caliphates'. It represented the political unity of the Muslim Ummah. The term is also used to refer to a state which implements such a government.

 

Pronouncing Arabic words and names.

Although word stress is not phonemically contrastive in Standard Arabic, it does bear a strong relationship to vowel length. The basic rules are:

1   Only one of the last three syllables may be stressed.

2   Given this restriction, the last "superheavy" syllable (containing a long vowel or ending in a consonant) is stressed.

3    If there is no such syllable, the pre-final syllable is stressed if it is 'heavy.' Otherwise, the first allowable syllable is stressed.

4    In Standard Arabic, a final long vowel may not be stressed. (This restriction does not apply to the spoken dialects, where original final long vowels have been shortened and secondary final long vowels have arisen.)

For example: ki-TAA-bun "book", KAA-ti-bun "writer", MAK-ta-bun "desk", ma-KAA-ti-bun "desks", mak-TA-ba-tun "library", KA-ta-buu (MSA) "they wrote" = KA-ta-bu (dialect), ka-ta-BUU-hu (MSA) "they wrote it" = ka-ta-BUU (dialect), ka-TA-ba-taa (MSA) "they (dual, fem) wrote", ka-TAB-tu (MSA) "I wrote" = ka-TABT (dialect). Doubled consonants count as two consonants: ma-JAL-la "magazine", ma-HALL "place".

Qur'an.

The Qur’an^[1] (Arabic: القرآن‎ al-qur’ān, literally “the recitation”; also sometimestransliterated as Quran, Qur’ān, Koran, Alcoran or Al-Qur’ān) is the centralreligious text of Islam. Muslims believe the Qur’an to be the book of divine guidance and direction for mankind, and consider the original Arabic text to be the final revelation of God.^[2][3][4][5]

Islam holds that the Qur’an was revealed to Muhammad by the angel Jibrīl(Gabriel) over a period of approximately twenty-three years, beginning in 610 CE, when he was forty, and concluding in 632 CE, the year of his death.^[2][6][7] Followers of Islam further believe that the Qur’an was written down by Muhammad's companions while he was alive, although the primary method of transmission was oral. Muslim tradition agrees that it was fixed in writing shortly after Muhammad's death by order of the caliphs Abu Bakr and Umar^[8], and that their orders began a process of formalization of the orally transmitted text that was completed under their successor Uthman with the standard edition known as the "Uthmanic recension."^[9] The present form of the Qur’an is accepted by most scholars as the original version authored or dictated by Muhammad.

Please add any terms that you believe need defining.

Kalo.