Afghanistan: Highway of Conquest
May 7, 2008 by Scott Powell
The United States is currently engaged in an effort to elevate Afghanistan to the status of exemplary moderate Islamic state. What exactly are the prospects for accomplishing this mission based on Afghanistan’s history and culture?
The first thing to realize when broaching this question is that Afghanistan is not a nation, and barely a country. Historically, Afghanistan served as a corridor for the rampaging armies of the East moving west, of the West headed east, and of central Asia moving north or south. Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and Timur (a.k.a. Tamerlane) are only the most famous of foreign rulers who used this geopolitical thoroughfare to fulfill their imperial ambitions. For all recorded history, Afghanistan has either been occupied by a foreign power in full or in part, or subsisted through some interim in which foreign powers were repositioning themselves for another move.
It’s for this reason that historians and those who accept the moniker “Afghan” place such great emphasis on the formation of the “Durrani Empire” in 1747. At this point, one of the region’s tribal leaders was elected King of Afghanistan by an assembly of notables. Even at this point, however, it would be an exaggeration to say that Afghanistan existed as anything other than a primitive feudal amalgam.
I liken the situation in Afghanistan to France in the Dark Ages. In 987, Hugh Capet was selected by the various lords of France as king. He was elevated to the nominal role of king precisely because it served the interests of the lords, who didn’t want centralized rule. Capet’s own land holdings around Paris were insignificant compared to those of the Duke of Normandy or Duke of Aquitaine. As king he would have no real power. Ahmad Shah Durrani, chosen in 1747 as “king” of Afghanistan was in a similar position, except one could argue that Afghanistan in 1747 was quite far behind France of 987. The region had not even coalesced into permanent feudal holdings under major “dukes” or “counts”. The relationships to which Afghans adhered (and many still do adhere) were tribal, like those of the Germanic tribes out of which the Frankish kingdom first came together as Rome fell.
Unlike France, however, Afghanistan never managed to experience the dynastic stability out of which a centralized monarchy could arise. Although Ahmad Shah was succeeded by his son, as Robert II succeeded Hugh Capet in France, the Durrani dynasty never experienced that long string of successes that gave the Capetian dynasty its storied place in French history. Even as the Durrani Empire was in the process of crystallizing, external events swamped its progress.
In 1798, Napoleon demonstrated his intention to move on India by conquering Egypt. Then France allied with Russia in a move that might yield an overland expedition to the nascent British Empire in Asia. Because of this threat the British began to keep a close eye on developments in central Asia, and the “Great Game” was initiated. Woe be to the Afghans, who had no idea their little corner of world was viewed as a pawn in a continental chess match between world powers.
The Shah of Afghanistan and his Suitors in the “Great Game”
They would learn quickly enough, as the British–who judged Afghanistan to be an unworthy state–initiated the Anglo-Afghan Wars in order to achieve regime change in India’s backward neighbor. First in 1839, and then again in 1878, British armies invaded to try to transform Afghanistan into a useful buffer state.
When the region proved too backward to use, but not backward enough to dismiss entirely, the British decided to strike a deal with the Russians, whose empire by 1875 had reached the Amu Darya (the river which now forms part of Afghanistan’s northern boundary. The two empires drew Afghanistan’s borders themselves, including the hated Durand Line which now bisects key Afghan tribes, imposing Pakistani citizenship on some and Afghan rule on others. (A strange result of this imperial boundary tracing exercise is that Afghanistan shares a border with China, and anyone who crosses that line headed East loses both freedom and 3.5 hours of their lives!)
Afghanistan’s present borders were largely imposed upon it by Russia and Britain.
Strangely, Afghanistan got off pretty easy when it came to the World Wars. In 1907, with the Anglo-Russian Entente, the Great Game came to an end. Its two contestants agreed to work together against a common threat instead. Then, as the World Wars consumed the West’s attention, Afghanistan slipped under the radar. It was so backward that nobody really bothered.
Things changed however in 1947, when Pakistan was formed and the Cold War turned the region into a battleground once again. The partitioning of the region by Britain was given permanence when the United States chose to view Pakistan as a key ally of the “Northern Tier” to contain Communism. It armed that country while largely ignoring Afghanistan.
The Soviets, not surprisingly, saw Afghanistan as ripe for the picking. Gradually, as the country moved from having one school in 1904, to two, three, four by WWII, “Western” ideas–including Marxism–began to percolate through the educated elite. With Soviet help, a Communist party staged a coup in 1978 and the primitive Islamic region was catapulted into the era of “scientific socialism.” Not surprisingly, the dissonance between old and new was too great, and the Soviet were forced to move in to prop up the Communist regime, lest it fail for all the world to see. From 1979-1989, the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan.
As Communism collapsed, a power vacuum was created, into which all the pent up Islamic tribal energies of the various peoples of Afghanistan were sucked. The country fell into Civil War, and gradually fell under the control of the Taliban.
From this point onward, the story is familiar to most Americans. The Taliban regime that hosted Osama Bin Laden was displaced by Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 after the 9-11 attacks. And US forces have been there ever since.
What is the relevance of this background to the present? Afghanistan has never become a true state, and it has constantly lived in subordinacy to outside powers. As a result of its history as a “highway of conquest,” as one historian put it, and its recent subordination to Britain and the Soviet Union, Afghanistan really only exhibits one cultural constant: a desire for independence. You often hear people say that the Afghans are “freedom lovers.” This is a misrepresentation. The people who live in Afghanistan are “self-determination lovers”–and with good reason! But these are not the same thing.
Left to their own devices, the Afghans would make war on each other long into the foreseeable future. Their loyalties remain to the tribe, above all, and to Islam. They would not embrace political freedom and create republican institutions; they would seek to dominate each other on the basis of traditional ideas about tribal and religious life. If threatened by outside interference, they would come together, but revert to internecine feuding as soon as the threat receded. They simply don’t know how to live any differently.
Can this be changed by an extended US presence? It’s possible, but not likely. Certainly, the timescale of the requisite cultural change is much longer than anyone in the Bush administration would care to fathom. First, Afghan tribalism is alive and well, and there are simply too many parts of the country that the US-supported government does not control. Second, Afghanistan is not being injected with a sufficiently deep Western outlook. Afghanistan’s so-called universities don’t teach humanities like history and philosophy. They teach computers, engineering, medicine–and Islamic Law. The intellectual framework needed to sustain free institutions is thus not being erected. The minute the US ceases to prop up the country, the weight of Afghanistan’s history and culture will cause the whole apparatus to collapse.
To learn more about the story of Afghanistan, try my lecture on the History of Afghanistan as part of the Islamist Entanglement. For the most accessible reading on the subject, I recommend the Greenwood History of Afghanistan by Meredith Runion. It’s not as thorough as Martin Ewans’s Short History of Afghanistan, which is also useful, but it’s a better introduction.
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I am currently readin Stephen Pressfields Novel ‘The Afghan Campaign” which is about how Alexander the Great subdued the area that is now known as Afghanistan.
It seems that great empires have had a lot of trouble subduing the Afghan region throught history, from Alexander the Great, the British, Soviets, Americans, even Ghengis Khan had some troble with them.
Even though Alexander the Great was very ruthless against the peole in that area(he had no Just War Theory getting in the way), he stil had a lot of troble handeling that area.
Why are tribalists regions so difficult to control? And if we somehow did get a proper warfighting doctrine without Christian ethics interfering what would be the proper way to fight a war against them? I ask becaus even though Alexander the Great was very ruthless against the peole in that area(he had no Just War Theory getting in the way), he still had a lot of troble defeating his “Afghan” enemies.
Would a modern military have different luck?
Tribalism is a primitive, unintegrated existence. It’s not easy to displace for precisely that reason. You have two options: wipe it out, or integrate it by force. In an ideal universe, you might achieve the gradual integration of a tribal region into a civilized one through isolation, limited contact, trade, education and economic progress, but no historical scenario has ever offered a developed country faced with outside pressures that option. (I’m not an expert on Alexander’s central Asian campaigns, but I do know that he was pushing his army beyond their will to continue the further East they went. Did he not sail down the Indus, and back to Persia, when finally convinced to give up? I think his forces were getting spread pretty thin. Genghis Khan did not have trouble with Afghanistan. He was tolerant of its people, until they rebelled, and then he mercilessly eradicated a large proportion of the population “pour encourager les autres.”
I don’t think we need to concern ourselves with tribalism per se in any country. It is a tremendous handicap, and makes any country that cannot remove it terribly weak. Our goal should be to have as little contact as possible with such cultures. It’s simply not in our interest! If that country is harboring terrorists, on the other hand, then we send them an ultimatum: turn them over, and if you refuse then we will deal with them and you in a manner of our choosing, and any deaths you incur will be your responsibility. Then we ask the military how best to remove the threat. The United States could easily take the mountainous caves of Afghanistan and turn them into a nuclear wasteland with ground penetrating tactical nukes, and the ecological effects–if that’s of any concern–would be minimal, but that’s just one option I can imagine. We don’t even have to nuke the whole country, just the mountains on the border with Pakistan, so that this “border” is actually properly sealed and everybody inside stays inside.
Honestly though, I don’t think that Afghanistan is the problem. Terrorists can only strike at the United States because of their major state sponsors–especially Iran. That’s where we should focus our attention.
Thank you so much again for the fascinating reply!
Alexander had a lot of trouble in that region during his invasion of the Afghan Kingdoms in 330 B.C, according to Pressfield “more massacres of Macedonian troops happened in those three years than in all of Alexander and his father’s Philip’s other campaigns combined.”Alexander thought he would pacify the region in a short while but instead it took him three long years. He was very brutal against his enemies but he still could not find a way to defeat them in orderto move on to India. He finally won though by marrying the daughter of
Oxyartes the most powerful of the tribesmen. So in effect, he became part of the tribe, so in the end he secured his flank and got the hell out of there,with a fifth of his army to garrison the place.
This is an interview on the Afghan Campaign:
http://www.stevenpressfield.com/content/afghan_campaign.asp
Stephen Pressfield wrote a fascinating article called “It’s the Tribes, Stupid”, while I dont agree with his conclusion that this war has nothing to do with religion, it is still fascinating and gives a lot of insight on how tribalism works.
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/pressfield_tribes.htm
“The tribe must have a chief. It demands a leader. With a top dog, every underdog knows his place. He feels secure. He can provide security for this family. The tribe needs a Tony Soprano. It needs a Godfather.
The U.S. blew it in Iraq the first week after occupying Baghdad. Capt. Nate Fick of the Recon Marines tells the story of that brief interlude when U.S. forces were still respected, just before the looting started. Capt. Fick went in that interval to the local headman in his area of responsibility in Baghdad; he asked what he needed. The chief replied, “Clean water, electricity, and as many statues of George W. Bush as you can give us.
The tribe needs a boss. Alexander understood this. Unlike the U.S., the Macedonians knew how to conquer a country. When Alexander took Babylon in 333 B.C., he let the people know he was the man. They accepted this. They welcomed it. Life could go on.
When we Americans declared in essence to the Iraqis, “Here, folks, you’re free now; set up your own government,” they looked at us as if we were crazy. The tribal mind doesn’t want freedom; it wants security. Order. It wants a New Boss. The Iraqis lost all respect for us then. They saw us as naive, as fools. They saw that we could be beaten.”
And by the way Genghis Khan did have trouble in afghanistan, according to Britanica Online,
“Jalal al-Din Mingburnu rallied the Afghan highlanders at Parwan (modern Jabal os Saraj), near Kabul, and inflicted a crushing defeat on the Mongols under Kutikonian.”
“Genghis Khan, who was then at Herat, hastened to avenge the defeat and laid siege to Bamian. There Mutugen, the khan’s grandson, was killed, an event so infuriating to Genghis Khan that when he captured the citadel he ordered that no living being be spared. Bamian was utterly destroyed”