The “Great Game ” of Afghanistan (see Desperta Ferro Modern History #11, The Great Game ) took place throughout the 19th century, but if you look back two hundred years you will find a similar situation, in this case between Mughals and Persians, acting as early avatars of the British and Russians. This "Great Game" clearly reflects one of the basic conditions of Afghan history:its location in the heart of Asia. This land is, in the words of historian Arnold Toynbee, "a crossroads of empires." British diplomat William Fraser-Tytler was also right when he wrote that Afghanistan was "at the meeting point of three great empires", for this region had always been a buffer state between three great centers of imperial power:India to the southeast, Persia to the west, and Central Asia on its northern border, the latter populated throughout history by peoples such as the Scythians, initially, and then the Turks, the Mongols, the Uzbeks, and finally the Russians.
The geographical constraint
Throughout the centuries, all those who have tried to subjugate Afghanistan have stumbled into the traps that awaited those who aspired to conquer these almost impenetrable lands . First, the geographical features that form the country's natural defenses:the Hindu Kush, stretching from northeast to southwest, and the Oxo River, on its northern border. Both pose a formidable logistical problem for any invading army, especially the mountains, which between November and March are covered in snow, which when it melts turns into roaring torrents that cause flooding in a very short time, a circumstance that the Alexander the Great himself.
But it's not just about carrying troops and equipment through icy passes or formidable riverbeds; the real challenge is keeping supply lines open , a task that requires fortifying and defending settlements surrounded by a hostile environment.
Once an army had managed to cross these barriers, then it had to face one of the most savage warrior peoples of history, the Afghan, who could not afford to be expelled from his habitat for the simple reason that he had nowhere else to go. His lack of social mobility and his rigid tribal structures tied him to his immediate environment, because if it was already impossible for the Afghans to be accepted by other clans of their own ethnicity, much less would other tribal groups accept them, since they live in a territory too poor enough to admit refugees. Furthermore, the men, who were and to a large extent still are primarily farmers and herders, could not find wives outside their closed communities. In other words, Afghans have never fought to defend a nation-state, or at least a tribal grouping, and the same is true today, with most Taliban fighters fighting just a few miles from their hometowns. origin.
Afghan tribes have honed their warrior skills, fighting each other for the little that their territory can offer them, since the beginning of Antiquity. This struggle for survival has taken the form of tribal warfare between the Uzbeks, Tajiks and Turkmen in the northern Hindu Kush, the Hazara in the central mountains and, in conflict with everyone else, the all-powerful Pashtuns, established in their mighty southern strongholds. and east, and whose domain extended to what is now known as the tribal belt of northwest Pakistan.
It was the location of Afghanistan in the heart of Asia which caused him to be frequently at war. A classic example of this can be found in the eighty-year period between 1839 and 1919, in which Great Britain fought three wars in this region for the sole purpose of creating a buffer state against Russian expansionism (for the First Anglo-American War). -Afghan, see The Return of a King , by William Dalrymple).
The Afghan terrain can become a bulwark against possible invaders of the region, but its geographical location makes it too tempting a morsel for armies that might consider trying to penetrate its defenses, since it is the connection point between the great empires of central Asia and the warm and fertile valleys of the Indian subcontinent. In addition, located in the heart of the Silk Road, it was inevitable that it would become the scene of continuous clashes of civilizations, since trade routes from all over Asia have converged on it and valuable merchandise from Asia has circulated for thousands of years. China, India, Persia, Mesopotamia, Central Asia and the Mediterranean.
The nomadic invasions
The economic differences caused by the location of Afghanistan on the main trade routes of Asia caused a perpetual tension between cities and nomadic peoples, who considered that their way of life was more honorable than that of the inhabitants of large cities since they were used to constantly moving without luxury. In addition, the cities, due to the abundance of wealth they contained and the poor warrior skills of their inhabitants, were easy targets against sudden attacks by nomads. These, thanks to their skill with horses and archery, were difficult to beat on a battlefield:their tactic of appearing on horseback from nowhere and shooting their arrows from a distance and then dissolving in the immensity of their territory – the classic guerrilla warfare – made it almost impossible for a conventional army, made up of dense formations of heavily armed foot soldiers, to defeat them. This is a pattern that can be observed throughout history in the relationships between urban settlements and the nomadic peoples of the surrounding steppes.
The first nomadic invasions of the territory that is today Afghanistan were carried out by the Aryan tribes who crossed the Oxus River in a southerly direction during the second millennium BC. From there, part of the tribes headed south, entering India through the Bolan Pass, another turned west to settle on the Iranian plateau, and another remained in the region. Based on this fact, there is a misconception that Afghanistan is a country that cannot be conquered and that every foreign power that has tried it has had problems:the first meaning is false, only the second is true.
Alexander the Great he is popularly regarded as the leader of the first major foreign military expedition to enter Afghanistan. This happened between 330 and 326 BC. C., after the conquest of Persia. He initially entered Herat triumphantly, after taking the easier route from eastern Persia. The following year he followed the Helmand River southeast of Kandahar, then moved north to Kabul in the spring. The Roman historian Quintus Curtius wrote three centuries after the events that, on his way, Alexander had to contend with "a backward tribe, extremely uncivilized even for barbarians." But these "barbarians" were part of the same warrior tribes that faced each and every one of the successive invaders of the region. The Greek historian Herodotus, however, says that 200 years before the Macedonian king crossed the Dardanelles to conquer Asia, Cyrus the Great he had been able to subjugate large tracts of this territory.
Some of those who would follow in Alexander's footsteps were going to cause incredible carnage and wreak havoc across Afghanistan. The country barely had time to recover for a short period of peace before facing the lethal advance of the Mongol hordes of the thirteenth century. According to historian Louis Dupree:
Genghis Khan's army razed cities and irrigation systems in its path, acts of vandalism that forced people to take refuge in mountain fortresses, where they developed and they refined guerrilla skills that would baffle invaders in the 19th and 20th centuries. The Mongols, at least, realized that Afghanistan wasungovernable , and that it was best to destroy it, a task in which they were used with amazing efficiency. His invasions did not end with the death of Genghis Khan, but in 1583, Tamerlane, his descendant, traveled the usual route south from Herat stopping to destroy Helmand's rebuilt irrigation systems, before carrying out the systematic slaughter of all those who crossed his path.
Another of the empires that conquered the region and sowed death in it, was the Maurya Empire , founded around 300 a. C., who crossed the border from India to strike a deal with the surviving generals of Alexander the Great, trading 500 elephants for most of southern Afghanistan, where untamed Pashtuns were making life miserable for the Greeks. It would be Ashoka, the greatest of the Mauryan kings, who would introduce Buddhism, a religion that would prosper until the almost complete conversion to Islam in the 10th century.
The rise of Islam was to have little effect on the historical currents in the area. The Arab armies, suddenly unified under the inspiration of Mohammed, were able to easily capture large tracts of territory in the Middle East, even overthrowing the Sassanid monarchy in the year 642 and conquer the region that roughly corresponds to present-day Iran. Abdullah ibn Amir, governor of Basra, was the one who, in order to take advantage of this expansive movement, ordered an Arab force to launch an attack against the principalities of the Afghan territories. Their progress was not as rapid as in previous conquests, although they managed to capture the southern desert area of Sistan, as well as the cities of Herat and Balkh, using the latter as a base for future assaults on Central Asia. However, a series of revolts in that city would prevent the Arabs from continuing east and penetrating the domains of Kabul and the Hindu dynasty of the Shahi.
Afghanistan in the Contemporary Age
The Pashtuns they have been the dominant force in the country since the mid-18th century. They are a fearsome adversary, whose tribal contingents make up more than 95% of the Taliban's ranks. In 1932 they were described by General Sir Andrew Skeen, a veteran of the North West frontier, as “the most formidable fighters of the world”, who descend from the hills “like great rocks falling, not running, but jumping […] These men are hard as nails; they can live with very little and only carry a rifle and a few cartridges.”
When the great Russian and British empires of the 19th century converged on the Afghan borders, armed intervention became inevitable. Taking the principle of "deny others" to the extreme, it was the uninformed and arrogant British politicians in London and Delhi who ordered the pre-emptive strike based on evidence comparable to the "suspicious dossier" that led the Americans and British to smuggle into Iraq in 2003, in order to bring about a regime change that no one wanted.
The British fear of a Russian invasion of Afghanistan was finally confirmed, but not until a century later. A British diplomat, sir Rodric Braithwaite quotes the comment made by a Russian general more than fifty years before the 1979 Soviet invasion:
Or, to put it another way, Braithwaite notes that can be conquered the country, butnot keep it or do anything with it. Had the Kremlin bothered to listen to this general's remarks, it would have prevented nearly 70,000 deaths and injuries, and a decade-long conflict that, like other attempts to subjugate Afghanistan, ended in ignominious retreat.
The American-led invasion in 2001 is the latest example of ill-conceived military action, which now, with the withdrawal of ISAF combat troops, risks leaving the country in a chaotic situation . The strategy was flawed from the start:in 2003, after driving out the Taliban and putting Al Quaeda to flight, Western nations set their sights on Iraq, mistakenly believing the enemy was finished, only to return in 2006 to find an insurgency well armed and determined, ready to face them.
Meanwhile, there is little evidence to suggest that Western leaders have understood the lessons that teaches the intervention in Afghanistan. The best that can be hoped for now is to channel aid correctly, minimizing the percentage that will inevitably fall into the hands of corrupt officials, to successfully rebuild the country's economy and infrastructure, allowing it to emerge from the shadow of more than thirteen years of war. . But the best possible scenario will be to make sure that this is the last foreign invasion of the country.
There is a story, told among British officers in the 1930s, that illustrates the contempt of the tribesmen for the foreigners who came to occupy their country. A political official was conducting an inspection in a Pashtun district of the North West Frontier Province, known today as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Both geographically and ethnically, the border regions between present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan must be considered the same. During the meal he asked one of the maliks [N. of T.:in the Pashtun language it designates the tribal chiefs] of the people on which side their people would take in case of war between Great Britain and Russia. “What do you want me to answer, what he wants to hear or the truth?” asked the grey-bearded man. The British officer, preparing for the worst, assured his host that he only wished to hear the truth.
Bibliography
- Stewart, J. (2007):The Savage Border. Stroud:Sutton Publishing.
- Stewart, J. (2009):Frontier Fighters. Barnsley:Pen &Sword.
- Stewart, J. (2011):On Afghanistan's Plains. London:IB Tauris.