They came, they butchered. And then they bolted. The fate of the invaders of Afghanistan over the last two centuries: the British in the 19th and 20th centuries and the Soviet Union in the 20th. Chronicled by David Loyn, with the eye and ear of the journalist for the telling - and amusing - detail and the broader sweep of the historian, in his magisterial new book "Butcher and Bolt - Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan".
Today it is of crucial concern across the globe whether or not this century, the 21st, will be the third in a row to be the graveyard of a foreign invader, this time the combined forces of the American Super Power and its NATO satraps, the Coalition. The problems facing President Obama and the Coalition will shape the future, not only of Afghanistan but also of NATO, and of sub-continental, relations. Even those of the non-Islamic world with Islam.
The introduction to Butcher and Bolt asks the essential questions:
- how could the socially unpopular Taliban re-emerge from their shattering defeat in 2001;
- is there something in the country and the very nature of its people that make it so difficult to conquer;
- why is holding it so much more difficult than taking it;
- what really goes on under the surface of one of the world's most complex societies;
- why has reform never taken hold;
- why did invaders never seem to learn from their predecessors' mistakes (the present Russian Ambassador thinks the Coalition is repeating the Soviet errors) or consider anything but their own narrow interests?
Loyn, writing with ease and clarity, illuminates these questions and in particular the parallels and links to past centuries in Afghanistan and the paradoxes that threaten to be portents for the future.
Change creeps hardly perceptibly through the centuries- except in some of the cities - in the heartlands of Afghanistan, especially in the Pashtu areas on the Durand Line and the frontier with Pakistan. This is the area whose xenophobic nationalism can so easily become the motor of a wider Afghan nationalism.
Afghan tribal structures - social, political, economic- have proved resistant to change, guarded in part by what the aptly named one-time Soviet Resident and now Russian Ambassador in Kabul, Mr Kabulov, calls their "irritative allergy" to foreigners. Mad, foolhardy Afghan bravery and martial skills in asymmetric warfare - they were the first guerrilla warriors to face aerial bombardment in 1919 and were shooting down Soviet helicopters as early as 1981 - and improvisation are as striking as they were two centuries ago. The terrain, which from the time of Alexander the Great has always dictated where the fighting takes place, and Afghan familiarity with it, are permanent.
The most extreme interpretation of Islam, with its promise of instant martyrdom, is as potent a rallying point for the Taliban now as it was for the Mujahideen against the Russians and for the Ghazis or Deobandi fanatics (who originated in what is now North West Pakistan - Malakand) against the British in both the 19th and 20th centuries.
Nor do the invaders change. They come solely for their own ends, politics and profit, be it material, precious lapis, geopolitical concerns or trade routes that today include potential energy pipelines. Arrogant, ignorant and over-confident in their superior armaments and technical development, the invaders seek to impose their own cultures, values and habits - always claiming that they are better for the Afghans than their own, whether they be Communism or Free Market Democracy - by way of puppet leaders and through the barrels of their guns.
Meanwhile the Afghan people, a large majority of whom would appear to beg to differ with the invaders and who would like to lead peaceful lives, become the victims of endless misery, death, destruction and poverty.
Against such abackground, historical knowledge and understanding is a vital tool for anyone. Invaders ignore it in the vain hope that, by forgetting it, it will not repeat, while the Afghans hope that by remembering and drawing on it, it will.
Long memories are a characteristic of Afghans - essential for the operation of "badal", generation-spanning revenge.
"Do you want to be remembered as a son of Dost Mahommed or a son of Shah Shuja?" was a Taliban recruiting slogan in 2005. Dost Mahommed was the Great Amir who first recognised the power of Jihad and who in the early 19th century, like Mullah Omar 200 years later, donned the Prophet's cloak to proclaim himself Leader of All the Faithful against the invaders. Shah Shuja was the "unlucky" and treacherous puppet Amir of the British, killed by a mob in 1842. Of course the modern Shah Shuja was instantly recognisable as Hamid Karzai.
With hindsight, and inevitably too late, the invaders come to recognise their mistakes. Lord Roberts, proponent of a British withdrawal in 1880, opined that "the less the Afghans see of us, the less they will dislike us". One hundred years later the Russian General Staff concluded that they had not considered the "historic, religious and national particularities of Afghanistan", while the European Representative, Francesc Vendrell, admitted to David Loyn that since democracy had been " brought" to Afghanistan, "it was not thought necessary for us to understand the tribal system". The then British Defence Secretary hoped that British troops could be withdrawn "without a shot being fired".
Invincible and fatal ignorance that some little studyof history could have blunted.
David Loyn's elegant pen steers the reader through much of the paradox and irony that are the stuff of Afghanistan.
The Afghan personality; the habit of calculating from minute to minute where advantage, power and money lie and the consequent ability to change allegiance instantly; the unspeakable cruelty of the monster Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who, as an anti-Soviet Mujahid, took 600 million dollars from the Americans and has since joined and rejoined the Taliban and the Karzai government - all this is but a reflection of Shah Shuja.
The attitude towards women is unchanging. Even President Karzai, complaining about exaggerated western interest in the fate of Afghan women, noted that the last King who tried to meddle with their status was ousted violently. Most recently, seemingly for electoral reasons, the President has signed off legislation that the UN says legalises rape within marriage and bans wives from stepping outside their homes without their husbands' permission.
The vagaries of the Pashtu code of honour, the Pukhtunwali, saved both the author from death, and Osama from being handed over to the Saudis. As a consequence the Americans unleashed the onslaught that secured the first, but temporary, defeat of the Taliban, finally forcing its leadership into Pakistan with the terrifying consequences that we are now facing.
The "Blow Back" from American policy that fuelled, at enormous cost, the Mujahideen resistance to the Soviets - resistance that the same people using the same weapons have now turned against the Coalition. The activities of Congressman Charlie Wilson, his ladies, Snowflake and Sweetums, and his aristocratic British shadow, Viscount Cranborne, are a curious interlude in the story.
America's soi-disant allies constantly undermine the war against Jihadism and the Taliban. Strategic depth is the permanent objective of the Pakistani intelligence agencies, via Kashmir, against India (as the late President Zia put it, Muslims have a right to lie in a good cause). The Saudis continue to disseminate Sunni Wahabi fundamentalism through the Madrassahs - the religious schools in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
There is the permanent presence of neighbouring players, powers who could be natural allies against Sunni extremist Taliban: Iran, disqualified till now by allied attitudes and India, alienated by the dispute with Pakistan over Kashmir. Russia is still in the Great Game, exercising influence by allowing or disallowing supply lines for NATO to cross its territory to compensate for the insecurity of Peshawar and the Khyber Pass. The latter is now as dangerous to use for the Coalition as was the Bolan Pass forthe British in 1840.
Even the logistics of today's invaders echo the chaos of earlier wars. The lack of proper equipment and transport and the elephants that proved as hamstrung as Soviet tanks or Land Rovers sent into battle fitted with only four out of five wheel nuts.
Underestimation of the Afghans and invaders' delusions of victory run like a thread of blood through the history of wars in Afghanistan. In 1842 Afghanistan was abandoned by Lord Ellenborough, since the last campaign had established "the supremacy of British power". The Russians assumed that the Mujahideen would throw down their arms when faced by the might of the Soviet army. President Bush proclaimed in 2004 that "the Taliban no longer exists in Afghanistan".
It seems, as David Loyn notes, that Afghanistan's conservative and tribal society defeats not only foreign forces, but also foreign ideas. President Obama has begun to talk of an "exit strategy". But he and the Coalition still have to answer the question put as long ago as 1838 by the Khan of Khalat: "You have brought an army into the country, but how do you propose to take it out?"
