Afghanistan's turbulent history

The events of September 11 and what has happened since have made people understand that even a small, distant and far away country like Afghanistan cannot be left to break up into anarchy and chaos without consequences for the whole world. Lakhdar Brahimi, special adviser to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan

The rising insurgency mirrors Afghanistan’s turbulent history marked by centuries of conflict and violence. Bridging trade routes between the Indian subcontinent, Persian Gulf and Central Asia, Afghanistan has persistently suffered foreign interference and invasions. But despite suffering perpetual instability and anarchy, its rugged terrain and people’s patriotic and religious zeal have helped preserve the nation’s independence.

It seems unusual that conquerors as prominent as Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan suffered greatly to invade and control this small nation. It is also interesting to note that invading Afghanistan has caused many great empires to collapse.

The British in the 1800s and the Soviets in the late 1900s paid harsh prices for Afghanistan’s occupation. The British suffered three humiliating defeats, while the Russians were forced to withdraw and their empire collapsed right afterwards. The US-led coalition are therefore pursuing a battle of “hearts and minds” to prove themselves as peacekeepers, not occupiers, in order to avoid a similarly fatal fate.

Afghanistan is where Tsarist Russia and British Empire played the Great Game – but neither side succeeded. To prevent Russian influence, the British India East Company invaded Afghanistan in 1838 to oust King Dost Muhammad and install its own satellite regime in Kabul. But the occupation marked the beginning of a disastrous chapter in British military history. Only one out of the 16,000 British troops survived in retreat in the first Anglo-Afghan war. Afghanistan was then nicknamed “graveyard for foreign invaders”.

The lesson learned from all foreign invasion of Afghanistan is that it is easy to conquer the country, but rather difficult, and sometimes impossible, to control it, or get out of it with success.

But to avenge the massacre, Britain repeated the error of invading Afghanistan in 1878 – triggering the second Anglo-Afghan war. The British army conquered many Afghan provinces with ease, including the capital. But a similarly calamitous doom descended on the British army when a nationwide jihad was declared against them.
Nearly half of the British army of 2,600 were annihilated only in the southern city of Maiwand, a district of Helmand Province, where 3,300 British troops are now stationed.

The Taleban are now rekindling the past hostilities to turn the public against the British forces in the province. "The British have been defeated in the past. Afghans are not scared of death. The British are an old enemy of Afghanistan,” a local Taleban is quoted as urging people to fight the British in the region.

Afghanistan has always been an ultra conservative and hyper religious nation. Any attempts of modernisation have met stiff domestic opposition. Having declared independence from Great Britain in 1919, King Amanullah embarked on radical reforms aimed at curtailing the power of the clergy, imposing official dress code, and promoting democracy and women rights – efforts censured as acts of westernisation that led to his deposition in 1929. His successors remained cautious at brining any social changes.

Ironically, the resistance deprived Afghans of political and economic growth. According to Mark Urban, author of War in Afghanistan, Afghans failed to avail themselves of an infrastructure, an efficient civil service, an independent judiciary, an integrated national railway network and well-organised armed forces the British left behind where they colonised.

In 1893, the British also imposed the Durand Line treaty separating vast Afghan territories that now belong to Pakistan. Although Afghan leaders have repeatedly refused to accept the Durand Line as official boundary between the two nations before and after the expiration of the treaty in 1993, absence of a central government in Kabul has denied the country return of its lost territories.

Since the establishment of Pakistan in 1947, the Pakistani military and intelligence agency (ISI) have relentlessly strived to destabilise and weaken Afghanistan to maintain its national security and territorial integrity. “Military hardliners called me a 'security threat' for promoting peace in South Asia and for supporting a broad-based government in Afghanistan,” said Benazir Bhutto, former Pakistani Prime Minister.

The Durand Line has recently come to international limelight as the areas now under Pakistan’s control (Baluchistan, North West Frontier Province of Pakistan and Federal Administrative Tribal Areas) have turned into headquarters for Islamic extremists and al-Qaeda activists. Pakistani President Parvez Musharraf’s call for building fences along the borders in 2005 met fierce opposition of Pashtun tribes on both sides of borders, as well as that of the Afghan government. “Barbed wire is a symbol of hatred, not friendship and hence it cannot stop terrorism,” Afghan President Hamed Karzai pointed out.

Afghanistan’s independence from Britain followed five decades of relative peace and stability – which ended with the overthrow of King Zaher Shah in 1973.

Zaher Shah introduced a new constitution in 1964 stipulating freedom of expression and equal gender rights for the first time in history. Although Zaher’s 41-year reign is described as the most tranquil era in Afghan history, it was marred by intense economic mismanagement and political negligence. Thousands died in severe droughts in the north, while he was building palaces in Kabul and Italy. His weak administration also paved the way for Russian influence that led to an invasion in 1979.

Daud Khan’s coup d'état of 1973 put an end to the period of monarchy. He established a republican, devised a development marshal plan and sought closer relations with western nations - arousing the wrath of Russians. “I would be the happiest to light my American cigarette with Russian matches,” was his foreign policy motto. In his last meeting with Daud in April 1977 in Moscow, Russian President Leonid Brezhnev complained about Daud’s permission of experts and aid workers from NATO member countries in Afghanistan. Daud is quoted as replying:

“We will never allow you to dictate to us how to run our country and whom to employ in Afghanistan. How and where we employ the foreign experts will remain the exclusive prerogative of the Afghan state. Afghanistan shall remain poor, if necessary, but free in its acts and decisions.”

His souring relations with Russia led to his assassination by the communist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) in April 1978.

PDPA’s bloody revolution saw the killing of thousands of the intelligentsia, Islamic scholars, university professors, leaders of ethnic minorities and civilians. Despite understanding of people’s deep cultural and religious sensitivities, they tempted fate by imposing a Marxist system of social reforms and welcomed the dispatch of Russian troops inside the country – instigating nationwide rebellion and mass migration of people to neighbouring countries, mainly to Pakistan and Iran.

The Afghan resistance coincided with the climax of the Cold War. As John K. Cooley, author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, points out: “The tacit consensus in USA was that the Muslim religion, fundamentally anti-Communist, if translated to politics, could be harnessed as a mighty force to oppose Moscow in the Cold War.”

The United States therefore forged an alliance with Pakistan’s then military government, which sought to topple the Russian-backed regime in Kabul and install its own mercenaries to enable expansion of Pakistan’s trade routes to Central Asia.

America thus fostered close ties with Islamic extremists and provided them with massive heavy and light military hardware – a relationship which went dreadfully wrong afterwards and led to creation of terrorist organisations allegedly responsible for many recent terror activities, including the 9/11 attacks on America.

Thousands of Islamists from the Arab world joined the Afghan mujahedin. According to John Cooley, CIA, unable to continue funding the mojahedin, promoted illicit drugs production and trade in tribal areas of Pakistan and remote Afghan provinces to keep the battle running – a policy that led to flourishing illegal business the world is striving to eliminate now. Thus Afghanistan changed into a hub for international drugs mafia and Arab fundamentalists, including al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

The 300,000 Russian troops and an annual aid of 3bn dollars failed to help Kabul suppress the mounting revolt. Thus they withdrew in 1989 in utter humiliation, leaving behind 15,000 deaths. The Afghan occupation is termed in Russian history as the beginning of the Union’s collapse. Author of Embattled America Richard Crockatt describes Afghanistan as the “Soviet Union’s Vietnam” – both in the failure on the battlefield and the collapse of consensus at home. The difference, according to him, was that the United States could afford such a failure, the Soviet Union could not.

Soon after Russian pull-out in 1989, America turned its back on Afghanistan. Kabul government fell in 1992, but disunity between mujahedin factions led to devastating civil war. And to depose the anti-Pakistan regime in Kabul, Pakistan hatched the monster of the Taleban in 1994. Taleban were an alliance of students at Pakistani madrassas (religious seminaries), previous Afghan resistance fighters, Arab extremist Islamists and even a handful of Chechen and Chinese Islamic fundamentalists. Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, who had left Afghanistan in 1990, returned in 1996.

At first, the Taleban won the support of Pashtun population in the south by promising them peace, security and the rule of sharia law. But after they captured Kabul in 1996, they started a series of unprecedented atrocities and severe punishments – such as amputation of hands for theft, stoning to death for adultery, execution for sodomy, and flogging for those breaching their code of dress. They also banned music, movie and still pictures, certain sports, and worst of all, education and work for women. They destroyed two gigantic Buddha statues in Bamian Province in early 2001.

Although the world community had not recognised the Taleban government – with the exception of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates – it was not until the 9/11 incident that the world reacted to oust the brutal regime.

Following 9/11, America called on the Taleban to hand over Bin Laden, allegedly responsible for the assault. But the Taleban’s refusal led the US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001.

The US heavy air assault supported by ground troops of Northern Alliance, the sole anti-Taleban forces left, drove the Taleban out of Kabul in no time. But the Taleban were never eliminated. Some fled the country and took sanctuary in Pakistan, while others took off their turbans and melted into villages in the south and east.

They established safe havens in the Pakistani tribal areas and continued to regroup, recruit fighters, raise funds and re-supply their forces. But America failed to pressure Pakistan to crack down on their activities. Thus they regrouped and are now back to take revenge.

Hamed Karzai, appointed head of the Interim Authority at the Bonn Conference in 2001, won Afghanistan’s first free presidential elections in 2004. Yet five years since the fall of the Taleban, the president, with enormous international economic and military backing, is still struggling to establish nationwide security, promote national unity, boost shattered economy, disarm local warlords and tackle drugs production.