Tuesday, January 04, 2000
Lest we forget _ Afghan history
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
"ake my horse and God send you may you get to Jalalabad and safety" -
Mortally wounded Indian subadhar to Dr Bryson, sole survivor from the 1842 retreat
"When you’re wounded and left on the Afghan plains
And the women come out to cut up your remains,
Just roll on your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your God like a soldier."
Rudyard Kipling
"The whole thing was unintelligible to me..."
Lord Auckland, Governor-General, on the catastrophe he had engineered
Afghanistan, a mountainous country of harsh people, cannot be conquered and held in a land war..It has humiliated its would-be rulers Britons and Russians more than once. Even the Taliban cannot subdue the Northern Alliance. Its cities are easily occupied, but the occupiers are locked in an perish, without an exit strategy. In snowy January 1842 Afghan soldiers slaughtered a contingent of 4,500 British and Indian troops and 12,000 civilians retreating from Kabul to friendly Jalalabad near the present Pakistan border, with one man left to tell the tale. That was the end of the First Afghan War, which started in 1839 with the British trying to protect Emir Dost Mohammad from Iranian and Russian conquest. But the Emir also wanted to recover former Afghan territory in Peshavar, a no-go for the Brits, who deposed Dost and installed a quisling, but had to restore him, before their demeaning retreat.
In 1879 Dost’s successors’ dallying with the Russians provoked another British invasion, resulting in the occupiers being massacred in Kabul, and the Second Afghan War, involving suicide warriors, ghazis. The occupation failed; the only salvation for the invaders was to install a popularly accepted Emir, Dost’s grandson Abdur Rahman, and withdraw. His pro-British. son Habibollah Khan was assassinated by nationalists in 1919 and grandson Amanollah Khan secured autonomy from the British Empire. The country remained friendly with the USSR through changes into secular dictatorships after 1973. Attempts to establish a friendship with the US led to the Soviet invasion and murder of the last Marxist dictator Hafizullah Amin in 1979. President Babrak Karmel accepted the USSR occupancy, but partisans, trained with US help, continued attacking Soviet army (it lost 15,000 men) until a UN-backed peace led to the withdrawal of the Red Army in 1988 and declaration of a neutral state. The victorious guerillas had been trained in Pakistani military camps, financed by the CIA and the rich Saudi engineer and mullah Osama bin Ladin, The latter is a prophet of a branch of the Jesuit-like (in the original sense) Wahhabi sect, an austere branch of Sunni Muslim faith. He accepts murder and suicide in the interests of preservation of the Islamic faith and Muslim church state, and had declared two fatvas ("judgment," commonly accepted as a holy war) against the Americans as desecrators of the holy land of Mecca. His Wahhabi branch became the enemy of Saudi Arabia, where it originated, because the sheikdom had grown less observant, to the point of giving bases to the US forces in the gulf war, as well as of the secular Moslems, such as Libyans, Egypians and Syrians (the latter had actually killed off 20,000 of their reactionary Islamists). Some of these alliances have changed.
After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the various religious, secular and national factions of guerillas refused to accept the next, "puppet" Najbullah regime and continued striving for the leadership in Kabul, fighting each other. Najbullah resigned in 1992, and Burhanuddin Rabbani became President. Two million Afghans had been killed in the fighting, and six million had fled to Pakistan and Iran, both sometime enemy countries. Fearing Iranian and now Russia’s influence, Pakistan had empowered the Pushtos allied in the Taliban led by the Mullah Muhammad Omar to overthrow Rabbani, and they succeeded
These are not homogeneous people, Of the 22 million inhabitants, the Pushtos or Parthans, basic supporters of the Taliban, constitute 38 percent, the opposing Tajiks, Uzbeks and nomadic Turkmens of the North form another 40 percent, the Mongolic Hazara are 19 percent. Of the Shiite Iranians there are about 1 million. Texas-size Afghanistan has border disputes with the slightly larger Pakistan, because Afghan-populated North-West Province (Peshawar) was voted into Afghanistan during the partition of British India in 1947 by giving the inhabitants only two choices, to be in India or Pakistan. When Pakistan’s eastern part became independent Bangladesh in 1972, there were also calls for an independent Pushtunistan.
History’s crossroads, Afghanistan was conquered by Darius the Great of Persia 2,500 years ago, then by Alexander the Great ("Bactria"), then became a Buddhist empire. Muslim Arabs came starting 1300 years ago., then Genghis Khan (1220) and Tamerlane 150 years later. His descendant Babur (1483-1530) out of Kabul established the mighty Moghul Empire and ruled the Indian subcontinent The rulers of Kabul changed frequently; the off-and-on Dost Muhammad dynasty lasted until a republic was proclaimed in 1973. Last king, Mohammad Daud Khan, 86, lives in Rome, and has agreed to lead a prospective coalition government to replace the militant Omar.
Romance about Afghanistan and the ferocious Pushtos or Parthans abounds. The famous Khyber Pass, a 28-mile long narrow road with 34 tunnels and 92 bridges connecting Peshawar and Kabul has been the entranceway for the various conquerors entering India from the North. It has been fateful for the British conquerors. Dust off your Rudyard Kipling, as I did.
"ake my horse and God send you may you get to Jalalabad and safety" -
Mortally wounded Indian subadhar to Dr Bryson, sole survivor from the 1842 retreat
"When you’re wounded and left on the Afghan plains
And the women come out to cut up your remains,
Just roll on your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your God like a soldier."
Rudyard Kipling
"The whole thing was unintelligible to me..."
Lord Auckland, Governor-General, on the catastrophe he had engineered
Afghanistan, a mountainous country of harsh people, cannot be conquered and held in a land war..It has humiliated its would-be rulers Britons and Russians more than once. Even the Taliban cannot subdue the Northern Alliance. Its cities are easily occupied, but the occupiers are locked in an perish, without an exit strategy. In snowy January 1842 Afghan soldiers slaughtered a contingent of 4,500 British and Indian troops and 12,000 civilians retreating from Kabul to friendly Jalalabad near the present Pakistan border, with one man left to tell the tale. That was the end of the First Afghan War, which started in 1839 with the British trying to protect Emir Dost Mohammad from Iranian and Russian conquest. But the Emir also wanted to recover former Afghan territory in Peshavar, a no-go for the Brits, who deposed Dost and installed a quisling, but had to restore him, before their demeaning retreat.
In 1879 Dost’s successors’ dallying with the Russians provoked another British invasion, resulting in the occupiers being massacred in Kabul, and the Second Afghan War, involving suicide warriors, ghazis. The occupation failed; the only salvation for the invaders was to install a popularly accepted Emir, Dost’s grandson Abdur Rahman, and withdraw. His pro-British. son Habibollah Khan was assassinated by nationalists in 1919 and grandson Amanollah Khan secured autonomy from the British Empire. The country remained friendly with the USSR through changes into secular dictatorships after 1973. Attempts to establish a friendship with the US led to the Soviet invasion and murder of the last Marxist dictator Hafizullah Amin in 1979. President Babrak Karmel accepted the USSR occupancy, but partisans, trained with US help, continued attacking Soviet army (it lost 15,000 men) until a UN-backed peace led to the withdrawal of the Red Army in 1988 and declaration of a neutral state. The victorious guerillas had been trained in Pakistani military camps, financed by the CIA and the rich Saudi engineer and mullah Osama bin Ladin, The latter is a prophet of a branch of the Jesuit-like (in the original sense) Wahhabi sect, an austere branch of Sunni Muslim faith. He accepts murder and suicide in the interests of preservation of the Islamic faith and Muslim church state, and had declared two fatvas ("judgment," commonly accepted as a holy war) against the Americans as desecrators of the holy land of Mecca. His Wahhabi branch became the enemy of Saudi Arabia, where it originated, because the sheikdom had grown less observant, to the point of giving bases to the US forces in the gulf war, as well as of the secular Moslems, such as Libyans, Egypians and Syrians (the latter had actually killed off 20,000 of their reactionary Islamists). Some of these alliances have changed.
After the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the various religious, secular and national factions of guerillas refused to accept the next, "puppet" Najbullah regime and continued striving for the leadership in Kabul, fighting each other. Najbullah resigned in 1992, and Burhanuddin Rabbani became President. Two million Afghans had been killed in the fighting, and six million had fled to Pakistan and Iran, both sometime enemy countries. Fearing Iranian and now Russia’s influence, Pakistan had empowered the Pushtos allied in the Taliban led by the Mullah Muhammad Omar to overthrow Rabbani, and they succeeded
These are not homogeneous people, Of the 22 million inhabitants, the Pushtos or Parthans, basic supporters of the Taliban, constitute 38 percent, the opposing Tajiks, Uzbeks and nomadic Turkmens of the North form another 40 percent, the Mongolic Hazara are 19 percent. Of the Shiite Iranians there are about 1 million. Texas-size Afghanistan has border disputes with the slightly larger Pakistan, because Afghan-populated North-West Province (Peshawar) was voted into Afghanistan during the partition of British India in 1947 by giving the inhabitants only two choices, to be in India or Pakistan. When Pakistan’s eastern part became independent Bangladesh in 1972, there were also calls for an independent Pushtunistan.
History’s crossroads, Afghanistan was conquered by Darius the Great of Persia 2,500 years ago, then by Alexander the Great ("Bactria"), then became a Buddhist empire. Muslim Arabs came starting 1300 years ago., then Genghis Khan (1220) and Tamerlane 150 years later. His descendant Babur (1483-1530) out of Kabul established the mighty Moghul Empire and ruled the Indian subcontinent The rulers of Kabul changed frequently; the off-and-on Dost Muhammad dynasty lasted until a republic was proclaimed in 1973. Last king, Mohammad Daud Khan, 86, lives in Rome, and has agreed to lead a prospective coalition government to replace the militant Omar.
Romance about Afghanistan and the ferocious Pushtos or Parthans abounds. The famous Khyber Pass, a 28-mile long narrow road with 34 tunnels and 92 bridges connecting Peshawar and Kabul has been the entranceway for the various conquerors entering India from the North. It has been fateful for the British conquerors. Dust off your Rudyard Kipling, as I did.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:11 AM 
