“Wer’e blondes
out there, man. Dumb and innocent as the
day is long.”
~American Special Forces “person”, concerning the
American presence in Afghanistan.
Frenchtoast called and asked how much do I think the past
as precedent? He was reading “Kim”, Rudyard
Kipling’s story of another era of the “great game”, the game of intrigue in the
power struggle between East and West. The pieces on the board? Street urchins, a horse trader, a
jelly-backed Bengali, and “a very foolish Sahib, a Colonel Sahib without a
regiment….” In that game, nations were the contestants, empires the prize. Borders were drawn only to be tested,
crossed, and redrawn by the victors.
International relations were like that then-
Today all invasions must be called “temporary.” They must be justified as hot pursuit, or
legitimate and limited retaliation, or fraternal responses to official calls
for help from the proper internal authorities.
The new style of relations between nations is
sometimes quite a strain. One reason is
that when the “great game” was abruptly halted and borders were frozen, some of
those borders were remarkably arbitrary. In many cases, they were unjust and
unrealistic to the point of absurdity.
For example, Israel, a great and ancient nation, had
no borders at all. The world was repeatedly
divided by lines drawn in Europe. That
is imperialism’ bitter legacy.
The suddenly frozen borders were particularly
artificial and controversial in the Asian region where the Russians and the
English both were building their empires.
The Russians first invaded Afghanistan in 1725. A kind
of Afghan national consciousness had just begun to emerge after centuries of
domination by Mongol warlords, Persian shahs, and Indian emperors. Then the son
of the Afghan leader who had thrown off the yoke of a Persian governor found
himself facing an army of Russians moving down from the north. His cousin
Ashraf fought off both the Russians and the Turks, but Afghanistan remained unstable.
Next, a Persian bandit chief made himself ruler over
Afghanistan. He was passing through for a raid on India, in which he captured
and brought back to Persia the famous Peacock Throne, enjoyed later by the deposed
shah of Iran. The Indians whose wealth had been looted harbored considerable
bad feeling against Afghans for this. They blamed the Afghans because, after
all, the bandit chief was their ruler.
You may be sure it is remembered that the jewels and
the throne (formerly treasures of the Mughal dynasty that built the Taj Mahal)
vanished across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. Today's political sympathies
in that part of the world, as in other places around the globe, have quite a
bit to do with yesterday's memories and conflicts.
By that time, the British were sufficiently well
established in India to be alarmed and aroused. Their "great game" of
espionage and intrigue used the greed, rivalry, and ambition among Afghan
tribes-Barakzai, Baluchi, Pushtun, Ghilzai-to block Russia's designs.
In 1837 the Russians tried again, this time supporting
an ambitious Persian ruler who invaded Afghanistan as a first step toward dominating
India. The British responded to this aggression by invading Afghanistan also.
This launched the first of three British-Afghan wars.
Afghan guerrilla tactics (there were guerrillas long
before Mao, Giap, and Guevara) drove the British out with heavy losses. The
Russian-backed Persians were repulsed as well.
Bungling the "balance of power" game-setting
Afghan tribes against each other may have caused the British failure. But
tribal rivalries often broke out without any outside help. This made the
Afghans frequently vulnerable to subversion and invasion.
The Russians tried again in 1878. Starting with a
successful diplomatic offensive, they persuaded the Afghans to break relations
with the British and accept the promise of Russian protection. Taking the
old-fashioned direct approach, the British invaded again. But rather than occupying the country this
time, they set up the friendly tribal leader Abderrahman as shah.
Afghanistan was united under him. He negotiated with
Sir Mortimer Durand the border, still known as the "Durand line."
After a short third war with the war-weary British from 1919 to 1921, Afghanistan
gained absolute independence.
But the Durand line was bound to cause trouble.
Pathans, living on both sides of the line, wanted an independent Pathan state.
This caused friction with Pakistan when, after World War II and the fall of the
British Empire, Pakistan became a nation. Baluchis also wanted an independent
Baluchistan, but their land was divided by those frozen borders into sections
of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iran.
In 1963 the shah of Iran barely managed to stop a
Pakistani-Afghan war over the Pathan quarrel and since it has never been be
difficult to stir up these lingering ambitions and dreams.
Meanwhile the Russians never lost interest. Using a
variety of tactics from diplomacy to assassination, they brought about shifts
in Afghanistan from monarchy with a pro- Western prime minister to monarchy
with a pro-Soviet prime minister; then to a republic with that same prime
minister in charge. A still more cooperative prime minister followed, and then
Afghanistan finally became a puppet regime. Direct rule by Russian invasion was
merely the last and not so illogical step.
The U.S. had, of course, inherited the British mantle
as leader of the West. American diplomatic efforts to loosen Afghanistan's
tightening bonds with the Soviet Union were going so well that the American
ambassador was kidnapped and killed.
With all this history on record, the surprising thing to
me is that Washington is always so surprised by the latest invasions-especially
as the CIA always knows.
Remember Frenchtoast, the Russians are masters also at
chess, the game of great patience. If the horses are finally out of the barns,
we should remember that Russia first began tampering with the door in 1725.
