Afghanistan, the Last Frontier

Afghanistan, the Last Frontier

I first went to Afghanistan in the spring of 1971 on my way to India, in

those heady days of the Hippy Trail to Shangri-La. Herat, the first

sizeable town I arrived at after crossing the Iranian border was something

out of A Thousand and One Nights. There were no paved roads of any kind,

the air was unpolluted, and the caravansaries still accommodated camels and donkeys. Hawkers came selling precious and semi-precious stones the size of eggs and antique genuine handicrafts in the common room at the inn. If one was wise one didn’t bargain under the influence of any intoxicants. Even so, these precious items could be had for a song, given the currency exchange value of the almighty U.S. dollar. The road from Herat to Kandahar was the same dirt road it had been since Alexander crossed the desert 2300 years ago. Main street  Kandahar was lined with emporiums selling the best hashish and opium one could buy this side of the Golden Triangle. A visit to any emporium required one to sample the wares and be inveighed upon to buy kilos of the stuff all packaged and ready for export in the most ingenious ways imaginable.

Two years later, on my way back from Shangri-La everything had changed.

There was one brand new spanking highway built by the Soviets from their

border all the way down to Kandahar and another pristine highway built by

the Americans from Kandahar to Herat. Already the stage had been set for

the battle for Afghanistan, the last uncontrolled and free territory in

the old world -not that occupation had not been tried before. Since the

1830’s the British Raj had sent several “expeditionary” forces to try to

subdue Afghanistan (one of which had been totally massacred by the Afghans

in 1842) and by the 1920’s had only succeeded in getting a government in

place that acquiesced to British Imperial rule as far as the maintenance

of some border points was concerned, but was self-governing otherwise. Even Winston Churchill did a stint in Afghanistan as a young subaltern. The British laid their imaginary boundaries in the sand, the same way they did everywhere else on the planet, without any regards for the people’s and tribes who occupied these areas from times immemorial. In the case of Afghanistan the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and a host of others were all lumped together under a simulacrum of British Imperial rule.

One little observed fact be it by the West i.e. democratic tendency, or the ex Soviet Union i.e. socialist tendency, is that neither side recognizes traditional Afghan societal structures. Most Afghans, including the Pathans were not sedentary but by and large, nomadic herder peoples. They are organized in tribal cultures that are sorted out in a clan system. The average so-called Afghan owes his allegiance not to a concept called Afghanistan but to his clan leader, who in turn has the privilege to sit on a tribal council. Afghanistan is probably the last place on the planet where the predominant population is nomadic herder tribes. These societies also exist to a lesser extent in Iran, Pakistan and India and are fast becoming extinct.

At the height of their occupation of Afghanistan the Soviet Union had over

350,000 soldiers pounding the Afghans with all the hardware they had

available to them. Their battle cry was ‘socialism and civilization.’ By the end of their ten year occupation of Afghanistan, they were severely beaten, and ignominiously retreated with the ensuing downfall of the Soviet Union itself.

Today we have the "American alliance" under the Nato flag engaged in a

war with the so-called Taliban, pounding the Afghans with savage capitalism under the guise of democracy and civilization.

The U.S. and the Soviets used Afghanistan as their surrogate battlefield in a hot war to serve as a proxy for their cold war dementia. By the time the Soviets were kicked out, the Afghans were left to deal with the carnage without so much as a thank you from the Americans. The Taliban arose out of the ashes with their ensuing savagery. A savagery that was the direct result of years of war against the Soviet armies.

During that war, Osama Bin Laden and the hordes of Mujaheddin from the Muslim world were the darlings of America fighting the good fight with the blessings of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher  in their proxy war against Soviet “hegemony.”

After 9/11 with the American bombardment of Afghanistan into the stone age, the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtun tribals, were supplanted with the so-called Northern Alliance, a motley collection of tribals from the northern reaches of Afghanistan including Tajiks, Uzbeks and others who now hold the reins of power with the full backing of the U.S. under  Nato. Western governments and their foot stools, the mainstream media, would like us to believe that the war in Afghanistan today is against a bunch of fanatics called the Taliban, but the facts suggest otherwise. The war is against the Pashtun peoples who just happen to occupy the central and southern regions of Afghanistan and who now have a score to settle with their northern tribal neighbours. This is a blood feud that has bloomed into a full scale civil war, just as Iraq has spiraled out of control as a result of the American invasion. And let us not kid ourselves...this was all deliberately planned with this intended outcome. The last thing the Americans want is a united front against them either in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Afghanistan also happens to be a vast untapped and unexploited region, rich in undreamt of resources and it sits right in the middle of an extremely strategic location, smack in the middle between China, Russia, the Middle East and the by extension Europe and the West. Let us not expect the Americans and the rest of the Nato alliance to want to leave Afghanistan voluntarily anytime soon.

But the West will stay in Afghanistan at its peril if the lessons of history are to be factored into the equation. If the West thinks it can cow Afghanistan into submission, it is in for a very rude awakening. The only way the West will win the hearts and minds of the Afghan peoples is by pouring in billions of dollars in aid and not armaments the way the Americans rebuilt Germany and Japan after WWII. But we know that that’s not in the cards...if it had been it would have been done after the Soviets were expulsed. The question then becomes, why not? Check for the next installment.

Bogos Kalemkiar

Toronto  November, 2007