by Michael Faulkner – December 17, 2008
George
Santayana’s much quoted aphorism, “those who cannot remember the past are
condemned to repeat it”, comes to mind when contemplating the present imbroglio
in Afghanistan. Although knowledge of history doers not appear to be the strong
point of many who hold the reins of power, one assumes that those who advise
them should be sufficiently well informed to warn the policy makers of the risks and dangers a particular
course of action may involve. Even in the imperialist version of British
history to which generations of schoolchildren were subjected until the second
half of the twentieth century, it could not be pretended that Britain had
emerged from the two “Afghan wars” of the nineteenth century covered in glory. But,
even if our leaders have “forgotten” this history, I suppose they may be
forgiven, as it was long before their time.
Not so
the more recent, and equally unfortunate, history of foreign intervention in
that blighted and benighted country. Thirty nine years ago next week, the
Soviet army entered Afghanistan to prop up a disintegrating pro-Soviet regime
which was about to be overthrown by fanatical mujahedin, armed, trained and
funded by the U.S. and its Pakistani and Saudi allies. Ten years later they
withdrew, exhausted – mission unaccomplished. A few years after that, the
government of Mikhail Gorbachev, and with it, the Soviet Union itself,
collapsed. The collapse of the Soviet Union, its economy enfeebled by an
accelerating arms race with the U.S. and its military demoralised by the
unwinnable war in Afghanistan, left the U.S.A. and its allies the undisputed
victors in the cold war.
This
victory was hailed by the State Department historian Francis Fukuyama as ‘The
End of History’ – a somewhat exaggerated claim that, within a few years
was to be exposed as the overblown nonsense it was. His purpose had been to
suggest that the demise of communism and the ‘Triumph of the West’ (the title of
a book written several years earlier by British historian J.M. Roberts) marked
‘the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological
evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal
democracy as the final form of human government.’ Whether or not they had fallen for Fukuyama’s teleological
mumbo-jumbo, there was during the 1990s a pronounced tendency for Western
politicians and opinion makers to talk of a ‘New World Order’, which, it was
assumed, would be unipolar, cast in the mould of
‘Western democracy’ and operate on the economic principles of the ‘free market’
which would be extended, unchallenged throughout the globe. Globalisation, it
was claimed, was the only path to universal prosperity. As we reflect on the
years 2001 – 2008, and look forward with apprehension to 2009, further
comment on Fukuyama’s utopia is, perhaps, superfluous. So let us turn to
Afghanistan.
The Great Game
For much
of the nineteenth century the British governing classes were preoccupied by a
perceived threat to India from a southward expansion of the Tsarist Russian
Empire. This led to the ‘Great Game’ – the British attempt to checkmate
Russia, by controlling Afghanistan and blocking their route to India. The first
moves in this game began in 1838, when the British, under the pretext of
assisting in resisting the incursions of Russia and Persia, raised an army,
paid and officered by themselves, under the nominal command of a puppet, Shah Shuja. Backed by a large British force, Shuja was installed in Kabul under British control in 1839. But the Afghans were not content to remain under British
rule and insurrection followed insurrection. Funds for bribing the tribal
chiefs were bleeding the British-Indian treasury dry. Unable to defeat the
insurrections, Elphinstone, commander of British
forces in Kabul, was forced to capitulate. During the negotiations in 1841 for
surrender, British envoy to Afghanistan, McNaghtan was murdered by Afghan chiefs. Safe conduct was promised to Elphinstone’s army, but in their attempted retreat in January 1842, 4000 combatants and about
1200 camp followers were massacred in the tribal passes. Only one man survived.
In a reprisal attack from India later in the year, British forces returned to
Kabul, plundered the town and massacred many inhabitants. They then withdrew,
having failed completely to install a puppet regime in power.
Nearly
forty years later in 1878, Britain launched its second Afghan war. Following
setbacks in the Balkans, Tsarist Russia began a southward expansion, once again
arousing British anxieties about a threat to India. The war, started with an
attempt to impose a diplomatic settlement in Britain’s interest, dragged on for
more than two years and, following the loss of thousands of British and Indian
lives and countless thousands of Afghan lives, ended with another occupation of
Kabul. Although the British were able to impose their will by force of arms and
to ensure their control of foreign policy by installing a compliant government,
they were unable to maintain a military presence in Kabul.
The Soviet Intervention, 1979.
British
experience in the nineteenth century should have left no doubt that any attempt
by a foreign power to impose its will on Afghanistan through a prolonged
military presence in the country would be doomed to failure. This lesson was
learned the hard way by the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The Soviets were
reluctant to intervene militarily in Afghanistan. They did not engineer the internal coup that brought the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), to power
in the country in 1979. The PDPA was a communist party that had little support
amongst the deeply religious and conservative rural population. Its secular
programme, which included land reform and promotion of women’s rights, prompted
a violent backlash. The government faced armed opposition from various factions
of mujahedin. To make matters worse, in true Afghan
tradition, the PDPA government was itself riven by
factional disputes between hard-line and relatively moderate Marxist-Leninists
– in fact, there were two different parties. As is common in Afghanistan,
ideological disputes, religious or secular, tend to be settled by the gun. Hafizulah Amin, leader of one
faction, became prime minister in 1979 and shortly afterwards assassinated his
rival, Mohammad Taraki. The Soviets regarded the
deteriorating situation in a country they had pledged to support, with growing
alarm. It is not widely known that the U.S. began aiding the mujahedin six
months before the Soviet intervention in December 1979. This was admitted by President
Carter’s national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, even though he knew that ‘this aid was going to induce a Soviet
military intervention’.
The
Soviets invaded to prevent the imminent overthrow of the Afghan government.
They installed their nominee, the exiled leader of the more moderate faction of
the PDPA in power. They expected the Afghan army to do the bulk of the fighting
against the mujahedin. In this they were to be disappointed.
The mujahedin was composed of numerous tribal groupings of conservative Islamists, united
only in their hatred of the ‘great Satan’ of communism. They were described by
most of the Western media as ‘freedom fighters’. To say that their aim was to
keep Afghanistan in the Middle Ages, is to credit them
with rather too much enlightenment. They wanted to return to the Dark Ages.
They were armed by an unholy alliance of forces united only in their hostility
to the Soviet Union. China helped to arm them, as did Saudi Arabia. Pakistan
was the main route for arms supplies. The U.S. government reversed its policy
of opposition to Pakistan’s nuclear programme and agreed to increase its aid to
the country if it acted as a conduit for arms supplies to the mujahedin. Muhammad Zia-al-Haq accepted this package from the Reagan administration.
For ten
years the Afghan government and the Soviet army battled the Islamist
opposition. Finally, Gorbachev, faced with increasing opposition to the war at
home and beset by other domestic and foreign problems, withdrew Soviet forces
in 1989. The PDPA regime lasted for another three years. When, in 1992, the
faction-riven mujahedin entered Kabul, they began to wreak vengeance on
all those they considered to be insufficiently observant of Islamic law. Najibulah, the last president of the PDPA regime, was
hanged, mutilated and his remains put on public display. Afghanistan descended
into the dark ages under a feuding dispensation whose representatives had been
armed and supplied by the Western powers and their cold war allies. The mujahedin spawned the Taliban and al Qaida. They were the breeding ground for the terrorism that
struck on 9/11. Bin Laden cut his teeth in the ranks of the CIA sponsored
‘freedom fighters’ who learned the tricks of their
trade in fighting Soviet tanks.
The heirs
of the mujahedin of the 1980s and 90s are now waging their jihad against those who helped bring
them into being. The monster has turned against its maker. They are now
fighting the other ‘great Satan’. In 1980 the Soviets were determined to stay
in Afghanistan for ‘as long as it takes’. They were there for ten years and
they did not succeed.
As I write, it has just been announced
that another three British marines have been killed, bringing the total to 132.
British forces are to be reinforced by 10.000 U.S. troops in the New Year. At
present there are 51,350 troops from 41 countries in Afghanistan, of whom
19,950 are from the U.S. and 8,745 are British. The U.S. will pour more troops
into Afghanistan as they are withdrawn from Iraq next year. The British
government is under pressure to do likewise.
Will they
be any more successful than their predecessors? I doubt it. One thing is
certain, though. Unless a determined effort is made to seek a diplomatic
solution, which means talking to the Taliban, this latest Afghan war will last
a long, long time. 