Divide and Conquer
I have seen a great deal of your government since I came to India. Your forts, your arsenals, your ships, all are admirable. I have been down to Calcutta, and have been astonished with your wealth, your palaces, your marts, and your mint; but to me the most wonderful thing of all is that so wise and wealthy a nation could have ever entertained the project of occupying such a country as Kabul, where there is nothing but rocks and stones.
With these words, Amir Dost Mahammad bade farewell to the governor general of India at the end of the First Afghan War. Mahammad had spent much of his life fighting to preserve his kingdom. His elder brother, Fatteh Khan, had been assassinated by Mahmud Shah Durrani, the very ruler of Afghanistan he had restored to his throne. As the leaders of the Barakzai tribe, Fatteh Khan’s brothers had to seek vengeance. They drove Mahmud from his throne and parceled out his territories among themselves. Mahammad received Ghazni, to which he later added Kabul, but his troubles had only begun.
These Pashtun rulers had powerful enemies and rivals. Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of Punjab, seized Peshawar, an important fortress town that Mahammad had to recover, but in asserting his right and defending his territory, he involved himself in a struggle among far greater powers. These were the years of the Great Game between Russia and Britain over control of the region. Mahammad, though he was courted by Russia, preferred Britain. The British governor general, however, instructed Mahammad that to receive British assistance, he had to surrender control over his foreign policy to Britain, but, in return, the only help the British offered was the dubious protection of Ranjit Singh himself. In the inevitable war they had provoked, the British defeated the Afghans, and Mahammad himself surrendered in 1840.
Defeat and political decapitation were not enough to secure control over the country. When the First Afghan War ended in 1842 with the treacherous destruction of a British force that numbered (including civilians) 16,000, Amir Dost Mahammad was permitted to return to the people he ruled. It was on that occasion that he expressed his bewilderment to the governor general.
Colonel Malleson began his History of Afghanistan (1879) with this anecdote, because he wished to explain to his British readers why “this country of rocks and stones” had “an importance beyond its territorial value.” Malleson had some explaining to do, since Britain was already fighting the second of three wars over Afghanistan. In the Second Afghan War (1878-80), which ended with the defeat of Ayub Khan, Mahammad’s grandson, the British were, indeed, victorious. They had also learned (or rather remembered) at least one lesson. Ayub Khan had besieged Kandahar, until he was routed by General Roberts. Ayub was not the actual ruler of Afghanistan, and when his uncle the amir died at the end of the war, the British installed another nephew, Abdur Rahman Khan, as their puppet. Ayub Khan again attacked and seized Kandahar, but the amir, at the head of an army from Kabul, retook the city. These divisions—always encouraged by the British—made it easier to defeat the Afghans in the short run, though foreign occupation or domination would ultimately unify the country against the invaders. Once in power, even Abdur Rahman proved to be a wily diplomatist who effectively kept his country independent of Britain. If quiet was what the British wanted, they got it, but if they thought they had gained the friendship of the Afghan nation, they were sadly mistaken, as the Third Afghan War was to prove.
After the Second Afghan War, Britain once again took over Afghan foreign policy, but this time wisely paid the amir a subsidy and left him in peace. In the Third Afghan War (1919), the British were able to repel an Afghan attack, and the RAF inflicted great damage on Afghan cities, but British forces suffered greater losses than the Afghans, and the net result was a decline in British influence. I wonder what Colonel Malleson would have said about these conflicts, as Britain was abandoning her empire in India after World War II?
Are there any lessons to be learned from the British experience or, more broadly, from Afghan history, that can be applied to the current debacle? Some are obvious, and the Russians had to learn them the hard way. One lesson of experience is that it is easier to conquer Afghanistan than it is to hold her. It is usually possible to bribe one set of natives (“friendlies”) to fight their enemies, on Julius Caesar’s principle of divide et impera, “divide and rule.” Unfortunately, the English mistranslation of Caesar’s dictum, as “divide and conquer,” has proved to be more accurate for modern empires that find places like Somalia or Afghanistan easy to conquer but impossible to rule. The peoples (note the plural) of Afghanistan are violent and quarrelsome, but today they are in basic agreement in hating their American conquerors. E pluribus unum.
The word Afghanistan, which refers to a region and not to a nation, is a great stumbling block to any would-be overlord. Indeed, the whole mistake of the current American operation may be said to derive from the delusion that there is any such nation as Afghanistan. Anyone who has even the slightest familiarity with the political geography of Afghanistan—and that is all I claim for myself—will realize that the region is the product of a series of ethnic and religious eruptions from all points of the compass. In the earliest days, it seems, it was a cultural extension of the Indus River Valley that winds through what is now Pakistan. When the invading tribes that spoke dialects of Indo-Iranian came bursting in, some entered the Indian subcontinent, while others went to Iran. Afghanistan, so far as I can tell, became a continuum of Indo-Iranian dialects and cultures, though the Iranian element would have become more dominant under the empire of the Medes and Persians. When Alexander the Great conquered Bactria, that name was applied to a region encompassing northern Afghanistan and the neighboring “stans” to the north. When Afghans speak of their glorious ancient past and claim Zoroaster as a native son, they are really boasting of the fact that they were subjects of the Persian Empire.
When Alexander’s successors wisely withdrew, the region was taken over by the Mauryan dynasty, which ruled a Hindu empire that came to include most of the subcontinent. As the Mauryan Empire dissolved, the territory that is today Afghanistan fell under the control of Parthians and then the mysterious Kushan Empire, followed by the Sassanid Persians. As the Sassanian Empire crumbled, the region broke down into local fiefdoms until the Arab conquest of Persia exposed the land to Islamic conquest, a process completed by the Ghaznavid dynasty in the 11th century. The Ghaznavids themselves were of Turkic origin, though they became thoroughly Persianized in language and culture. At the height of their power, they ruled much of India, on which they imposed Islam. It is usual to say that the Ghaznavids, alien though they were, more or less created Afghanistan, but the reality is rather more complex. Afghan cities were the center of an empire ruled by a Turkic dynasty and dominated by Persian culture. A better claim might be made for their successors, the Ghorids, an Iranian people who ruled over Afghanistan and parts of Iran and the subcontinent.
The Iran-India axis has been dominant in much of the region’s history, but there is another, which might be called the Turkic-Mongol axis. Ghaznavid rulers were preoccupied with fighting off the Seljuq Turks, and both they and the Ghorids’ successors, another Turkic clan, were overwhelmed in the 13th century by the Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan and his Turkic allies. Some of this history is embedded in the form of the Turkic Uzbeks and Turkmeni who inhabit Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and parts of Tajikistan and Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is not a nation, much less a nation-state. It is an endless civil war, alternately lapsing into a cold, or blowing up into a hot, war. It is one Pashtun tribe against another, Pashtun against Uzbeks and Iranians, and Uzbeks against Iranians, old guard corrupt mujahideen against idealistic Taliban, and, overall, Shia against Sunni. I know too little about the place to speak with any more authority than the CIA experts who permitted a Jordanian triple agent to blow them up, but even that little is more than I wish to know. Returning veterans have said they find our Afghan “allies” as revolting as our enemies, and, from what I can gather, pedophilia and homosexual rape are routine pastimes, like bowling or having a beer with your buddies in the good old U.S.A. One friend told me he went to bed each night and woke up each morning with but one thought: “I don’t want to have my legs blown off for these people.”
Military men have told me that General McChrystal is an excellent officer, but his job—subduing Afghanistan—is not only impossible: It is not worth the doing. Two misinformed and ignorant American presidents have sent their countrymen to die in the rocks and stones of Kabul, protecting the right of child-molesting warlords to grow the opium that is poisoning the soul of Europe and America. Yes, we shall lose face in withdrawing. This is something that Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld might have thought about before going in, something that President Obama’s advisors might have considered before beefing up the mission. So far the government admits that our own First Afghan War has cost about $300 billion and 1,000 lives. The whole of Afghanistan is not worth a red cent to the American people, much less the life of one American helicopter pilot. It is time to cut and run.
This article first appeared in the March 2010 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.
Entries(RSS)
Dr. Fleming,
I admire our soldiers who deploy and do their duty, reflecting in most cases the remnant of that which is best in America; however, the political class -Republican, Democrat, bureaucrat - which has sent those good men into this immoral, unconstitutional and ultimately unwinnable war earn my utter disdain.
All good points, except about McChrystal, another "perfumed prince," as the late Col. Hackworth called the military generals as they kill and spend their way toward a retirement as millionaire defense-contractor advisers. Jeff Huber had this assessment of McChrystal:
"Sun Tzu warned, 'If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.' The looniest aspect of the Afghanistan debate is McChrystal’s stunning admission that it’s impossible to tell what’s actually going on. We understand more about the Klingons and the Vulcans than we’ll ever know about the Afghans. We don’t know what we’re doing in Afghanistan, and the war fanatics tell us we need to do more of it." http://www.amconmag.com/blog/the-mcchrystal-method/
And: "At a March video conference with troops in the field, McChrystal flat out admitted, "We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat." I’d love to have seen the McSmirk he had on his face when he said that.
"Ultimately, whether he qualifies for a section 8 discharge or is merely an amoral leader of the world’s best-funded death squad, he’s ensuring that David Petraeus’ Long Warkeeps getting longer by creating an endless supply of enemy soldiers, and supposedly responsible, sane people in charge of the mightiest nation in the history of humanity – including the commander in chief who promised he would change things – are perfectly happy to sit by and let him do it."
http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2010/04/05/mccrackers/
Dr. Fleming,
This is a marvelous piece.
Thank you.
"Military men have told me that General McChrystal is an excellent officer, but his job—subduing Afghanistan—is not only impossible: It is not worth the doing. Two misinformed and ignorant American presidents have sent their countrymen to die in the rocks and stones of Kabul, protecting the right of child-molesting warlords to grow the opium that is poisoning the soul of Europe and America. Yes, we shall lose face in withdrawing. This is something that Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld might have thought about before going in, something that President Obama’s advisors might have considered before beefing up the mission. So far the government admits that our own First Afghan War has cost about $300 billion and 1,000 lives. The whole of Afghanistan is not worth a red cent to the American people, much less the life of one American helicopter pilot. It is time to cut and run."
McCain should have attempted to acquire Tom Fleming as chief mechanic for the "Straight Talk Express." BUT, he relied instead on wind power as blown by Little Bill Kristol and the girlie boy healers of National Review who failed to make the crooked leg straight. We owe their failure for the current crop of failures like Obamacare, Sarah, "Let US Attack Iran", Palin, The tea party crowd and our next republican nominee, Mitt Romney.
Excellent essay Dr. Fleming.
As near as I can figure it, the American imperium is wasting its time there protecting the opium fields. Take a look at Marjah, the site of the latest military/media campaign, it's nothing more than a collection of mud huts in the middle of a vast desert. The cash crop? Poppies of course. And Barry the Puppet recently broke a campaign promise by ratcheting up the occupation force by another 30,000 men. Both the cynics and conspiracy paranoids figured this scam out early on. The housing bubble had burst and "investors" needed a product that cost a dime, sold for a buck, and is very habit-forming. (That's a quote from The Addams Family.) With hapless hicks, hayseeds, rubes, yokels, apple-knockers and other assorted members of the middle-class who shed their blood running protection for the aforementioned Wall Street criminals, that's well worth the price of the swindlers' negligible tax contribution.
Furthermore, RT's Max Keiser recently reported that New York banks are openly laundering the drug money in an effort to appear solvent.
Our leaders must pretend that Afghanistan is a country because they cannot understand a world in which there is anything except consolidated obedient states under the unfied control of people like themselves. To admit to it would undermine their confidence that they can manage the world.
Good article. The whole situation has been incoherent from day one. Remember our first 'allies', the Northern Alliance? I dont believe they were even ethnic Pashtuns, but actually Tajik ex-Soviet soldiers.
@6: NIIIICE!
Sure we can subdue Afghanistan. Yes we can, we're the ones we have been waiting for.
A point of correction, if it is possible for a B.A. to correct Dr. Fleming on anything: the current invasion is more properly termed the Fourth Afghan War. In a global light, the period from Wilson to Truman should be understood as a rocky but sure reintegration of the United States into the British Empire and, more ominously, the transfer of this latters' cultural and political capital from London to Washington. This is the true meaning of the new international order, and the results have been catastrophic for the Empire and for the world in general.
#10. Granted that the British Empire infused much into the American Empire, and not for the best, still the American version is only a pathetic, shoddy imitation. The British Empire did exhibit some fine examples of human conduct and manage to impart some civilisation to various dark corners. The American Empire is and has been wholly deleterious in its impact.
@11: Dr. Wilson, you are certainly correct, but part of my point--though looking back I think I did not write this clearly--was that the movement of the capital of the Empire from London to Washington was an act of monumental catastrophe for Anglo-American civilisation and did irreparable damage. I do not know when was the last time you were in England, but the damage to its cultural landscape is horrifying to behold, and by all accounts of friends and associates who live or have lived there it has been a stark collapse even over only the last twenty-five years, when the new center began to infect the point of origin. A prime minister who is not a slave to America politically or culturally does not, regrettably, appear forthcoming.
Also, we should exercise caution. To some extent I share your admiration for the British Empire but mostly from a nostalgic and æsthetic perspective: these are the icons I grew up watching and however much I may play a snob (today I just got a t-shirt that reads "I Love RIEN ; I'm Parisien"--I'm not making this up) Anglo-Celtic folklore is a part of myself. All the same, keep in mind that Scottish Rite Freemasonry, Unitarianism, Univeralism and Whigism (although these four things all lead to the same place) all originated in England as well. (The only reason I did not mention Puritanism is because that is simply fundamentalist Calvinism, which is French-Swiss in origin.) If the British Empire did much to civilise the world, she also sowed the seeds that would undo her beautiful work--it only took a passing of the nerve center to ourselves, her inept spawn, to initiate the harvest.
Witness, to name just one example, Shiv Sena's renaming campaign. "Bombay" is no more.
Make that "all originated in Britain." Laziness does funny things.
Regarding the comment about Bombay in #12.
The NY Times recently ran a photo of brokers doing business at captioned "at the Bombay Stock Exchange in Mumbai." Also, I can't tell you how many taxi cab drivers in NYC react with rage when I ask them about the PC renaming of the city and much of their country.
Part of my job is dealing with colleagues in India. When I first asked my boss where in India the colleagues were located, he said, 'Mumbai'. I had no clue where that was, as I was not aware of the renaming, or perhaps had heard of it in passing and forgotten.
When I found out it was Bombay, I knew exactly where it was. I use 'Bombay' now whenever I mention my colleagues to anyone so as not to confuse them. The PC fools may use 'Mumbai' if they wish, but we dont have to, and every time we dont, it's another shot fired at the pinko rainbow fairie minions.
Perhaps next they will demand that we call India 'Hindustan' in order not to offend American Indians? Oh, wait.....
To be fair, the renaming was not an act of "political correctness" in its own right, but a nationalist drive on the part of a right-wing Hindu government (as "right-wing" as right can be outside of the context of religious struggle in Christendom) to assert India's independent identity.
Of course, you are both right to suggest that the PC fools would welcome such a change, as they welcome anything that eradicates any trace of colonialism. But only if it is done on the part of non-Occidentals, apparently.
(I would like to see them demand that the Maltese and the Egyptians stop speaking the language of their Arab conquerors and bring back Italian and Coptic--and that the latter--along with the Persians--re-convert en masse to, respectively Christianity and Zoroastrianism. I'm not holding my breath.)