Skip to main content

Afghanistan, graveyard of the empires

Drawing on his own experiences travelling the country during its 14 years of socialism under siege, NICK WRIGHT writes that the idea of Afghanistan as an ungovernable maelstrom of chaos is a purely the creation of Western imperialism

“A WAR begun for no wise purpose, carried on with a strange mixture of rashness and timidity, brought to a close after suffering and disaster, without much glory attached either to the government which directed, or the great body of troops which waged it. Not one benefit, political or military, was acquired with this war. Our eventual evacuation of the country resembled the retreat of an army defeated.”

Thus, in 1843, GR Grieg, chaplain to the British Army wrote of the empires’s catastrophic defeat in the First Afghan War as an expeditionary force of 4,500 military personnel and over 12,000 camp followers fled Kabul to Jalalabad. Barely a handful survived.

The regional balance of power fell to the Russian empire and in 1878, the British invaded again and again in 1897. Britain went to war in Afghanistan again in 1919.

More than a century later in the summer palace of the King of Afghanistan in Jalalabad I was apologetically reminded of this history by a comrade from the central committee of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan.

He recounted how successive British invasions were accompanied by brutal murders, rape, the punitive destruction of crops and entire settlements while the Afghans established a reputation of intransigent resistance and exemplary retaliation for the crimes committed against them.

We had no sense that the US and Britain would invade again in 2001 and 2014.

We were delayed in Jalalabad — a provincial city on the trade route to the south-east — by a mojahedin offensive which made air transport a risky enterprise and road transport even riskier. Compensation came as an enjoyable night on the ale with Sikh troops from the Afghan national army on leave for their spring festival of Vaisakha and more nights with some very basic vodka obtained from a nearby unit of the Soviet army.

What struck me from my time in Afghanistan was the defining character of Afghanistan’s vast territory, its strong cultural traditions and the essentially local character of political power.

The fractious PDPA was communist-led and had a real electoral base in the urban centres with a long-standing presence in the military and among the technical intelligentsia. But it was in office by reaching an accommodation with regional and clan figures.

Its attempts to secularise and modernise Afghan society created as many problems as benefits it promised, and in the countryside the need to maintain stability entailed all manner of compromises and was the background to much internal division in the party and government.

Inevitably, given the Cold War character of the regional confrontation Soviet patronage was a powerful factor in the inner party struggles which brought Mohammed Najibullah to office. There was real enthusiasm among young people for education and training and an understanding that these opportunities were worth defending.

At one further education centre young women and men had beaten off a mojahedin attack before aid arrived from the Afghan army and the Soviets. As they bent over their books under an awning at the college gates, their weapons on their laps, they were supervised by a vigilant one-legged veteran with an AK47 more keen to try out his English than maintain watch.

Earlier, in Kabul, I was impressed with Dr Najibullah who himself hailed from an influential Pashtun clan. I watched as he rolled up his sleeves to parley with heavily armed clan leaders in a loya jirga, a full-on debate around a programme of national reconciliation.

After the Soviet army left and in the face of a renewed mojahedin offensive Dr Najibullah’s administration changed tactics, widened its support and managed to survive even as the global balance of power worsened with the dismantling of socialism in the USSR.

A long-time Parcham party militant, twice imprisoned under the previous regime and responsible for intelligence and security he, better than most, understood the brutal metrics of politics in this part of the world. He was a powerful obstacle to Pakistan’s aims among the Pashtun population and was taken from his refuge in the UN compound in Kabul and executed.

A decade or more later the fractious mojahedin alliances were replaced by the Taliban who imposed an equally brutal and repressive rule that was brought to end by the 2001 invasion following the 9/11 attacks and replaced by a series of puppet regimes.

This second Taliban accession to state power, swifter then either it or the US thought possible, is a reflection of the precipitate decline in US power in the region and a global rebalancing which Biden’s administration is compelled to recognise, even as it manoeuvres to contain China.

Withdrawal is the settled policy of the US ruling class — owned by Barack Obama, inherited by Donald Trump and implemented by Joe Biden — but is not without its critics in the US military, intelligence and foreign policy establishment.

These find an echo in military and intelligence circles here in Britain — among whom can be found the now most confounded Atlanticists — chief among them Tom Tugendhat MP, chair of the Commons foreign affairs select committee — a figure made less ludicrous only in comparison to the numbskull Labour MPs challenging Biden’s “betrayal” of Blairism.

Tugendhat’s rise through the Territorial Army ranks was as an intelligence officer and he is an unquestionably loyal instrument of the foreign intelligence lobby, where he is known for his enthusiasm for the idea that the Foreign Office/MI6 nexus should have a greater operational independence in formulating policy.

The US withdrawal signifies a change of tack by the US foreign policy establishment and is a marker for a period of realignment in the region.

The dominant media narrative of unchecked Taliban advances as provincial cities fell to the insurgents revealed the truth that many of these “fallen bastions” were weakly held urban centres in rural areas where life continued much as it has done for decades.

The air raids, drone strikes and military excursions over the years have embittered Afghans to the various occupying powers and in many cases government forces and clan militias swiftly reached local deals, essentially power-sharing arrangements which reflect long-standing local realities.

The Taliban today is a heterogeneous formation but its origins lie in the earlier outfits that included Pashtun youth educated in religious schools, many funded by Saudi Arabia, in the border regions intersected by the frontier with Pakistan. These were essentially a reserve force in Pakistan’s perennial drive to keep Afghanistan divided.

This was the basis of a mojahedin army that grew to military and greater political significance under the tutelage of the Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence agency and with massive US funding as part of the offensive to overthrow the secular government of the socialist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan.

The 14 years — 1978 to 1992 — of the PDPA’s rule saw big advances in health and education with a serious attempt to shape a new generation able to build a modern and progressive state.

Before the mojahedin offensive succeeded in confining these advances to the areas under direct government control a massive literacy programme was combined with a progressive social programme which was dependent on substantial assistance from the Soviet Union and socialist countries.

At the time Amnesty International’s “Women in Afghanistan: pawns in men’s power struggles” (1999) tried to make something of an equivalence between the PDPA government and its opponents, asserting: “Alongside the violence perpetrated against women by members of armed mojahedin groups, all Afghan political groups have used the status of women as a political tool to claim legitimacy or popularity vis a vis other factions.”

With scant mention of Nato complicity in the sustaining the oppression of women under the mojahedin writ it was nevertheless compelled to acknowledge the realities confronting the Afghan communist leaders.

The government of the PDPA moved to prohibit traditional practices which were deemed feudal in nature, including banning bride price and forced marriage. The minimum age for marriage was also raised. Education was stressed for both men and women and widespread literacy programmes were set up.

Such reforms however were not universally well-received, being viewed by many Afghans — particularly in rural areas — as the imposition of secular Western values considered alien to Afghan culture and un-Islamic.

The enduring reality of Afghan politics is that despite a clear national identity all governments have to take into account the very real power bases of clan, linguistic and ethnic groupings as well as the sharp distinction between rural life and the situation in the urban centres.

The country is made up of many ethnolinguistic groups: Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Aimaq, Turkmen, Baloch, Pashai, Nuristani, Gujjar, Arab, Brahui, Qizilbash, Pamiri, Kyrgyz, Sadat and others while its borders dissect almost every population grouping with surrounding states able to exercise an important influence.

India is seen as a counterweight to Pakistani influence, Iran to the west is ever vigilant while Russia and several of the former Soviet republics have, in recent weeks, conducted very extensive military manoeuvres close to the northern border.

A factor of growing importance is the greater influence of China which has developed strong economic links with Pakistan and is increasingly the driver of economic development and even political realignment in the region.

The present Taliban leadership have learned from their predecessors. During the 1989 fighting, when a mojahedin offensive which initially seized Jalalabad airport saw the insurgents defeated by fighting between the contending jihadi factions, the Afghan army proved its operational efficiency.

The Hezb-e Islami faction led by the CIA’s most favoured commander, the murderous and perennially treacherous Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, infamous for throwing acid in women’s faces, had slaughtered fleeing civilians and surrendered Afghan soldiers which stiffened resistance and saw a strategic defeat for the mojahedin. Three years earlier Hekmatyar took tea with Thatcher at Number 10 and was praised as a freedom fighter against communism.

The Afghan national army proved it could operate effectively even without Soviet help and in fact Najibullah’s government survived the departure of the Red Army and the dismantling of socialism in the USSR by three clear years.

As the domestic dynamics of Afghan society are reasserted against imperial power, the contrast with the collapse of this puppet government in a bare fortnight could not be greater.

Nick Wright blogs at 21centurymanifesto.

 

OWNED BY OUR READERS

We're a reader-owned co-operative, which means you can become part of the paper too by buying shares in the People’s Press Printing Society.

 

 

Become a supporter

Fighting fund

You've Raised:£ 13,288
We need:£ 4,712
3 Days remaining
Donate today