There was a meticulously crafted assortment of red and pink roses around the perimeter, and a small vineyard with green grapes on one end. The house was constructed of concrete, with whitewashed walls and a small leafy courtyard. And so history will repeat itself, until and unless Afghanistan is given the space to find its own path.I spent the morning of September 8, 2006, with several Afghan friends in a guesthouse in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, sipping a warm cup of sher chai, a traditional Afghan drink prepared using black tea, cardamom, and milk. It seems inevitable that in a few years some other superpower will try to invade to remove the Taliban one more time – and then leave an even bigger mess behind that will provoke yet another future invasion.
#The graveyard of empires series#
As the Taliban solidifies its reign over Afghanistan once more and see the news reports of its repressive, violent policies, it is the legacy of a series of failed Western interventions into the Graveyard of Empires. Since the term ‘Graveyard of Empires’ was first coined, we can say that each foreign invasion of Afghanistan was launched to fix problems created by the previous invasion.
However, this view of Afghanistan as a problem to solve is much less important than the question of why foreigners have been so driven to try to bring it under control. International discussion of Afghanistan focuses on its history of expelling invaders, as various militaries, media pundits and political think tanks try to figure out how Afghanistan should be controlled, as though the country is a wild animal that needs taming. The attacks on September 11, and the subsequent invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, are the consequences of America’s own Cold War policies against Russia. To oppose the Soviet Union’s socialist politics, the US encouraged the development of hard-line, militant Islam as a motivator for Afghans to fight the Russians. The radical Islamist policies of the Taliban were also a legacy of America.
The Taliban emerged to seize control of Afghanistan in 1996, as a direct consequence of the United States’ desire to take Afghanistan out of Soviet influence.
Osama Bin Laden himself was one of the foreign fighters who came to Afghanistan to fight for the Mujahideen. As the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, it left behind a country in turmoil as warlords that grew out of the US-backed insurgency fought for power. Russia would finally invade Afghanistan in late 1979 to support the pro-Soviet government, which prompted US and Saudi funding for the Mujahideen guerillas. Historians now argue that the British overestimated Russia’s desire to expand its borders towards India, meaning that the Afghan Wars were a costly British overreaction. The British fought to keep Afghanistan out of Russian influence. As the Russian Empire advanced south through Asia, the British relied on Afghanistan to be the buffer state protecting its colonies in India. The Anglo-Afghan Wars of the 19th early 20th centuries were part of ‘The Great Game’, a clash between Russia and Britain as they wrestled for power over Central Asia. And yet foreign powers try, again and again. This produces a view of Afghanistan as a place that can never really be conquered. Explanations are offered for why Afghanistan defeats great states again and again: its landscape and climate is inhospitable, its people tribal, it is surrounded by countries sympathetic to its people and hostile to foreign invaders. The United States’ 20-year-long occupation was the longest of these modern examples, but Afghanistan has throughout its longer history also endured invasions from Persians, Greeks, Mongols, and many more. Multiple superpowers – the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and the United States – have successfully occupied the country in the last two hundred years, but they have always been afterwards expelled by the Afghans. Since the 19th century, Afghanistan has been called ‘The Graveyard of Empires’.
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