BOOKS: “In Afghanistan”

IN AFGHANISTAN: TWO HUNDRED YEARS OF BRITISH, RUSSIAN AND AMERICAN OCCUPATION
By David Loyn
Palgrave MacMillan, $27.95, 231 pages
REVIEWED BY ROBERT F. DUNN

This is a most timely book. As NATO forces, largely American and British, grow in number and spread throughout Afghanistan, they occupy, visit and fight in places well-known to their predecessors of years and even centuries before. This is not the first time Kabul, Jalalabad, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar, Herat, the Khyber Pass, the Suleiman Mountains, the Hindu Kush and even Waziristan, Swat and Peshawar have been scenes of conflict. Alexander passed that way. So did Tamerlane and the Mongols and maybe more. Yet the people we now call Afghans fought, maintained their independence and survived in as austere a landscape as can be found on Earth; but this story is not about centuries past. It starts at the beginning of the 19th century and is fast-paced and chock-full of lessons for us today.

David Loyn begins in the early 19th century when the British from their base in India started pushing west across the Indus River into the Suleiman Mountains, that ridge of high mountains that today defines the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The people they encountered were not the same as the peoples to the east of the Indus. They were Pashtuns, a fiercely independent people organized in clans and tribes, barely acknowledging any central authority, but related by blood, ethnicity and religion to the peoples on the west side of the mountains. To say they did not welcome the British, or any outside military force, is gross understatement.

Yet the British feared the Russians would one day cross into Afghanistan from Central Asia and threaten India, or alternatively, the Napoleonic French might push through Persia from the Gulf or the Middle East. Thus their move into these seemingly primitive and dangerous areas across the mountains was in the minds of the strategists and planners a pre-emptive effort.

The first British envoy to make his way through the Khyber Pass to Kabul and Afghan lands was a character out of Kipling (although Kipling came along almost 100 years later): Mountstuart Elphinstone. Along with Elphinstone came British surveyors mapping and troops building forts at what seemed to be the key strategic points. Their mission: To pacify the Muslim tribesmen and preclude either Russian or French thrusts through Afghanistan toward India.

Three times in the 19th and the early 20th centuries the British tried to have their way in Afghanistan. Three times they were beaten back by tribes who fought with guile and ancient weapons against the best the British Empire had to offer. Time and again British leaders would take tea, befriend and ally with Afghani leaders, accepting traditional and fulsome Muslim hospitality, only to see such friendships and alliances evaporate at the least provocation or with no provocation at all. Even Afghan recruits into the British Army would often refuse to fight against others of their own tribe and, in several notable instances, joined in the massacre of their erstwhile comrades in arms.

The situation was made even worse in the 1830s when holy warriors, Mujahedeen inspired by Wahhabi teachings out of Saudi Arabia, appeared with their Shariah law and fought fanatically against any established Afghan rule and most certainly against foreigners, the British in this case.

Then, as if the British attempting to defend India from positions in Afghanistan didn’t have enough on their plate, in 1873, the Russians attempted to move in by sending a diplomatic mission to Kabul offering, among other things, help in securing Peshawar and other lands to the east of the Suleiman Mountains, if only the Afghans would cede control of lands northwest of the Hindu Kush to the Russians. This prompted the British to send an army through the Khyber Pass with plans to pre-empt the Russians. Not unexpectedly, the Afghanis objected to this intrusion and, after a bit, the Second Anglo-Afghan War ended as did the first, a disaster for the British.

There were other battles as succeeding British administrations sought either to push Indian frontiers into Afghanistan, pre-empt the Russians or, on occasion, disengage from Afghanistan entirely for reasons divined only by Parliament; but the outcome was almost always a set back for the British and business as usual for the Afghans, with the Russians standing at the ready to take advantage of whatever the latest events brought on.

One of the most frustrating aspects of battle with Pashtuns comes through in a quote from a young Winston Churchill, “Beaten in a fair fight, they could not understand why retribution should inevitably follow. As we approached the first fortified village the sovereign would ride out to meet us, and with many protestations of fidelity, expressed his joy at our safe arrival.”

World War I and the ensuing Red revolution put at least a temporary end to the “Great Game” between the British and the Russians, and thus forays into Afghanistan, but in the 1980s, Soviet forces rolled in. In those Cold War days, the United States was determined to stop Soviet expansion wherever and whenever it might take place; however, in this case the Americans had to work with the Taliban.

By the time of the Soviet invasion, the Taliban had taken over the country and were actually governing from Kabul, imposing their Wahhabi-inspired version of Islamic law on most of the country. At the same time, they had a ready supply of jihad-eager recruits from the madrassas they had established with the help of generous Saudi dollars and they were eager to purge their country of the infidels from the north, using the Americans fighting the Cold War to their own ends. All they needed were weapons and the money with which to buy them.

Thus, it was not the American Army that was marshaled to block the Soviets but the Taliban. Financed by the CIA, its proxies in Pakistan (especially its intelligence service, the ISI), and Congressman Charlie Wilson, an alliance of convenience was formed. With the resultant huge sums of money made available, the one force in Afghanistan that had a chance of defeating the Soviets, the Taliban, was enabled. “The rest is history,” as some would say.

David Loyn does not leave it at that, however. He does indeed cover in detail the defeat and withdrawal of the Soviets, the post-Sept. 11 drive to capture Osama bin Laden by American Special Forces and the CIA and the lead-up to the current engagement of NATO in Afghanistan. He, in fact, provides insights about this period that may not have been immediately apparent at the time to even the most avid newshound.

This is a most readable and important book about a current issue, an issue easier to understand if one can appreciate its history as researched and presented by David Loyn. An early read and retention as a reference is highly recommended, especially in these turbulent times in that part of the world.

• Vice Admiral Robert F. Dunn resides in Alexandria and is the president of the Naval Historical Foundation.