thedrifter
05-13-09, 08:06 AM
May 13, 2009, 0:00 a.m.
Crossroad of Empires
Why Afghanistan is so often at the center of history.
By Stephen Tanner
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is adapted from Stephen Tanner’s new book, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War against the Taliban.
When American B-52s went into action on either side of the Hindu Kush in the fall of 2001, the military history of Afghanistan came full-circle. The country that for centuries had stood at the crossroads of the great civilizations of the Old World was suddenly assailed by the young superpower of the New. This time it was not the centrality of Afghanistan but its very isolation from the rest of the globe that incurred the wrath of foreign arms. Once a coveted prize of empires and a source of indigenous warrior kingdoms, the southern Asian country had devolved through the modern era to the status of a buffer state, then a Cold War battlefield, and finally to a mere hideout — conveniently pocked with caves offering refuge to international terrorists. Yet in the 21st century A.D., no less than in the 5th century B.C., Afghanistan found itself once again enmeshed in combat with the world’s strongest military power. Given Afghanistan’s long, varied history of conflict, this latest development has not been a surprise.
Unlike some mountainous lands, such as Peru, Nepal, and Norway — even at times Switzerland, its closest European counterpart — it has never been Afghanistan’s lot to exist benignly apart from the rest of the world. It has instead found itself at the hinge of imperial ambitions since the beginning of recorded history, from the world’s first transcontinental superpower, the Persian Empire, to its latest, the United States. In between enduring or resisting invasions from every point of the compass (and most recently from the air), the Afghans have honed their martial skills by fighting among themselves, in terrain that facilitates divisions of power and resists the concept of centralized control. The wonder is that the Afghan people, who at this writing have experienced non-stop warfare for a quarter of a century, present the same problems to foreign antagonists today as they did 2,500 years ago. And battles between disparate cultures or religions continue to underlie the din of arms. Afghanistan, as ever, remains the stage for not just clashes of armies but of civilizations.
A geographical map, more than a political one, best explains Afghanistan’s importance over the centuries. It is the easternmost part of the great Iranian plateau, and given the nearby impenetrable arc of the Himalayas, it is the primary land conduit connecting the great empires of Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. But conduit is perhaps too soft a term: invasion route would be more accurate. Afghanistan’s claustrophobic passes have borne mute witness to armies of Persians, Greeks, Mauryans, Huns, Mongols, Moghuls, British, Soviets, and Americans — among others — including many of the most famous captains in history. As a strategically vital piece of real estate, Afghanistan has also given birth to empires of its own such as the Ghaznavids, Ghorids, and Durranis, who spread fear of Afghan fighting prowess from Delhi to the Caspian Sea.
The historian Arnold Toynbee once suggested that upon viewing the rise of civilization from its center in Mesopotamia, the map of the Old World becomes startlingly clear. He distinguished countries between blind alleys and highways, and among the latter he thought two held prominent place: Syria, which was the link between the civilizations of Europe, Africa, and Asia; and Afghanistan, which was the nodal point between the civilizations of India, East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and thence Europe. “Plant yourself not in Europe but in Iraq,” he wrote, and “it will become evident that half the roads of the Old World lead to Aleppo, and half to Bagram.” Toynbee noted that Bagram was once the site of Cyrus the Great’s Kapish-Kanish as well as Alexander the Great’s Alexandria-in-the-Caucasus. He would have nodded appreciatively had he seen Bagram airfield become the primary Soviet base in Afghanistan during the 1980s and that at the onset of the 21st century not only American but British, German, and Australian troops have been disembarking at that strategic spot, nestled in the southern foothills of the Hindu Kush.
When, in geopolitical terms, the center of world gravity existed in the East rather than in European capitals or, more recently, Washington, D.C., Afghanistan held a crucial role in the fate of nations. But after enjoying supreme status as a crossroad of empires, its political importance began to decline during the medieval period. Historian Rhea Talley Stewart has stated that two men did irreparable damage to Afghanistan. The first was the conquering Genghis Khan; the second was Christopher Columbus, who sailed past the presumed ends of the earth, establishing tremendous avenues for commerce and conquest that did not depend on the land. “Afghanistan is far less important to a round world,” Stewart wrote, “than it was to a flat one.” Once global seapower emerged as an equivalent to land power (airpower was not yet on the drawing board), the definition of Afghanistan changed from an essential passageway between civilizations to a place more desirable as a no-man’s-land. It remained crucial territory in the view of great empires, but in a negative rather than a positive sense. In the 19th century the world’s greatest seafaring empire and the world’s greatest land one vied for control of Afghanistan in a Cold War–like contest known as the “Great Game.” The country was vital to both sides but with the greater interest that it should not be strong on its own terms but exist ignominiously as a buffer between larger spheres of influence. During the past two centuries, of course, both participants in the Great Game, Britain and Russia (as the Soviet Union), found little but grief in their forays into that buffer.
The uniqueness of Afghanistan lies not just with its location at the hub of disparate empires; after all, the flatlands of northern Poland and central Iraq have been equally well trod by rampaging armies. Afghanistan’s continuously violent history is due in equal measure to the nature of its territory, which has in turn influenced the nature of its people. However strategically desirable Afghanistan’s narrow mountain passes and river valleys, the bulk of the land is unrelentingly harsh, and where it does not consist of jagged, successive ranges of heights it is largely desert. The people of this forbidding land have thus had advantages in defense of their territory, whether on a national, regional, or local level. It is a land that can be easily invaded but is much more difficult to hold — and to hold together.
Among Afghanistan’s more remote mountain regions are tribes, still governed on a feudal basis, that have never been conquered. Neither have they ever been fully subjugated by domestic government. Invading armies may pass through, seizing sedentary communities on accessible transit routes, which in Afghanistan are more the exception than the rule, while among remote heights and deep valleys tribes have maintained their independence for thousands of years. This is not to say the country’s mountains are populated by hermits or pacifists. On many occasions the tribes have descended from Afghanistan’s mountains with devastating results: to participate in collective defense, civil wars, or expeditions for plunder. When the Afghans have acted in common cause, their country — though often ravaged — has never been held down by a foreign power; on the other hand, evidence indicates that Afghanistan is only capable of unity when its people respond to a foreign threat. Left to their own devices, Afghans engage in internecine battles, or simply enjoy freedom — not the kind enforceable by a Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, or Communist Manifesto, but of more ancient derivation — unbothered by government at all.
— Stephen Tanner is the author of Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War against the Taliban, which has just been published in an updated edition. Excerpted by arrangement with Da Capo Press (www.dacapopress.com), a member of the Perseus Books Group.
Ellie
Crossroad of Empires
Why Afghanistan is so often at the center of history.
By Stephen Tanner
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is adapted from Stephen Tanner’s new book, Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War against the Taliban.
When American B-52s went into action on either side of the Hindu Kush in the fall of 2001, the military history of Afghanistan came full-circle. The country that for centuries had stood at the crossroads of the great civilizations of the Old World was suddenly assailed by the young superpower of the New. This time it was not the centrality of Afghanistan but its very isolation from the rest of the globe that incurred the wrath of foreign arms. Once a coveted prize of empires and a source of indigenous warrior kingdoms, the southern Asian country had devolved through the modern era to the status of a buffer state, then a Cold War battlefield, and finally to a mere hideout — conveniently pocked with caves offering refuge to international terrorists. Yet in the 21st century A.D., no less than in the 5th century B.C., Afghanistan found itself once again enmeshed in combat with the world’s strongest military power. Given Afghanistan’s long, varied history of conflict, this latest development has not been a surprise.
Unlike some mountainous lands, such as Peru, Nepal, and Norway — even at times Switzerland, its closest European counterpart — it has never been Afghanistan’s lot to exist benignly apart from the rest of the world. It has instead found itself at the hinge of imperial ambitions since the beginning of recorded history, from the world’s first transcontinental superpower, the Persian Empire, to its latest, the United States. In between enduring or resisting invasions from every point of the compass (and most recently from the air), the Afghans have honed their martial skills by fighting among themselves, in terrain that facilitates divisions of power and resists the concept of centralized control. The wonder is that the Afghan people, who at this writing have experienced non-stop warfare for a quarter of a century, present the same problems to foreign antagonists today as they did 2,500 years ago. And battles between disparate cultures or religions continue to underlie the din of arms. Afghanistan, as ever, remains the stage for not just clashes of armies but of civilizations.
A geographical map, more than a political one, best explains Afghanistan’s importance over the centuries. It is the easternmost part of the great Iranian plateau, and given the nearby impenetrable arc of the Himalayas, it is the primary land conduit connecting the great empires of Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. But conduit is perhaps too soft a term: invasion route would be more accurate. Afghanistan’s claustrophobic passes have borne mute witness to armies of Persians, Greeks, Mauryans, Huns, Mongols, Moghuls, British, Soviets, and Americans — among others — including many of the most famous captains in history. As a strategically vital piece of real estate, Afghanistan has also given birth to empires of its own such as the Ghaznavids, Ghorids, and Durranis, who spread fear of Afghan fighting prowess from Delhi to the Caspian Sea.
The historian Arnold Toynbee once suggested that upon viewing the rise of civilization from its center in Mesopotamia, the map of the Old World becomes startlingly clear. He distinguished countries between blind alleys and highways, and among the latter he thought two held prominent place: Syria, which was the link between the civilizations of Europe, Africa, and Asia; and Afghanistan, which was the nodal point between the civilizations of India, East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, and thence Europe. “Plant yourself not in Europe but in Iraq,” he wrote, and “it will become evident that half the roads of the Old World lead to Aleppo, and half to Bagram.” Toynbee noted that Bagram was once the site of Cyrus the Great’s Kapish-Kanish as well as Alexander the Great’s Alexandria-in-the-Caucasus. He would have nodded appreciatively had he seen Bagram airfield become the primary Soviet base in Afghanistan during the 1980s and that at the onset of the 21st century not only American but British, German, and Australian troops have been disembarking at that strategic spot, nestled in the southern foothills of the Hindu Kush.
When, in geopolitical terms, the center of world gravity existed in the East rather than in European capitals or, more recently, Washington, D.C., Afghanistan held a crucial role in the fate of nations. But after enjoying supreme status as a crossroad of empires, its political importance began to decline during the medieval period. Historian Rhea Talley Stewart has stated that two men did irreparable damage to Afghanistan. The first was the conquering Genghis Khan; the second was Christopher Columbus, who sailed past the presumed ends of the earth, establishing tremendous avenues for commerce and conquest that did not depend on the land. “Afghanistan is far less important to a round world,” Stewart wrote, “than it was to a flat one.” Once global seapower emerged as an equivalent to land power (airpower was not yet on the drawing board), the definition of Afghanistan changed from an essential passageway between civilizations to a place more desirable as a no-man’s-land. It remained crucial territory in the view of great empires, but in a negative rather than a positive sense. In the 19th century the world’s greatest seafaring empire and the world’s greatest land one vied for control of Afghanistan in a Cold War–like contest known as the “Great Game.” The country was vital to both sides but with the greater interest that it should not be strong on its own terms but exist ignominiously as a buffer between larger spheres of influence. During the past two centuries, of course, both participants in the Great Game, Britain and Russia (as the Soviet Union), found little but grief in their forays into that buffer.
The uniqueness of Afghanistan lies not just with its location at the hub of disparate empires; after all, the flatlands of northern Poland and central Iraq have been equally well trod by rampaging armies. Afghanistan’s continuously violent history is due in equal measure to the nature of its territory, which has in turn influenced the nature of its people. However strategically desirable Afghanistan’s narrow mountain passes and river valleys, the bulk of the land is unrelentingly harsh, and where it does not consist of jagged, successive ranges of heights it is largely desert. The people of this forbidding land have thus had advantages in defense of their territory, whether on a national, regional, or local level. It is a land that can be easily invaded but is much more difficult to hold — and to hold together.
Among Afghanistan’s more remote mountain regions are tribes, still governed on a feudal basis, that have never been conquered. Neither have they ever been fully subjugated by domestic government. Invading armies may pass through, seizing sedentary communities on accessible transit routes, which in Afghanistan are more the exception than the rule, while among remote heights and deep valleys tribes have maintained their independence for thousands of years. This is not to say the country’s mountains are populated by hermits or pacifists. On many occasions the tribes have descended from Afghanistan’s mountains with devastating results: to participate in collective defense, civil wars, or expeditions for plunder. When the Afghans have acted in common cause, their country — though often ravaged — has never been held down by a foreign power; on the other hand, evidence indicates that Afghanistan is only capable of unity when its people respond to a foreign threat. Left to their own devices, Afghans engage in internecine battles, or simply enjoy freedom — not the kind enforceable by a Magna Carta, Bill of Rights, or Communist Manifesto, but of more ancient derivation — unbothered by government at all.
— Stephen Tanner is the author of Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War against the Taliban, which has just been published in an updated edition. Excerpted by arrangement with Da Capo Press (www.dacapopress.com), a member of the Perseus Books Group.
Ellie