I told an American diplomat in Kabul last month that the British are
unconvinced that US policy in Afghanistan makes sense, or that the present
Afghan government is sustainable. “Given the record of British engagement in
this region over the past two centuries,” the American responded irritably,
“I do not think you people are well positioned to give anybody else lectures
about how to do things here.”
Touché. Even at the height of British imperialism, when Victorian proconsuls
prided themselves on their ability to impose order upon the most unlikely
subjects - dervishes and Zulus notable among them - they failed with the
Afghans. When Abdur Rahman took over as amir in 1881, he wrote: “The country
is in a deplorable condition. Everything which belonged to the state is
ruined and requires renewal. The people are...most turbulent and
intractable, and devour all they can.” His picture of Afghanistan remains
unchanged in the 21st century.
The British have perversely admired the warrior spirit and fierce independence
of these tribespeople since the first British envoy, a 29-year-old political
officer named Mountstuart Elphinstone, visited Kabul in 1808. Governments in
London and Delhi spent much of the ensuing century arguing about how best to
handle what they perceived as a vital buffer zone between the British and
Russian empires. Some governors and viceroys urged annexation, or at least
an assertive presence - the so-called “forward policy”. Others favoured
extreme caution about venturing in strength beyond the passes dividing
Afghanistan from what was then India. They bribed tribal chiefs to forswear
their raiding habits, and sent punitive expeditions to burn villages and
seize hostages when violence erupted - the “butcher and bolt” strategy.
David Loyn is a distinguished foreign correspondent who knows Afghanistan
intimately. His book offers an admirable historical summary of the country's
experience between 1808 and the present day. Neither its people nor the
mistakes made by meddling foreigners have changed much in between. In 1838,
when the British first sent an army into the country to impose a ruler of
their choice, one Shah Shuja, the expedition was assumed to be the usual
agreeable and adventurous “jolly”. One regiment took its own pack of
foxhounds. The media warmly applauded the commitment, as a means of
frustrating the tsarist bear. “The Russian fiend has been haunting and
troubling the human race,” foamed The Times.
What followed became one of the most notorious humiliations to befall the
British Empire, with the destruction of the remnants of the retreating army
at Gandamack in 1842, and the deaths of most of the senior officers engaged.
Thereafter, for several decades the British pursued a policy of diplomacy
and bribery to keep the frontier quiescent. Each side thought the other
duplicitous, the Afghans because the British often reneged on their
financial commitments, the British because the Afghans resumed local warfare
whenever it suited them.
In 1878, a second Afghan war began, following the local refusal to accept a
new British envoy. This made “Bobs” Roberts's military reputation (he became
Lord Roberts of Kandahar) but changed nothing. The British discovered a
persistent historical truth: that winning battles was meaningless, since
Afghan society was too fragmented and addicted to warfare for any settlement
to stick.
In 1893, Sir Henry Durand, the Indian foreign secretary, negotiated a treaty
with the amir, partitioning Waziristan. The region's inhabitants have taken
little notice of this frontier from that day to this. A senior official, Sir
Denis Fitzpatrick, argued against any further attempt to impose the imperial
will by force of arms, “to undertake so formidable a task as that of
establishing the pax Britannica generally throughout the Waziri country”.
For the most part, this view was accepted. But when Afghan jihadis embarked on
offensive operations into northwest India - modern Pakistan - in 1919, the
British found themselves engaged in a new war whether they liked it or not.
Desultory operations on the frontier continued for much of the period
between the two world wars.
In 1933, 19-year-old Zahir Shah became ruler and presided over 40 years of
relative tranquillity. Loyn passes over this period in his book, yet it
seems worthy of scholarly study to discover how such a miracle was achieved.
After Zahir's death, new turbulence erupted. A communist regime seized
power. In 1979, the Russians invaded the country to prop up the tottering
Kabul regime that had become its client, and to end the instability on their
frontier. Like every other foreign interventionist, Moscow at first assumed
that its soldiers' stay would be brief. In the ensuing decade, however,
100,000 Russian troops waged a murderous campaign in which 1.5m Afghans
died, the country was devastated and the invaders miserably failed to impose
their will.
It was during this period, as Loyn vividly describes, that grievous western
foreignpolicy errors were made. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher
perceived Afghanistan solely through a cold-war prism. They sought to
exploit Soviet difficulties and to aid Russia's enemies. By providing aid to
the mujaheddin insurgents, they helped to destabilise Pakistan and fuelled
Islamic militance across the region. The years of the mujaheddin war saw a
mushroom growth of radical madrasahs in Pakistan, whose influence is
shockingly apparent today.
Western influence was most recklessly wielded by a preposterous Texan
congressman, Charlie Wilson. He visited the area in 1982 and fell in love
with the mujaheddin as romantic foes of the Soviet evil empire. As a member
of the defence appropriations subcommittee, Wilson was able to secure huge
increases in American aid. His proudest achievement was to promote the
dispatch of Stinger hand-held anti-aircraft missiles to the insurgents, with
which they shot down 200 Russian aircraft and helicopters in the first year
of their deployment. Wilson, portrayed in heroic guise by Tom Hanks in a
recent Hollywood film (Charlie Wilson's War), was the sort of blundering
foreigner who gives Texans a bad name. He was aided in his follies by
British right-wing lunatics with influence over Thatcher. Their actions
contributed substantially to the shocking mess in the region today.
To be sure, in 1989 the Russians were driven out of Afghanistan with their
tails between their legs. But in 1996, after an internecine struggle among
the victorious tribes, the radical Islamist Taliban emerged as rulers of the
country. The American government was so outraged at this turn of events that
it refused to recognise the new regime.
Loyn argues that, by the standards of Afghan governments, the Taliban was not
as bad as is sometimes suggested. It banned opium cultivation, for a start.
Its great crime, in the eyes of the West, was the repression of women.
During one of Loyn's own assignments in the country, a Taliban minister
demanded of him curiously: “Why are you so interested in our women?”
The Taliban's quasi-medieval regime was far too weak to resist the
western-backed assault of 2001. Following its collapse, the author writes,
“a unique window of opportunity, when there was goodwill for the
international community to succeed, closed quickly”. Today, the blunt
reality and central problem in Afghanistan is that most of its people
believe they were better off under the Taliban than they are under President
Hamid Karzai.
An Afghan businessman said to me last month: “The past seven years of
democracy” - he used the word derisively - “have been a disaster for us.”
Afghanistan has never been an integrated state, but always a loose
conglomeration of constantly shifting interests, allegiances, tribes and
communities. There is little understanding of the modern world or appetite
to participate in it. The middle class, such as it ever was, has largely
abandoned the place. There is a dire, probably fatal shortage of qualified
Afghans to administer the country effectively, never mind honestly. Today,
as for the past 200 years, British and American military operations are
modestly successful within the compass of the small forces available. But
successes are meaningless, when there are many parts that - to invert the
Heineken advertisement - western military power cannot reach.
Almost every foreigner engaged in Afghanistan except President Bush now
recognises these realities and past mistakes. The question is whether the
West has a second chance; whether at this late stage it is possible to
change policy and convert the present shambles into some tolerable outcome.
This is highly debatable. I am one of those who believe that we must keep
trying throughout the region - the peril of Pakistan is even more alarming
and intractable. At the very least, we must pour in a lot more money, if it
can be kept out of Swiss bank accounts. But it would be naive to suggest
that the odds favour success. Loyn's excellent primer explains why, and
should be slipped into President Obama's Christmas stocking.
Butcher & Bolt by David Loyn
Hutchinson £18.99 pp396
