Afghanistan, America’s Longest War: History Repeats Itself

“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”

On August 30th, 2021, the last plane carrying US soldiers evacuated Afghanistan, signifying the end of Operation Freedom’s Sentinel: America's failed nation building attempt. America spent twenty years and 5.8 trillion dollars trying to build a stable, functioning Afghan democracy, only to watch it collapse in days to the same group the U.S expelled 20 years earlier: the Taliban. America is not alone in its efforts to have tried to unite Afghanistan. The British, Soviets, Mongols, and Macedonians all made attempts at imposing order on Afghanistan; all failed. In defeat, America joined the ranks of other would-be conquerors, suggesting that Afghanistan may indeed be “the graveyard of empires”. Ironically, this may have all been foretold by Alexander the Great who, in 323 BCE, called Afghanistan a nation of “lawless savages, the enemies of civilization” (Holt 14).

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

In 330 BCE, Greece was divided into fiercely independent city-states. King Philp of Macedonia had a burning desire to avenge the Persian Empire for two invasions of Greece 150 years earlier. Philip was able to unite the Greek states into an alliance with the purpose of destroying the Persian Empire. Before his plan could be executed, Philp was assassinated, and his son, Alexander, became his successor. Barely twenty years old, Alexander successfully commanded the conquest of Persia. Upon defeating the Persian King Darius II, Alexander hatched a new vision to conquer the known world. The result was an empire spanning from Macedonia and Egypt to India. Alexander’s eleven-year march suffered not a single defeat. However, one satrapie of the Persian Empire proved stubbornly bellicose to Alexander, who was accustomed to summarily destroying or co-opting his vanquished. That place was Bactria, known today as Afghanistan. The people in Bactria saw Alexander as an invader staining their native culture and bringing evil to their lands. For these reasons, Alexander found it nearly impossible to take the satrapy of Bactria (Holts 14). In fact, the campaign was so difficult, the only way Alexander could subdue the Bactrians was through the exercise of pure military force and even then, the results were ephemeral. Although Alexander temporarily succeeded in taking Bactria, he ultimately concluded the Bactrians indomitable. Alexander conquered the region, gained nominal loyalty of tribesmen, only to be denounced as soon as he marched east. Alexander referred to Bactria as “...a rogue regime that harbored warlords and terrorists...” and concluded that the men who inhabited this rugged land were “criminals [who] would continue to exploit differences of religion, language, and culture to rouse attacks on innocent victims. They must be stopped with overwhelming military force.” (Holt 15).

GENGHIS KHAN

In 1218, Genghis Khan, fierce military genius and ruthless leader of the Mongol Empire, deployed over 200,000 soldiers to invade the Khwarizm Empire, today Afghanistan. Initially, Khan sent a caravan of 500 camels carrying riches to the Khwarizm ruler, an attempt at bribing him into an agreement which would prevent costly losses to Khan’s army. A greedy border commander slaughtered every member of the convoy but one. Subsequently, Khan marched through the Empire, slaughtering every person he crossed, annihilating vast swaths of the population in cities he passed through. He destroyed the empire in 1220; dissent was nonexistent: accounts of Khan’s slaughter had circulated widely. Khan ruled Afghanistan with an iron fist after concluding, like Alexander, that Afghanistan could only be ruled through overwhelming military power. The Mongol rule of terror lasted seven years. Khan’s death in 1227 resulted in the collapse of the entire Mongol empire and the people of Afghanistan returned to local, tribal organization.

THE BRITISH EMPIRE

In the 1830’s, Britain became the first modern power to attempt to govern Afghanistan. At the time, Afghanistan was deadlocked between choosing loyalty to the British or Russian Empires. Both powers had envoys in Kabul, and were desperately trying to gain favor with King Emir Dost Mohammed Khan. Afghanistan was of interest to the Russians because it could be used as a gateway to attack the valuable British colony of India, whereas the British wanted a pro-British king, to prevent such an invasion. The king eventually chose to side with the Russians after the British angered him greatly for refusing to help recapture a province being besieged by Indian Sikhs. When a Russian-backed Iranian army entered Afghanistan during the Afghan-Russian negotiations, the British decided that the risk of an invasion of India was too great. In response, in 1839, the British landed 20,000 British and Indian conscripts, 38,000 servants, and 30,000 supply camels in Afghanistan. The invasionary force met little resistance, and unlike what Khan experienced, the British were successful in bribing local tribal leaders which allowed for the nearly bloodless conquest of many cities. The British took Kabul only to discover that the king had fled the city. They hastily established a new pro-British Afghan puppet leader, Emir Shah Shuja.  British and Indian troops occupied the country in order to ensure a pro-British monarch and maintain stability. However, it was cost prohibitive to keep tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan. In 1839, a majority of the British soldiers were evacuated, and a small British garrison remained in Kabul, giving the Afghans less incentive to remain loyal to the British. Growing disapproval of the British presence eventually boiled over among insurrectionists and dissidents, led by the son of British-deposed King Dost Mohammad who stormed the British garrison and forced the British to withdraw under promised conditions that they would be protected in retreat. The promise was not honored and, as the British retreated from Kabul in 1842, they were ambushed by hill tribesmen who had allied themselves with the British empire only three years earlier. After a final massacre at Gandamak Pass, only a few British and Indian soldiers escaped the onslaught; hundreds were captured and sold into slavery. The British were effectively expelled and the puppet leader murdered. Dost Mohammed Khan was released from British custody, reassumed the throne as a more pro-British leader, once again underscoring the ever-shifting loyalties of the Afghan people.

THE SOVIET UNION

In 1979, the Soviet Union attempted to govern Afghanistan. The head of the Afghan communist party, Mohammed Taraki, was unpopular and killed by soldiers loyal to Hafizullah Amin, the deputy prime minister who believed Taraki’s affiliation with the Soviet Union an attempt to undermine his power. The Soviet Union, alarmed by the assassination, invoked a friendship treaty, stating that they would provide military and economic support, as a pretext for deploying troops on Afghan soil. On December 24th, 1979, 280 transport aircraft landed 25,500 Soviet soldiers in Kabul overnight; the Soviets took control of the city after only a few days of brief resistance. After securing the capital, the Soviets attempted to expand their sphere of influence into the surrounding countryside. Months after trying to secure the country, the Soviets were repelled by Mujahideen, United States funded Islamic insurrection groups using guerilla warfare tactics to resist Soviet advances. These insurgents believed the Soviets Christians and atheists: enemies of Islam. The United States played on Afghan hatred of the Soviets, supplying insurgents with anti-aircraft weaponry in a proxy war aimed at forcing a Soviet withdrawal. Ironically, the Americans were also thought of as enemies of Islam; however, it was situationally expedient for the rebels to ally themselves with one enemy to expel another. Yet again, Afghan loyalties changed with circumstances. By 1989, the Soviets retreated. A total of 15,000 Soviet soldiers and two million Afghans had been killed.

9/11

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda, a radical Islamic terrorist group, hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners filled with civilian passengers, flying two into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, crashing one into the Pentagon, and the fourth plummeting into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania after passengers commandeered the aircraft from the hijackers. In all, 2,996 Americans were killed at home in this foreign-borne attack, more than any since the war of 1812. It was also the deadliest terrorist attack ever on American soil. Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of these attacks, had a history of attacking the United States, viewing it as an imperialistic, tyrannical nation and an enemy of God. Before 9/11, he organized the 1993 murder of eighteen US servicemen who were arresting a Somali warlord. He was also responsible for the 1998 bombing of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, resulting in 224 deaths. Additionally, bin Laden orchestrated the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole as it refueled in the Yemeni port of Aiden, killing 17 sailors. Although bin Laden was on American radar, it was not until after the September 11 attacks that the United States made any attempt to capture him. Bin Laden, as well as his al-Qaeda operatives, were hiding in the rugged mountainous regions of Afghanistan at the time, sheltered by the Taliban who shared a hatred for America.

On October 6th, 2001, the United States launched an invasion of Afghanistan, aimed at eradicating the terrorists, destroying the Taliban and capturing or killing bin Laden. A heavy bombing campaign against Taliban and al-Qaeda targets ensued, and US troops arrived twelve days later. By December, Taliban resistance had crumbled, its insurgents forced into some of the most remote regions in the world. In only two months, American forces took control of the country, destroyed the bulk of the Taliban, and forced al-Qaeda into hiding. However, bin Laden had escaped to Pakistan, and it would be  another ten years until he was killed by Navy SEAL Team Six in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 2nd, 2011,  

By April 17th, 2002, Operation Enduring Freedom had accomplished all of its goals except capturing or killing bin Laden. However, the seeds of American failure were planted on that same date when President George W. Bush announced that the US would begin the process of nation building in Afghanistan. This was to be accomplished by routing terrorist groups that posed a threat to the new government, and establishing a strong state through popular support. Problems with this approach surfaced from the beginning. Hamid Karzai was the first leader chosen by popular suffrage in the fledgling Afghan democracy. He was ineffective, seeking not to represent the people, but rather to do everything possible to hold onto power. The first elected legislature was thoroughly corrupt. Forty percent of the first Afghan parliament members had backgrounds as drug traffickers, militia leaders, or histories of committing human rights abuses (Mathias Bak 5). Government corruption spread like a malignant tumor: seats of government were bought and sold like commodities. Many who bought such positions did so by incurring debt, and subsequently paying it back through “rent money” corruptly exacted in “official government capacity'' (Mathias Bak 5).

Although government corruption was endemic in August 2021, the cause for the Afghan government's quick collapse to the Taliban was primarily the result of a military rendered weak by a tangled web of conflicting loyalties. One of the biggest problems that the Afghan government faced from the start was securing all provinces, especially those remote, from falling back into Taliban control. To prevent this, the government contracted private warlords and regional militias to help ensure that the country remained free from Taliban rule. These warlords and militia leaders were rewarded with high positions in the government, often concurrently trafficking opium free from repercussions.

The American trained Afghan army was eventually meant to replace the private militias and act as a strong centralized military. Sadly, the military was plagued by corruption, like all sectors of Afghan society. Top military positions were sold, making abating corruption difficult. Although the command structure was thoroughly corrupt, the problems in the military were most apparent in the number of ghost soldiers. It is estimated that half of all Afghan soldiers were ghost soldiers: existing only on payrolls (Mathias Bak 8). With a broken chain of command and an armed force with little will to fight, the Afghan military was clearly unprepared to defend its homeland.

President Joe Biden took office on January 20th, 2021 and on May 1st, he ordered the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, keeping his campaign promise to end “forever wars”. At the time, Afghanistan remained stable, but not all U.S troops had evacuated. Trouble escalated in August, one month after the US evacuated Bagram Airfield, the main U.S military base, when the same Taliban the U.S. had almost completely destroyed a decade earlier began taking provincial capitals. Many fell with little or no resistance; corrupt leaders surrendered in return for safety, and Afghan soldiers surrendered their arms without a fight, just as they had to the British and Alexander. Despite President Ashraf Ghani’s assurance that the US trained Afghan army had “a strong spirit to defend their people and country”, Afghan soldiers, whose allegiance had shifted with the winds of change just as it had many times over the previous twenty four centuries, abandoned their posts, many surrendering to the Taliban for rewards. (Landay). By August 15th, only weeks after the first provincial capitals fell, the Taliban surrounded Kabul, their white flags raised in triumph, ready for the final offensive. On that same day, president Ghani quietly fled the country, like Dost Mohmamed had done when the British invaded. The U.S embassy was immediately evacuated and one of the largest airlifts in US military history was orchestrated. Karzai International Airport was flooded with desperate Afghan civilians, many who had worked for the US over the previous two decades. The world watched in horror as Afghans broke through security barriers and clung onto planes as they ascended. The terror group ISIS-K, which had nearly been eradicated by the U.S army also began to resurge, and two suicide bombings on August 26th killed thirteen U.S service members and over seventy civilians (Aikins). Finally, on August 30th, after a disastrous evacuation, the last U.S soldier left the country to the Taliban.

ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSION

From Alexander the Great’s campaign, to Genghis Khan’s assault, from the British occupations and Soviet mission to the United States’ Operation Enduring Freedom, all attempts by outside powers to impose order on the Afghan people have failed catastrophically. The geniuses and superpowers that led these conquests were far from incompetent, yet none were able to subdue the clans of Afghanistan. The root of Afghan indomitability lies in the recalcitrant and tribalistic nature. As it was twenty four centuries ago, it remains today: Afghanistan is one of the most divisive civilizations in the world. In fact, it was a military genius no less than Alexander the Great who found controlling the Afghan factions impossible. Despite temporarily enjoying pledges of allegiance from the Bactrians he subdued, Alexander found that their feigned loyalty disappeared like a fistful of sand as soon as his army continued its eastward march. (Holt 94). Fierce Afghan tribalism was again on full display between 1979 and 1989 when the Soviets were unable to unite the fractious country. Then in August, 2021, as US forces prepared the final evacuation of Afghanistan,  military intelligence estimated that the Afghan Army could defend Kabul for five months to indefinitely. Not unpredictably, the unequivocal divisiveness of tribalism once again reared its ugly head as resistance from the Afghan Army evaporated in the face of the Taliban advance. The American withdrawal imminent, most, if not all US-trained Afghan soldiers felt more loyal to their tribes than to the American-installed government they swore to defend. Like with Alexander, the Americans found that the allegiances of Afghan soldiers changed with the times and many who trained for years on a military payroll funded by US tax dollars shifted their loyalty to the Taliban on the basis of tribal, religious and cultural affiliations. (The Economist). Others in charge of defense, such as contracted warlords, also operated on the basis of fierce tribal loyalty, benefitting their tribes rather than defending a united Afghanistan. The reason for this constant state of tribalism is unclear. While many civilizations in the world have evolved beyond tribalism, Afghanistan has been in a constant state of tribal divisiveness its entire history. Afghanistan’s inability to move beyond tribalism becomes only more confusing when looking at all of the potential it had to become a developing country. In the book Sapiens, author Yuval Harrari writes that it is economic, religious, and imperial conquests that have brought civilizations together by uniting independent clans and tribes (Harrari, 173-237). Over the past two and a half millennia, Afghanistan was repeatedly exposed to all three of these unifying forces. Along the silk road, Afghanistan enjoyed the economic benefits of trade from both east and west. Pilgrims traveling the road brought Buddhism. Afghanistan also traded with China, India, and Rome. Throughout many periods, Afghanistan enjoyed a common religion and viable economy; still, Afghanistan remains divided along tribal cleavages. Every effort to unite the country has failed; Afghans have consistently rejected new ideas introduced by outside powers and proved incapable of unity. This inability to respond to unifying forces suggests that Afghanistan suffers from a deeply rooted problem: the culture of the region. It is clear the Afghans respond situationally to what best benefits themselves and their tribes, without future considerations, as evidenced by the experiences of Alexander and the United States. Afghanistan seems unable to unite because there is no need when families can be sustained tribally. Centuries of cultural involution need to be transcended if Afghanistan is to become one country. In effect, the Afghan people remain in a prehistoric default mode, resistant to all efforts to rise above tribalism, forge a national identity, and join the league of modern nations. Alexander may have overstated when he called Afghanistan a nation of “lawless savages, the enemies of civilization”, but his underlying point of Afghanistan’s inability to progress past primal tribalism remains poignant.

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