By Carol J. Williams
“Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.”
Nowhere has that admonishment by 18th century statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke been ignored with such disastrous consequences as in Afghanistan.
The imperial British army suffered its most inglorious defeat there in 1842, only to have the folly of invasion repeated by the Soviet Union in 1979 and again by the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
As tens of thousands of U.S. and allied troops prepare to leave Afghanistan after nearly a dozen years, Scottish writer-historian William Dalrymple’s new chronicle of the British debacle more than 170 years ago evokes comparison of the fates that have met foreign invaders.
In “Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42” (2013 © Alfred A. Knopf), Dalrymple traces the protagonists of today’s battles for power between U.S.-backed President Hamid Karzai and Taliban mullahs to their clansmen of the First Anglo-Afghan War era. Karzai is descended from the same Pashtun sub-tribe of Popalzai as Shah Shuja, the exiled leader who was returned and installed by the British in 1839 to replace the Taliban forebear Dost Mohammed Khan, whom the invaders had ousted.
Dalrymple, in California for the next week to present his book in Los Angeles, Pasadena and the Bay Area, talked with The Times about his account of one of history’s most ill-considered occupations, and modern-day leaders’ failure to heed its lessons.
Q:
The British experience of invading Afghanistan was repeated by the Soviets 30 years ago and now by the United States and its allies. Why do the major powers not learn from each other’s failed attempts at imposing their development and governing models on this faraway country?
Dalrymple:
My personal theory is that it’s because it's not impossible to conquer Afghanistan. There have been powers in history that have very successfully ruled the country for years. It helps if you’re from the region and have the same religion. If you’re a Muslim you stir up less resistance. But it’s an extremely expensive place to occupy.
In the end what happens isn’t military defeat but the hemorrhaging of money into the country. It happened with the Soviets, and the Indians before them. They did what the Americans are doing now -- they began to cut the troops and train up an Afghan army. They find themselves taking increasing numbers of casualties and, as they try to find a way around that, they give up rather than get defeated.
In no way have the Americans been defeated. Had they wished to, they could have hunkered down and hemorrhaged more money and blood. But, at the end of the day, they have decided it’s not worth it.
Q:
Didn’t the U.S. invasion in October 2001 have a different impetus from the British intervention in 1839? Wasn’t the original coalition mission aimed at eradicating Al Qaeda’s refuges in the country?
Dalrymple: Sept. 11 was such a catastrophic knock to the system, such an astonishing event, that all other years of civil liberties work, lessons from history, careful planning of security operations just got thrown aside in this moment of blind panic and anger. There was very little George Bush could have done otherwise. He had to make a move in response to this catastrophic, life-changing attack.
The invasion in 2001 was justified. What we should have done, though, is very clearly demonstrate good intentions. There was an awful lot of goodwill among the Afghans initially. They hated the Taliban. But we should have built hospitals and schools, not impose a puppet on them. We spent millions on security and nothing on the country. Even eight years after the invasion, there was still no proper road from the airport to the capital, Kabul. It was a lost opportunity. It could have been a time when the West and the Afghans made friends.
Q:
Do you see any chance of lasting Western influence on Afghanistan once the troops are gone? Will the national government model and recognition of women’s rights endure, or is the country likely to revert to the tribal conflicts and geographic divisions that existed before the invasion?
Dalrymple:
A lot has changed thanks to the U.S. intervention. There is all sorts of stuff that can never be put in reverse. There’s a whole generation of very wired, Internet-savvy younger people who know of the world and are aware of the situation of Afghanistan. The urban population has doubled in the past decade, and the population of Kabul is up by a factor of three. The Taliban remains an entirely rural movement. It’s very strong and oddly admired in the rural Pashtun south and is the authentic voice of the ultra-orthodox Pashtun villager. But I think it unlikely that the Taliban will be able to sweep out Kabul and Karzai straight away.
It’s not at all clear what is going to happen. There’s a good chance Karzai might enhance his stature once the allies have withdrawn, though it may be in Fortress Kabul, with very little power over the south. It’s more likely there will be a messy civil war or some sort of accommodation reached with the Taliban to share power.
Q:
In your book, you recount the atrocities committed by the British "army of retribution" [punishing Afghans for the savage 1842 rebellion that forced the foreigners to retreat to India]. Do you see that phenomenon of brutality spawning more brutality in the occasional instances reported in the current war of troops attacking Afghan civilians or desecrating the corpses of enemy dead?
Dalrymple:
One could make an argument for that parallel. Afghans in the 19th century had a tradition of mutilating the dead. They would cut off the genitals and put them in their victim’s mouth. It was an effective way of warding off enemies.
War is a nasty business. Young men with guns and power behave very badly at any point in history. It’s one of the tragic universals of the human character that alongside love, charity and peace there is this darker side of it.
Q:
Once the U.S. drawdown is completed next year, will the mission be regarded by future historians as a failure not unlike those of the British and Soviets? Or has the occupying force accomplished the core goals of the invasion?
Dalrymple:
For [President] Obama, it is a political issue. He made it a central promise of his presidency to pull the troops out. It’s also a cost factor putting an end to it, even though the vow to dismantle the Taliban was not accomplished. The Taliban are back in force.
The worst repercussions of the operations in Afghanistan may be felt with the U.S. allies in Pakistan. Pakistan has become a very radicalized country where even the liberal, English-reading class is extremely anti-American thanks to the drone attacks.
Q:
Shah Shuja was assassinated after the British left. The Soviets’ last Afghan communist ally, Mohammad Najibullah, was seized from U.N. protection when the Taliban took power in 1996 and castrated, dragged through the streets of Kabul and then hanged. Is Karzai likely to meet a terrible end if the Taliban regain control and see him as an abandoned U.S. puppet?
Dalrymple:
Karzai really has a large degree of support among the population at the moment. He is as irritated by the U.S. troops as many other Afghans, and he speaks quite authentically about the problems, not like a man installed by U.S. bullets and U.S. blood.
Karzai is haunted by the fact that Shah Shuja is regarded as a Quisling and the man who threw him down, Wazir Akbar Khan, is regarded a hero. But Shah Shuja was a more forceful and persevering character than many realize, and he might have survived to rule Afghanistan if not for a domestic conflict that led to his godson assassinating him after the British left.
Karzai could survive, at least for a while. Or he may end up living in some equivalent of the Green Zone [the U.S. diplomatic fortress in Baghdad].
I wrote this book because we need to know this history that we are unconsciously repeating. Karzai is a direct descendant of Shah Shuja. Never has history quite repeated itself as in this case.
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