Read Online A Rope and a Prayer by David Rohde, Kristen Mulvihill - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: David Rohde, Kristen Mulvihill
Tags: General, Biography & Autobiography, Editors; Journalists; Publishers, Political Science, International Relations
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spoke Persian, and were the country’s second largest group. Ethnic Hazaras, descendants of the Mongols and minority Shia Muslims, were the country’s third largest group. Uzbeks, Turkmen, and other ethnic groups from neighboring countries made up the remainder.
In the mid-1800s, Afghanistan became the coveted prize in the “Great Game,” the celebrated British and Russian competition for control of Central Asia. The same pattern of conquest and rebellion emerged. In 1838, a British army seized control of Kabul. Three years later, Afghans revolted, hacking to death two British envoys in Kabul’s main bazaar. When the British withdrew from Kabul several months later, Afghan marksmen firing from surrounding hills decimated the column. Out of a force of 15,000, only one man survived, purportedly spared so that he could describe the horrors that awaited future invaders.
In 1878, a larger British force of 40,000 soldiers bent on reasserting the empire’s supremacy seized Kabul and other large cities. Three years of relative calm followed, until a rebellion erupted and 1,000 British were killed in the Battle of Maiwand, a few dozen miles from where “Little America” would be built decades later. Two months later, a larger British force decisively defeated the Afghans in Kandahar.
Aware that a long-term British presence would spark another uprising, the British installed an Afghan regent named Abdur Rahman. He agreed to British protection, subsidy, and control of Afghanistan’s foreign affairs, moves all designed to block Russian expansionism toward British-controlled India.
In 1893, the British imposed a 1,600-mile border between Afghanistan and British-controlled India that annexed vast parts of Afghanistan and divided the Pashtuns, placing roughly 25 million of them in British-controlled India and 10 million in Afghanistan. The division would rankle Afghan Pashtuns for decades and lead to repeated calls for the establishment of a new nation called Pashtunistan. With the stroke of a British pen, the Afghan Pashtuns lost two-thirds of their population and dropped from being Afghanistan’s overwhelming majority to a plurality of its people. Ethnic Tajiks, who dominate Afghanistan’s north, had their hand strengthened.
In 1919, a bold young Afghan king named Amanullah Khan attacked the British and tried to retake the Pashtun areas the British had seized. In a three-month war he failed to do so, but regained control of Afghanistan’s foreign affairs. For the next decade, American diplomats considered Afghanistan within Britain’s “sphere of influence,” though, and declined to recognize it as an independent nation.
Leon B. Poullada, an American diplomat who served in Afghanistan in the late 1950s and wrote a history of relations between Washington and Kabul, referred to the American view as the “Afghan blind-spot.” Poullada argued that American policy makers dismissed the country as hostile and hapless, and repeatedly failed to see its strategic importance. “This feeling of unreality, of an inability to focus or define American interests in this ‘far-off’ land will appear as a recurring theme,” Poullada wrote, “and will help to explain the many inconsistencies of American diplomacy in Afghanistan.”
Poullada blamed the misperceptions on early American writing about Afghanistan. It began in 1838 when Josiah Harlan, a quixotic mercenary from Pennsylvania, became the first American to enter Afghanistan. Over the course of a decade, Harlan carried out an astonishing run of opportunism and skullduggery across South Asia, posing as a surgeon at one point and culminating in his 1838 position as a military adviser to Dost Muhammad, Afghanistan’s ruler.
Harlan claimed he led an entire division of Afghan troops—and a heavy artillery train—over the Hindu Kush range, the forbidding mountains that separate northern and southern Afghanistan. Standing astride a 12,500-foot mountain pass, Harlan said he
In the mid-1800s, Afghanistan became the coveted prize in the “Great Game,” the celebrated British and Russian competition for control of Central Asia. The same pattern of conquest and rebellion emerged. In 1838, a British army seized control of Kabul. Three years later, Afghans revolted, hacking to death two British envoys in Kabul’s main bazaar. When the British withdrew from Kabul several months later, Afghan marksmen firing from surrounding hills decimated the column. Out of a force of 15,000, only one man survived, purportedly spared so that he could describe the horrors that awaited future invaders.
In 1878, a larger British force of 40,000 soldiers bent on reasserting the empire’s supremacy seized Kabul and other large cities. Three years of relative calm followed, until a rebellion erupted and 1,000 British were killed in the Battle of Maiwand, a few dozen miles from where “Little America” would be built decades later. Two months later, a larger British force decisively defeated the Afghans in Kandahar.
Aware that a long-term British presence would spark another uprising, the British installed an Afghan regent named Abdur Rahman. He agreed to British protection, subsidy, and control of Afghanistan’s foreign affairs, moves all designed to block Russian expansionism toward British-controlled India.
In 1893, the British imposed a 1,600-mile border between Afghanistan and British-controlled India that annexed vast parts of Afghanistan and divided the Pashtuns, placing roughly 25 million of them in British-controlled India and 10 million in Afghanistan. The division would rankle Afghan Pashtuns for decades and lead to repeated calls for the establishment of a new nation called Pashtunistan. With the stroke of a British pen, the Afghan Pashtuns lost two-thirds of their population and dropped from being Afghanistan’s overwhelming majority to a plurality of its people. Ethnic Tajiks, who dominate Afghanistan’s north, had their hand strengthened.
In 1919, a bold young Afghan king named Amanullah Khan attacked the British and tried to retake the Pashtun areas the British had seized. In a three-month war he failed to do so, but regained control of Afghanistan’s foreign affairs. For the next decade, American diplomats considered Afghanistan within Britain’s “sphere of influence,” though, and declined to recognize it as an independent nation.
Leon B. Poullada, an American diplomat who served in Afghanistan in the late 1950s and wrote a history of relations between Washington and Kabul, referred to the American view as the “Afghan blind-spot.” Poullada argued that American policy makers dismissed the country as hostile and hapless, and repeatedly failed to see its strategic importance. “This feeling of unreality, of an inability to focus or define American interests in this ‘far-off’ land will appear as a recurring theme,” Poullada wrote, “and will help to explain the many inconsistencies of American diplomacy in Afghanistan.”
Poullada blamed the misperceptions on early American writing about Afghanistan. It began in 1838 when Josiah Harlan, a quixotic mercenary from Pennsylvania, became the first American to enter Afghanistan. Over the course of a decade, Harlan carried out an astonishing run of opportunism and skullduggery across South Asia, posing as a surgeon at one point and culminating in his 1838 position as a military adviser to Dost Muhammad, Afghanistan’s ruler.
Harlan claimed he led an entire division of Afghan troops—and a heavy artillery train—over the Hindu Kush range, the forbidding mountains that separate northern and southern Afghanistan. Standing astride a 12,500-foot mountain pass, Harlan said he
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