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In 1747 the Durrani Pushtun lords of the south elected Ahmed Shah as their king. This event was the modern foundation of what we call “Afghanistan”. Ahmed Shah controlled Kandahar, Herat and Kabul. The lords were independent in their home areas but followed their king and provided him with troops in return for which he gave them gifts of land and money. In other words their allegiance was highly conditional and was retained by Ahmed Shah paying them out of the spoils of his conquests of:
* Peshawar
* Sindh
* Kashmir
These areas are in what is now Pakistan and India. Peshawar and Sindh are both very fertile plains. Kahmir is quite remarkably lush. Between the three of them they provided the surplus needed to maintain the Afghan State.
Every king (every central government) has needed such a surplus. Every king (every central government) has had to feed, arm and pay an army. Without such an army or the khans there would be no Afghan state. It is very simple without money, no arms, no army and no khans. No king (no central government) has ever been able to raise sufficient revenue within Afghanistan, for that would be to attack the khans. So customs dues and revenues from the plain supported the state.
However as overland trade declined so did customs revenues. Dynastic wars tore the state apart and the rising power of the Sikhs meant the loss of Kashmir and Peshawar, the Amirs of Sindh declared independence. Thus when Amir Dost Mohammed emerged as the ruler of Kabul and Kandahar he lacked the surplus needed to hold the kingdom together. He asked the British to help him reconquer Peshawar. The British who were nervous of taking on the Sikhs said “no”, he turned to the Russians which caused the British to panic and invade.
The British invasion of 1838 was a walk-over. Amir Dost Mohammed had been cutting back the Khans’ subsidies and raising their taxes in an attempt to hold the state together (and incidentally stay both in power and alive). When the British started (literally) flinging bags of gold at the Khans their opposition to invasion evaporated and Amir Dost Mohammed’s army deserted.
At that time there was no such thing as Afghan nationalism. The closest thing to a nationalist resistance was a few mullahs who managed to raise small groups of armed men for jihad. They were at most only a few dozen and were easily defeated. At the start Afghans were not in general reflexively opposed to the British. But they rapidly became so. The reason for this was that the East India Company had realised that in order to hold Afghanistan they would have to pay out far far more in subsidies than they collected in revenue. They decided to cut the payments to the border tribes and the khans. The result of this was that the border tribes closed the passes, and the khans stopped regarding the British as friends and allies. Once rumours began to spread that the British were planning to withdraw because of the expense it became time to change sides.
As well as ceasing to be a fount of gold the British had brought a major economic problem with them in the shape of a large army with many camp followers to Kabul and Kandahar. They ate up so much grain that the price of bread initially climbed to double the usual price and then continued to rise. This made the khans happy, but it drove the poor to famine, desperation, and hatred for the British.
Resistance began to coalesce into a holy war. And it was inevitable that it be a holy war. Given the divisions in Afghan society Islam was the only banner that could unite the resistance. They massacred nearly the entirety of the 20,000 man army retreating from Kabul. The empire struck back, empires always do, the British returned and engaged in an orgy of sacking, looting, raping, and burning. They referred to these activities as "teaching the Afghans a lesson". But while they could and did sack, loot, rape, and burn to their imperialist little hearts’ content what they couldn’t do was hold the country. They left and Dost Mohammed reassumed his throne
This time however he had a hefty British subsidy to back him up (sound familiar???) and he had enough to hold the state together. The Islamic resistance disbanded but they left behind a memory and a tradition of popular Islamic resistance to foreign invaders. For while it is true that the Afghans had turned against the British for mostly economic reasons, they had fought them as infidels.
I chose to start at the beginning. But I could equally have picked 1878, 1901, 1919, 1924, 1928, 1933, 1973, 1978, or you get the idea.
The Afghan state as we know it doesn’t deserve the name, it’s not a state, a nation, or even a people. It does not now have (and never did have) the internal resources to hold itself together, let alone to develop. It has always needed massive injections of cash OR the resources of:
* Peshawar
* Sindh
* Kashmir
To hold itself together.It would be cheaper, easier, and quicker to give
* Peshawar
* Sindh
* Kashmir
“back” to Afghanistan over the objections of Pakistan and India than it would be to engage in nation building. So that’s what you need to do. Give
* Peshawar
* Sindh
* Kashmir
“back” to Afghanistan over the objections of Pakistan and India.
Lots of luck with that.
du
14 Comments
Thank you so much for this post – what an important education for all of us – and important warning.
Digg is open.
This strategy today — Get Afghanistan Right — is a very important effort. Americans want our troops home. The mission is unclear. Let’s end it.
Get in touch would you? A comment at our place with a valid email would do it.
kthanxbai :-)
Hello and thank you Du. Hope all is well with you and yours.
you say: “The Afghan state as we know it doesn’t deserve the name, it’s not a state, a nation, or even a people. It does not now have (and never did have) the internal resources to hold itself together, let alone to develop. It has always needed massive injections of cash OR the resources of:
* Peshawar
* Sindh
* Kashmir”
You are misinformed; you don’t know your history, as evidenced by your selective misrepresentation of the Afghan people’s history of their nation. Go ahead and throw out 1929 thru 1974 if it helps you make your point, but your statements are not credible.
Great piece. It’s so important to keep the historical in mind with Afghanistan. I was having an argument on Kos all day with someone who is swearing the Taliban aren’t a “foreign resistance organization.” And, well, they’re wrong, at least seeing how the Taliban fit into the larger Afghan history.
And how, exactly, does the Taliban fit into the larger Afghan history?
OK; I checked the KOS thread and you’ve got it wrong,too. You are apparently conflating resistance fighters throughout Afghanistan’s history with the Taliban. And it is not just semantics.
Afghans have never allowed foreign troops on their soil without a fight, and they never will.
Yes I do know my history and no I didn’t ignore 1924-78. The posting specifically deals with a far earlier period. It deals with that period because that was when the pattern was set of the political entity “The Afghan State” not having enough resources.
Would that be the:
Would that be the Pashtun people in the south and east?
They are after all the dominant group. The kings have always been Pushtuns, and so, for example, were the three Presidents of communist Afghanistan. The army and police are and always have been dominated by them.
They are as I’m sure you know an Iranian group and speak a Farsi dialect. In fact, “Afghanistan” is Farsi word meaning “land of the Pushtuns”.
Or are you talking about the:
* Hazaras, (Farsi speakers of Mongol descent, who live in central mountainous region?)
Or perhaps you mean the various Turkic peoples in the north, the:
* The Uzbeks?
* THe Turkomans?
* The Kirghiz?
Or maybe you mean the Farsi speaking Tajiks who live in the west and around Kabul?
Every single one of those peoples differ in:
* Language,
* Customs,
* Appearance,
* and history.
What they have in common is that they are all Muslims and suffer scarcities of
* Land,
* Pasture,
* Water.
Which of these highly various peoples are the Afghan people Dru?
So long as the foreigners splashed around enough money and didn’t try to upset the social order they had no problems.
So, you are saying that a multiethnic country does not meet your definition of a nation. The race has to be pure to be legitimate? How very disgusting!
So what, if the Pashtun majority rules? How does the dominance of one majority group negate the nationality of the others?
Afghanistan is a Farsi word, meaning Land of the Afghans. Pashtuns speak Pashtu, which is not a dialect of Farsi (Dari). Many Afghans are bilingual; they are not as isolated from one another as you seem to think they are.
Pashtuns, Tajik, Hazara, Turkman and Uzbeks are all Afghans. The majority are Muslim, and at least before so many became refugees there were respected minorities of Hindus, Sikhs and Jews (also Afghans).
You say:
So long as the foreigners splashed around enough money and didn’t try to upset the social order they had no problems.
in response to my statement about foreign troops. Please clarify, when, exactly did this happen? I’d like to know about a time when a foreign army came in and gave away cash without upsetting the social order.
I understand that you ignored the twentieth century in your posting; an era when scarcities were being overcome and Afghanistan was starting to prosper; I guess because that period of time doesn’t fit into your thesis.
The point of the posting is that Afghanistan’s modern problems date to its founding. It’s too small and poor to sustain a central state.
It’s hilarious that you should cite the periods of intermittently rising prosperity of the 20th century in support of your argument. That prosperity was due almost entirely to huge amounts of foreign aid and vanished when donors cut back.
Pashto is an Iranian language and is spoken by about 30% of the populace.
As to this:
Yes indeed how very disgusting that rather than addressing the point I was making that you should choose to hurl a slur of racism. Nothing that I wrote could remotely be construed as racist and you know it. I’m treating your comment with the contempt it deserves and not bothering to respond further.
du
Your comments speak for themselves and you demonstrate plenty of contempt for the country of Afghanistan and its people. I’m not surprised that your think that the 20th c. was hilarious, because as I said, it doesn’t fit in with your thesis. Take your marbles and go home if you wish, but your ignorance and your (maybe) unintentional racism is plain to see (although I didn’t characterize it as such, you did). Being challenged on your facts when they are incorrect is a risk you take when bloviating in the blogosphere. Farvel lille dreng.