And Afghanistan Survives as the Graveyard of Empires

Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan once tried hard to conquer the area now known as Afghanistan. Not just as “The Graveyard of Empires” which was regarded as a reputation for the Afghan people in thwarting the expansionist ambitions of the invaders from Great Britain to the Soviet Union, it as also “a graveyard for colonialist and neocolonialist foreign powers aiming to dominate it,”  Romain Malejacq, political scientist wrote in his book “Warlord Survival.”

In 2010, anthropologist Thomas Barfield then wrote in his book “Afghanistan. A Cultural and Political History” that the way of Afghanistan gets rid of foreign invaders is to make the country ungovernable, unstable, and difficult to control, so that the colonizers eventually go alone. However, Thomas wrote, this strategy ultimately haunts the Afghan people themselves because every conflict that occurs actually makes the state and government institutions there become weaker, so that every ruler who appears tends to choose an authoritarian and brutal way of power.

Historically, the modern history of Afghanistan began in 1747 with the founding of the Durrani Empire by Ahmad Shah Durrani, a Pashtun military commander who previously served in the Persian Empire, led by Nadir Shah. After the assassination of Nadir, Durrani gave birth to the Afghan kingdom (Durani Empire) which was dominated by Pashtun tribes. Its position was geographically between the Persian Empire and the Mughal Empire (the Muslim empire that controlled parts of India). The Durrani Empire lasted until 1823, then succeeded by Dost Muhammad Khan, who emerged in Kabul in 1826. Dost was the emir (or ruler) of Afghanistan who later founded the Barakzai dynasty.

Entering the nineteenth century, Afghanistan was caught in the great game between Great Britain (East India Britain) and the Russian Empire. Fearing that Russia would use Afghanistan as a springboard to attack South Asia, the British decided to move first. The British invaded Afghanistan in 1839 and established local rulers as puppets of British rule. The British action ended badly. Historian William Dalrymple in his book “Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42” called it the “greatest disaster” of Imperial Britain

During the First World War, despite receiving envoys from Germany and Istanbul and receiving gold, the Afghanistan chose neutrality, rejecting the Ottoman Empire’s call for pan-Islamism, Islamic solidarity against Russia and Great Britain. But soon after the war was over, after assassination of his brother,  Amanullah Khan (1919-1929) then suddenly launched an attack on British troops in Afghanistan (known as the Third Anglo-Afghan War), and considerably won, then gained independence from Britain which was agreed upon via the Treaty of Rawalpindi (August 8, 1919).

Amanullah is a secular modernist who tries to represent all ethnic minorities in Afghanistan. And Amanullah was brushed off by ethnic Tajiks, led by King Habibullah Kalakani, continued to King Mohammad Nadir Shah who reappointed the Barakzai Regime, then was succeeded by his son Mohammad Zahir Shah in 1933. He was the last King of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah (1933-1973) who is still well remembered by some groups in Afghanistan for his success in bringing about the Afghan constitution in 1964, establishing a legislature and promoting freedom for women.

Zahir Shah struggled to get US support to match the Soviet Union and also struggled to get Soviet support to keep up with US. As fate would have it, and yes Afghanistan was again trapped in the great game between US and the Soviets during the cold war. At first, Afghanistan was fairly successful in playing its role in the Cold War. Afghanistan got fund from both sides. The Soviets built infrastructure projects in Afghanistan under Zahir Shah, such as the north-south Salang Tunnel and Bagram airfield. The United States also provided agricultural and other development assistance, such as a USAID-led irrigation project and a hydroelectric power plant in Helmand Province, the Kajaki Dam.

Afghanistan began to become less stable in the 1970s, during the Nixon Administration, who was strongly anti-communist and somewhat allergic to the Islamic movement. And during medical treatment to Italy in 1973, Zahir Shah was overthrown by his cousin, Mohammad Daoud. Daoud abolished Afghanistan’s monarchy and declared himself Afghanistan’s first president in a dictatorial fashion. His reign was only 5 years, Daoud was then overthrown and killed in April 1978 by military officers under the direction of two top officials of the People’s Democrat Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), Hafizullah Amin and Nur Mohammad Taraki, via Revolution Saur (in April 1978).

Taraki became president, but a year later, in September 1979, he was overthrown by his own friend, Amin. Even though both are from the same faction, the Khalq PDPA faction that was of rural Pashtun ethnicity. Amin tried to impose a radical socialist style to change the traditional system of society by redistributing land and bringing more women into government. But resistance emerged (anticommunist) which sparked an uprising from Islamic parties.

The insurgency grew more massive, jeopardizing the position of Amin’s government, compounded by Soviet suspicions that Amin had begun flirting with US after his visit to Washington, which sparked the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late December 1979. The Soviets then replaced Amin with Kamal Barbrak to run Afghan government in the Moscow (Communist) style, which led to the birth of the Mujahideen.

Furthermore, as is well known, the struggle of the Mujahideen which was backed up by funds and weapons from US and Saudi via Pakistan made the Soviets drenched in blood for 10 years in Afghanistan, by repatriating around 13,000 coffins to Moscow, which sparked an increasing antipathy of the Soviet people to the soviet communist party. The Soviets signed the Geneva agreement in 1988 to leave Afghanistan the following year, 1989. Two years later, 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed.

US and the Saudis had a big role in helping the Mujahideen, some of whose members later became the Taliban and Al Qaeda. After the Soviets left Afghanistan and Najibullah step down, an unstable Mujahideen government was formed. Five years after its birth, the Taliban, thanks to the support of Pakistani intelligence (ISI), succeeded in removing the Mujahideen government and installing Mullah Omar as leader of the Afghan emirate in 1996.

Then the events of 9/11 2001 forced US to follow in the footsteps of the Soviet Union by invading Afghanistan, removing the Taliban government for refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden. US was stuck there far longer than the Soviets, from the Bush Junior administration, Obama, Trump, and ended up in Biden’s hands. Just like the fate of the Soviet Union, US went home as  loser aka defeated. If the target is “just kill Osama bin Laden,” then indeed that target has been met.

But if the target is “nation building,” then US has failed at the time  Ashraf Ghani’s government just ran away before Kabul was taken over by the Taliban. In fact, US has never really left Afghanistan after the new government was formed in 2004, even though it has experienced “lost focus” since the US invaded Iraq in 2003 and the assassination of Osama in 2011. Until finally in 2021, Joe Biden firmly and consistently decided to completely exit Afghanistan with a “non-victor” status similar to when US left Vietnam in 1975. Joe Biden’s consistency, however, has helped cement the status of “The Graveyard of Empires” for Afghanistan.

Joe Biden might comment “not my business” over the uncertainty over the sustainability of Ghani’s government in Kabul. Or Antony Blinken may be confident in saying Kabul is not Saigon’s Moment. But the rapid occupation of Kabul and Ashraf Ghani’s flight to Tajikistan to Usbekistan to UEA, would be a direct slap in the face for US as China, Russia and Pakistan are standing behind the Taliban now. Evidence of US’s 20-year presence at a cost of more than $2 trillion in Afghanistan has turned out to be nothing more than a cowardice of President Ashraf Ghani. And the end of the retalibanization is uncertain, because the regional great game is still ongoing and there is absolutely no certainty that the Taliban will be free from Al Qaeda. In other words, the storyline of the fight in Afghanistan is still long, with the shadows of another version of 9/11 still hanging in US’s skies. And as usual in the history of Afghanistan, if the invaders have left, then they will fight with each other which will make the Taliban regime II remain an unstable regime. Yes, that’s a sign that Afghanistan survives as The Graveyard of Empires.

Ronny P. Sasmita
Ronny P. Sasmita
Political Economic Observer and Senior Fellow at Economic Action Indonesia Institution/EconAct