Afghanistan: The Legacy of the British Empire. A Brief History
By <
http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/dana-visalli> Dana Visalli
Global Research, March 22, 2013
A brief review of the recent history of Afghanistan explains some of the
background pertaining to today's crisis in the country.
To begin with, Afghanistan is a complex place; there are 20 major ethnic
groups and more than 50 total, with over 30 languages spoken, although most
also speak either Pashtun and/or Dari.
This reflects its geographical position at a cultural crossroads, as well as
its mountainous topography, which isolates different ethnic groups from one
another. In the 1700s, when Afghanistan was just forming as a nation, two of
the world's major powers of the time were advancing towards it from opposite
directions. England was busy conquering India between 1757 and 1857, and
Russia was spreading its control east and was on Afghanistan's border by
1828. This overview will focus on first England's and then America's part in
shaping modern Afghanistan.
One of the most lucrative products that England exported from its new colony
India was opium.1
By 1770 Britain had a monopoly on opium production in India and saw to it
that cultivation spread into Afghanistan as well (the boundary between the
two was ill-defined until 1893). Anxious to protect their drug trade and
concerned the Afghan king Dost Mohammad was too friendly with the Russians,
the British sent an expeditionary force of 12,000 soldiers into Afghanistan
in 1839 to dethrone him and set up their own hand-picked king, Shah Shoja.
They built a garrison in Kabul to help prop him up. However the Afghan
populace resisted this occupation, and in the winter of 1842 the British
were forced into an attempted retreat back to the east. Within days of
leaving Kabul 17,000 British soldiers and support staff lay slaughtered in
the snow between Kabul and Jalalabad after a battle with Afghan forces.2
Dost Mohammad returned to power, but the Afghan government did not have the
resources to protect its borders, and England soon took control of all
Afghan territory between the Indus River and the Hindu Kush, including
Baluchistan in 1859, denying Afghanistan access to the sea.3 Still worried
about the Russians, England invaded Afghanistan again in 1878; overthrew the
standing king and forced the new government to become a British
protectorate. England considered slicing up Afghanistan according to what
London had determined was the "scientific frontier" of its Indian empire,
but settled for an Afghan government over which it retained control of the
economy and all foreign policy.4
The British invasions embittered the Afghan people, creating a sense of
xenophobia that created powerful resistance to Western-style reforms put
forward by Afghan leaders in years to come.
In order to consolidate its gains, England created the Durand Line in 1893,
an arbitrary 1500-mile border between "British" India and Afghanistan that
made permanent its previous territorial gains and laid claim to the
Northwest Frontier Provinces, long considered part of Afghanistan. This
boundary was made "permanent" in a 1907 Anglo-Russian convention, without
consulting the Afghan government.5
Taking these provinces divided the Pashtun people, who since time immemorial
had been considered part of the Afghan homeland, between two separate
nations, Afghanistan and India. This created a deep animosity among the
Pashtuns that survives in full force today, 120 years later. In fact all
Taliban are Pashtuns.
Neither Britain nor Pakistan afterward ever gained full control of the
Northwest Provinces, and they later became the source of the Islamic
radicalism that spawned both Al Qaeda and the Taliban. It is into the
Northwest Provinces that majority of the American drone missiles are fired
today. This antipathy has its genesis in the drawing of the Durand Line.
A strongly anti-colonial young King Amanullah ascended to the Afghan throne
in 1919, and declared Afghanistan's independence from Britain's
"protectorate" status in his inaugural speech. He attempted to regain the
Pashtun lands east of the hated Durand line by organizing uprisings in the
Northwest Provinces and supporting them with Afghan troops. Reacting to this
provocation, the British attacked once again, embarking on the third
Anglo-Afghan war in eighty years in June 1919. The British suffered early
setbacks and responded by bombing Kabul and Jalalabad by air. Neither side
had the stomach for a long war, and in August of 1919 a peace treaty was
signed which granted Afghanistan full independence, but maintained the
status quo of the Durand Line.
Meanwhile Britain's control over the Pashtun tribal areas remained more of a
wish than a reality. Between 1849 an 1900 no less than 42 military
operations were conducted that did little more than reconfirm the stubborn
independence of the mountain tribes. When Amanullah continued to push for
reunification after the 1919 war, Britain responded with a ruthless and
bloody effort to pacify the Northwest Territories. In 1920 a five-day battle
took place in which two thousand British and Indian troops and four thousand
Afghan tribesmen were killed.6
Amanullah himself became a beacon of liberalization in Afghanistan. He
attempted drastic changes in the country by reforming the army, abolishing
slavery and forced labor, and encouraging the liberation of women. He
discouraged the use of the veil and the oppression of women, introduced
educational opportunities for females. Britain resented Amanullah, fearing
that the liberalization of Afghan society would spread to India and become a
threat to British rule there.7 Britain therefore initiated support for
conservative and reactionary Islamists in the country to undermine
Amanullah's rule.
In 1924 there was a violent rebellion by conservative Islamists in the
border town of Khost which was quelled by the Afghan army. The rebellion was
a reaction to Amanullah's social reforms, particularly public education for
girls and greater freedom for women. The Afghan historian Abdul Samad Ghaus
wrote in 1988, "Britain was seen as the culprit in the affair, manipulating
the tribes against Amanullah in an attempt to bring about his downfall."8
In 1929 there was a larger rebellion of conservative tribes people, and
Amanullah was forced to flee the country. Many historians suspect Britain
was behind this uprising as well. In Abdul Ghaus's view, "Afghans in general
remain convinced that the elimination of Amanullah was engineered by the
British because he had become..an obstacle to the furtherance of Britain's
interests."9
The new King , Nadir Shah submitted to Britain's dictates, including
acceptance the Durand Line. Britain launched a ferocious new military
campaign in 1930 in another bid to gain control of the Northwest
Territories. The offensive went poorly, and Britain was about to lose
control of Peshawar to the tribal warriors when it initiated a massive
aerial bombardment of civilian Afghans to prevent defeat. MIT professor Noam
Chomsky later pointed out that, "Winston Churchill felt that poison gas was
jut right for use against 'uncivilized tribes' (Kurds and Afghans,
particularly)," while the respected British statesman Lloyd George observed
that "We insist on reserving the right to bomb niggers."10
One of the root causes of the enduring animosity between Afghanistan and
Pakistan was the seemingly permanent loss of Afghan lands taken by the
British, including Baluchistan (with its access to the sea), and the
Northwest Territories to Pakistan when that country was created by Britain
in 1947. The British excluded the Afghans from the partition negotiations
and the partition agreement, which finalized Pakistan's boundaries-on the
Durand Line. In addition to institutionalizing the artificial boundary
created in 1893, Britain's parting act hobbled the Afghan economy,
permanently denying Afghanistan its former territory over the Hindu Kush
with access to the sea.
In response to the partition agreement, the government of Afghanistan
created an independent Pashtunistan movement that called for independence in
the Northwest Territories. In reply, Pakistan hardened its position
regarding the territories. In 1948 Pakistan greatly increased its military
presence there. The action provoked the Afghan King Zahir Shah to renounce
the Durand Line and demand the return of its territory. Kabul convened an
Afghan tribal assembly (a Loya Jirga) which voted its full support for a
separate independence for the tribal areas from Pakistan.
The assembly also authorized the Afghan government to abrogate all of
Afghanistan's treaties with Great Britain regarding the trans-Durand
Pashtuns. American involved in Afghanistan began in earnest soon after the
end of World War II. In 1950 the top-secret U.S. policy document National
Security Directive 68 warned of the Soviet Union's alleged "design for world
domination."
The U.S. initiated aid projects in Afghanistan starting in 1945. Soviet
President Nikita Khrushchev wrote in his memoirs, "It was clear to us that
the Americans were penetrating Afghanistan with the obvious purpose of
setting up a military base."11 In fact in 1956 the U.S. built a fairly
useless International Airport in Kandahar that was widely seen as a
refueling base for U.S. bombers. Wikipedia notes that, "Since the airport
was designed as a military base, it is more likely that the United States
intended to use it as such in case there was a show-down of war between the
United States and former USSR."12
By the early 1970s the U.S. had decided that the best way counter the
Soviet's "design for world domination" was to support the strict Islamists
in Afghanistan, who were opposed to the progressive reforms of the Afghan
government. According to Roger Morris, National Security Council staff
member, the CIA started to offer covert backing to Islamic radicals as early
as 1973.13 In August 1979 a classified State Department Report stated: "the
United States larger interests .would be served by the demise of the current
Afghan regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social
and economic reforms in Afghanistan." Fundamentalist Islamists opposed to
the Afghan government and supported by the U.S. became known as Mujahideen,
or 'fighters for Islam.'
<
http://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/zbig.jpeg>
Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Carter, admitted
after the Soviet-Afghan war that the CIA was providing covert aid to Afghan
Mujahideen fully six months before the Soviet invasion.14 He pointed out
that the U.S. intention in providing this aid was to "draw the Russians into
the Afghan trap..the day the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote
to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its
Vietnam War." The Soviet's invasion of Afghanistan in December of 1979 was
in their minds based largely on the knowledge that the U.S. was purposely
destabilizing the Afghan government for its own purposes.
When the Soviets did invade, the U.S. was quick to provide weapons to the
Mujahideen. By February 1980, the Washington Post reported that they were
receiving arms coming from the U.S. government. The amounts were
significant: 10,000 tons of arms and ammunition in 1983 which rose to 65,000
tons annually by 1987, according to Mohammad Yousaf, the Pakistani general
who supervised the covert war from 1983-87. Milton Bearden, CIA station
chief in Pakistan from 1986-1989 who was responsible for arming the
Mujahideen, commented, "The U.S. was fighting the Soviets to the last
Afghan."15
It is estimated that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia gave $40 billion worth of
weapons and money to the fundamentalist Mujahideen over the course of the
war.16 The money was funneled through the Pakistan government, which used
some of it to set up thousands of fundamentalist Islamic religious schools
(madrassas) for the Afghan refugee children flooding into the country; these
became the formative institutions for the Taliban.17
Many of the madrassa students and Taliban-to-be were traumatized Afghan war
orphans, who were then raised in these all-male schools where they learned a
literal interpretation of Islam and the art of war, and not much else.
Fifteen years later the U.S. was at war with these same fighters, which it
had itself created through its funding of the madrassas and the
fundamentalists. The 9/11 attacks on the United States were carried out by
the same radical Islamists that the U.S. had nurtured and supported during
the Soviet war years.
In 2001, three weeks after the 9/11 attacks, the then prime minister Tony
Blair sold the case for war in Afghanistan by insisting that the invasion
would destroy the country's illicit drug trade. In an impassioned speech to
the Labor Party, he told his supporters, "The arms the Taliban are buying
today are paid for by the lives of young British people buying their drugs
on British streets."
But in fact the Taliban had outlawed the cultivation of poppies in May of
2000, and by the time of the U.S./NATO attack and invasion of Afghanistan
the drug trade in Afghanistan had almost completely disappeared.18
As soon as the Taliban were overthrown the growing of poppies and production
of heroin and opium surged, such that record amounts are produced almost
every year, and Afghanistan has become the world's primary supplier of these
drugs. Production of heroin by Afghan farmers rose between 2001 and 2012
from just 185 tons to a staggering 5,800 tons. Ninety per cent of the heroin
sold on Britain's streets today is made using opium from Afghanistan, and
after twelve years of U.S. occupation, heroin and opium now account for
about half of Afghanistan's GDP.19
Well over one million Afghans were killed in the Soviet-Afghan war, along
with over four million injured. More than five million refugees fled the
country during that war, and two million were internally displaced. 20
400,000 more died in the civil war, and 40,000 have died during the U.S.
occupation.21 30 years of war combined with 250 years of manipulation by
foreign powers have left Afghanistan one of the poorest and most
ecologically damaged countries in the world.22
Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our
problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the
leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been
killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people are obedient
all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and
war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails
are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running
and robbing the country. That's our problem. Historian Howard Zinn
Dana Visalli is an ecologist and organic farmer living in Twisp, Washington.
Contact him at dana_at_methownet.com See also Afghanistan, Ecology and the End
of War
http://www.globalresearch.ca/afghanistan-ecology-and-the-end-of-war/5326749
and US Occupation Forces in Afghanistan: Incompetent, Irreverent, and
Irrelevant
http://www.globalresearch.ca/american-military-field-operations-us-occupatio
n-forces-in-afghanistan/5327210
Notes
1. <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
2. Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story, Paul Fitzgerald &
Elizabeth Gould, 2009, pg 34
3. Ibid, pg 38
4. Ibid, pg 45
5. Ibid, pg 54
6. Ibid, pg 60
7. Ibid, pg 63
8. Ibid, pg 62
9. Ibid, pg 63
10. Ibid, pg 65 11. Ibid, pg 94
12. <
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandahar_International_Airport>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kandahar_International_Airport
13.
<
http://original.antiwar.com/james-lucas/2010/03/05/americas-nation-destroyi
ng-mission-in-afghanistan/>
http://original.antiwar.com/james-lucas/2010/03/05/americas-nation-destroyin
g-mission-in-afghanistan/
14. Interview with Zbigniew Brezinski". Le Nouvel Observateur. Jan. 15, 1998
15. Milton Bearden, " Afghanistan Graveyard of Empires." Foreign Affairs,
November/December 2001.
16.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Afghanistan
17.
http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/afghanistan-history-pr.cfm "Lessons from
History: U.S. Policy Towards Afghanistan, 1978-2001." 5 October 2001
18.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2102158/Heroin-production-Afghanista
n-RISEN-61.html
19.
http://www.unodc.org/pdf/publications/afg_opium_economy_www.pdf
20.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_in_Afghanistan#Destruction_in_Afghan
istan 21.
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/massacre.html 22.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/afghanistan-ecology-and-the-end-of-war/5326749
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Received on Fri Mar 22 2013 - 16:30:20 EDT
