Flashpoint! "At the Front Line of Today's Wars". Afghanistan by Ken Guest, Part One

This article is an extract from a book Flashpoint! "At the Front Line of Today's Wars". The book has been out of print for decades and it takes effort to find it on the secondary market. Luckily, the author of the chapter on Afghanistan, Ken Guest, has agreed to publish his part of the book in this blog. It will come in several parts, not only covering the Soviet-Afghan War from the side of the Mujahideen fighters, but also showcasing rare photography made by Ken, which was not published on the web before.

One of the central pillars of Afghan society was their devout belief in Islam. A Mujahid on the plain of Khost, in Paktia, performs one of the five daily prayers demanded by the faith.

Geography, Poverty, and a History of Invasion

Afghanistan is one of the least accessible and poorest countries on earth. It is roughly the size of Texas, and the harsh landscape is riven by great mountain ranges and perilous deserts. The scarcity of good, arable ground has fostered warlike habits among the Afghan tribes: for centuries they swept down from their barren hills, to carry out cross-border raids on the fertile Indian subcontinent. It is difficult to see why anyone should wish to invade such a place. Yet the Russians are only the latest in a long line of protagonists to enter the Afghan arena. The history of Afghanistan is a brutal litany of incursion by greater regional powers - Greeks heading north, Mongols heading south, Persians heading east and Indians heading west. Afghanistan itself has not been the prize, but the highway to conquest.

Alexander the Great and the Arrival of Islam

Alexander the Great, who campaigned in the region between 329 and 327 BC, was one of the first invaders to appreciate the Afghans' robust devotion to their rugged land. He is reputed to have observed that Afghanistan could be occupied, but not vanquished. History was to prove him right. In the eighth century a new kind of conqueror arrived - Islam.' The Islamic reformation ignited Central Asia and changed the nature of Afghan society for ever. Henceforth Afghan resistance against the pagan invaders would be a matter of Jihad (Holy War). In the centuries that followed, many great armies passed through Afghanistan's unforgiving mountains to subdue the fierce tribes, but few remained for long to hold the tiger by the tail.

Mongol Invasions and Enduring Legends

The Golden Horde of Ghengis Khan laid waste to the land in the thirteenth century. They were followed, in 1398, by Tamerlane's Mongol horsemen, who galloped in from the Steppes to destroy anything missed by the earlier invasion. People living in central Afghanistan today, who retain a Mongol appearance, maintain that they are the direct descendants of Tamerlane's men. The Mongol forces operated in units each comprising a thousand horsemen and known as a Hazara. According to local belief, some of them were trapped when the main force withdrew. The Afghans attribute the regional name of Hazara Jut (Land of the Thousand) to that event. Similarly, Afghans from the remote mountains of Nuristan (Kingdom of Light) believe themselves to be descendants from the earlier invasion of Alexander the Great. In the sixteenth century another Mongol king, Babur the Tiger, set off from the Afghan capital, Kabul, to found the great Mohgul dynasty in India.

The invading Mongols left a permanent reminder of their invasion in the form of Buzkashi, the national sport of Alghanistan. Two teams, mounted on fast horses, compete to score by placing the dead carcase of a goat in the scoring circle of the opposing team. It is said that, when the sport was first introduced, prisoners were used instead of goats! When teams of up to 100 horsemen gather for a really big game, it looks for all the world as though the invading Mongols are back. It is not so much a sport as all-out medieval warfare

Afghan Resistance to the Mohguls

However, when the Mohguls returned later to conduct war against the Afghans, they suffered accordingly. The Yusufzai tribe of eastern Afghanistan destroyed 8,000 Mohgul soldiers in 1587; the Afridis killed 10,000 more in 1672 and decimated an entire army in 1673.

Identity, Faith, and the Afghan Worldview

The Afghan nation which evolved from the comings and goings of these passing conquerors was one divided by ethnic origin, language, social mores and political persuasion. Among all of this wide diversity there were only three things that the Afghans agreed upon. The first, and most deeply rooted, was that the land, bleak as it was, belonged to them and no others. The second and third were the cornerstones of their Islamic belief - that there was but one God (Allah), and that Mohammed was his prophet. Any attempt either to wrest their land from them or to interfere with their religion would be fiercely resisted. The mountains of Afghanistan are littered with the bones of foreign invaders who have failed to appreciate this.

A Buzkashi player in the Panjshir valley

The Founding of Afghanistan Under Ahmad Shah Abdali

In 1747 a Pathan, Ahmad Shah Abdali, rose from the ashes of another collapsing dynasty and forged a new nation, known for the first time as Afghanistan. As the king of this new nation, Ahmad Shah Abdali became better known as Durran Durrani (Pearl of Pearls). His southern Pathan tribe adopted the Durrani name and have been major players in Afghan power struggles ever since.

British Intervention and the First Anglo-Afghan War

By the nineteenth century, Afghanistan was coming under increasing pressure from the 'gunboat diplomacy' of her new colonial neighbours. In 1839, Britain dispatched an army into Afghanistan, sparking off the first Anglo-Afghan War. Initial British successes, including the occupation of Kabul, were outweighed by later humiliating defeats. Looming large among these was the near-total destruction of the British force compelled to evacuate Kabul in January 1842. The shipwrecked honour of the British Army was rescued by a brief reoccupation of the capital before withdrawal from the country in December of the same year.

The Second Anglo-Afghan War and Maiwand

In 1878 the touchpaper was lit again when a Russian mission arrived in Kabul. This struck a raw nerve among Russophobic officers in the British Indian Army, who feared it was a prelude to Russian armies marching down the Khyber Pass towards India. They demanded that the Afghans expel the delegation. The Afghans refused, and in the eyes of the British there was thus only one solution - invasion. Events in this second Anglo- Afghan War bore an unhealthy similarity to the first. Initial successes (including the obligatory occupation of Kabul) were soon followed by costly defeats. During the Battle of Maiwand in 1880 over a thousand British troops were killed. Once again, suitable face-saving revenge was exacted before the British finally left.

Additional merit is earned if prayers are performed communally. These Mujahideen in Nangraha in 1981 are being led in prayer by their commander, Doctor Hamid. The title of Doctor, like that of Engineer, is often applied in Afghanistan as an honorific, and does not necessarily mean that the man is qualified in these fields. Doctor Hamid had been a first year medical student before he abandoned his studies to join the Mujahideen

The Third Anglo-Afghan War and Aerial Bombing

The roles were reversed in 1919, when a small Afghan invasion force occupied the Indian border village of Bagh. This sparked off the Third Anglo- Afghan War. Lasting only a month, it was most notable for a new feature of such conflicts - aerial bombing. On 24 May 1919, a British Handley Page biplane bomber flew 140 miles to reach Kabul and released twenty bombs. Of these, four hit the Palace, one hit the tomb of Amir Abdur Rahman and a third destroyed Kabul's only ammunition factory. Honour satisfied, peace followed soon afterwards.

The Fall of the Monarchy and Political Upheaval

Afghanistan's last king, Zahir Shah, was ousted from power in a bloodless coup on 17 July 1973 while he was away on a diplomatic mission to Italy. The perpetrator was his cousin, Mohammed Daoud, who immediately declared Afghanistan a republic. Five years later, in 1978, President Daoud was in turn deposed and killed in what became known as the Saur (April) Revolution. The new President was Mohammed Taraki, who strengthened links with communist Russia by signing a Soviet-Afghan Friendship Treaty in December 1978. Less than a year later he was killed in yet another coup. This time the victor was former Prime Minister Haffizullah Amin, but, like his predecessors, Amin was destined not to wear the mantle of the Presidency for long.

Soviet Invasion and Guerrilla War

When Britain had ruled India many of her officers had been firmly convinced that one day the Russians would come. Thirty-two years after the last British sentry guarding the Khyber Pass had packed up his kit bag and gone home, they were finally proved correct: on 24 December 1979 President Amin was assassinated by Soviet Special Forces spearheading the Russian invasion. The Russians hastily recalled the exiled Afghan communist Barbrak Karmal to step into Amin's still warm shoes as the next President, and Afghanistan slid into all-out guerrilla warfare against the Russian presence.

A Pathan Mujahid from Paktia in 1981, regionally identifiable by the way he wears his patkhy (turban)

Cold War Fears and Historical Debate

In 1979 the Cold War was still a reality. The consensus of Western opinion in the wake of the Christmas Eve invasion was that Kabul was not the ultimate objective: observers feared that it was but a stepping stone in the old Russian dream of warm-water ports on the Indian Ocean. In 1919 Leon Trotsky had told the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, The road to Paris and London lies through the towns of Afghanistan, the Punjab and Bengal.' However, Trotsky was long dead and the world had changed beyond all recognition. Whether the ultimate Soviet goal was Kabul or further afield must be left for the historians to debate.

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