Afghanistan as crossroads of empires

Stephen Tanner writing in his Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the War against the Taliban:

When American B-52s went into action on either side of the Hindu Kush in the fall of 2001, the military history of Afghanistan came full-circle. The country that for centuries had stood at the crossroads of the great civilizations of the Old World was suddenly assailed by the young superpower of the New. This time it was not the centrality of Afghanistan but its very isolation from the rest of the globe that incurred the wrath of foreign arms. Once a coveted prize of empires and a source of indigenous warrior kingdoms, the southern Asian country had devolved through the modern era to the status of a buffer state, then a Cold War battlefield, and finally to a mere hideout — con­veniently pocked with caves offering refuge to international terrorists. Yet in the 21st century A.D., no less than in the 5th century B.C., Afghanistan found itself once again enmeshed in combat with the world’s strongest military power. Given Afghanistan’s long, varied his­tory of conflict, this latest development has not been a surprise.

Unlike some mountainous lands, such as Peru, Nepal, and Norway — even at times Switzerland, its closest European counter­part — it has never been Afghanistan’s lot to exist benignly apart from the rest of the world. It has instead found itself at the hinge of impe­rial ambitions since the beginning of recorded history, from the world’s first transcontinental superpower, the Persian Empire, to its latest, the United States. In between enduring or resisting invasions from every point of the compass (and most recently from the air), the Afghans have honed their martial skills by fighting among themselves, in terrain that facilitates divisions of power and resists the concept of centralized control. The wonder is that the Afghan people, who at this writing have experienced non-stop warfare for a quarter of a century, present the same problems to foreign antagonists today as they did 2,500 years ago. And battles between disparate cultures or religions continue to underlie the din of arms. Afghanistan, as ever, remains the stage for not just clashes of armies but of civilizations.

A geographical map, more than a political one, best explains Afghanistan’s importance over the centuries. It is the easternmost part of the great Iranian plateau, and given the nearby impenetrable arc of the Himalayas, it is the primary land conduit connecting the great empires of Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent. But conduit is perhaps too soft a term: invasion route would be more accurate. Afghanistan’s claustrophobic passes have borne mute wit­ness to armies of Persians, Greeks, Mauryans, Huns, Mongols, Moghuls, British, Soviets, and Americans — among others — including many of the most famous captains in history. As a strategically vital piece of real estate, Afghanistan has also given birth to empires of its own such as the Ghaznavids, Ghorids, and Durranis, who spread fear of Afghan fighting prowess from Delhi to the Caspian Sea.

...

... Historian Rhea Talley Stewart has stated that two men did irreparable damage to Afghanistan. The first was the conquering Genghis Khan; the second was Christopher Columbus, who sailed past the presumed ends of the earth, establishing tremendous avenues for commerce and conquest that did not depend on the land. “Afghanistan is far less important to a round world,” Stewart wrote, “than it was to a flat one.” Once global seapower emerged as an equivalent to land power (airpower was not yet on the drawing board), the defini­tion of Afghanistan changed from an essential passageway between civilizations to a place more desirable as a no-man’s-land....

...

The excerpt is in NRO. I find the Columbus bit fascinating and true. Genghis Khan was the last great captain to conquer Afghanistan, but it stayed in the Mongol empire for centuries as part of the trade routes between China and Europe. The bubonic plaque destroyed that empire, not another conqueror. One of the reasons his conquest did not stretch into India was that the heat caused the bows used by his warriors to delaminate. This pushed his conquest further west through the Middle East and Russia.

But Columbus's discovery also made the Middle East less important as a trade route which was convenient for the Europeans and bad news for the Islamic world that had been at war woth the Christian West for centuries. The Mongols had been able to tame the Islamic world and use it in its trade with the Christian West. When their empire failed and Europe banned trade with the East because of the plague the world slumped into a deep depression and Afghanistan never really recovered.

I am not sure the Obama administration has the patients to try to pull them out.