In Afghanistan

In Afghanistan

Review by John S. Major

Afghanistan, the "Graveyard of Empires," has frustrated would-be conquerors and occupiers from Alexander the Great to the British Raj to the Soviet Union. Can today's American-led NATO effort to defeat the Taliban and restore some measure of stability to the war-torn country succeed? BBC correspondent David Loyn concludes that, despite long odds, some measure of success is not out of reach—provided we understand what our goals should be, and pursue them steadfastly and realistically.

Loyn himself is a rarity—a genuine Western expert on Afghanistan. Assigned to cover South Asia for the BBC in the 1990s, he took a special interest in Afghanistan and began immersing himself in its languages, cultures and tangled past, asking himself why none of the country's would-be conquerors over the course of the past two centuries ever seemed to learn any lessons from history. In this compelling and insightful book, Loyn lays out some of those lessons for anyone willing to listen.

Loyn begins his story with Mountstuart Elphinstone, whose 1809 diplomatic mission to the Afghan frontier was one of the opening moves in the “Great Game” of imperial competition in Central Asia. Elphinstone returned to Delhi doubting that the "wild and strange" people of Afghanistan could ever be controlled. His misgivings were well founded; in three Afghan Wars (1838-42, 1878-79 and 1919) Great Britain failed almost completely in its aim of establishing stability on the northwestern frontier of the Raj. The Soviet Union had no better luck in 1978-92 in maintaining a friendly communist regime in power. Time and again, intervention in Afghanistan led only to ignominious retreat.

As Loyn points out, the problem of pacifying Afghanistan goes beyond difficult terrain, tenuous supply lines and a warrior ethic that makes any adult male a potential partisan. More fundamental has been the error of thinking of Afghanistan as a conventional, centrally governed nation-state competent to extend its policies nationally. The complex reality is that Afghanistan was and remains a mosaic of ethnic groups and tribes and fragmented loyalties; no government in Kabul, whether a monarchy, a republic or a Soviet dictatorship, can govern except through a web of tribal alliances. Add to the mix resentment of perceived foreign arrogance, a heavily-armed Islamist insurgency (originally encouraged by the United States to resist the Soviet occupation, but now turned against ourselves), blatant corruption, a thriving opium trade and deteriorating conditions on the Afghan-Pakistan frontier, and today's situation looks almost impossibly difficult. Even the minimal goal of a stable Afghanistan that is not inimical to Western interests will be difficult to achieve.

David Loyn offers no easy answers, but this powerful book at least helps to define the problem—and that is the first step in trying to get things right. This is an essential book not only for American and NATO policy-makers but for all concerned citizens who realize that history matters.

Hardcover: 288 pages

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. ( July 01, 2009 )

Item #: 02-8824

ISBN: 9780230614031

Product Dimensions: 6.125 x 9.25 x 0.72 inches

Product Weight: 17.0 ounces