Afghanistan – The Graveyard Of Empires
It is said that Afghanistan is the “Graveyard of Empires”. You might not believe it because it makes no sense that how the country which has no Institutions, no regular Army, no Economy has defeated the largest Empires of their times. The common man in Afghanistan is living a life of Stone Age in 21st century. They used to move from one place to the other according to the different seasons. So it doesn’t make any logic that how this happened.
If we want to know the reason behind it, we need to take some help from the history because history always speaks with some logic. So if we see in the historic prospective we will start from the incursion of the Great Britain in Sub-Continent. When British Army fully occupied the region from Delhi to Lahore, they planned to move further in Afghanistan. Finally they launch the assault against Afghanistan in1838 including 20,000 troops. After difficult travel through the mountain passes, the British reached Kabul in April 1839. They marched unopposed into the Afghan capital city.
It is also in the psyche of the afghan people that they always welcome the foreign invader and when once they are settled, then they start resistance. Dost Mohammed was toppled as the Afghan leader, and the British installed Shah Shuja, just like the American installed Karzai in present. The afghan population starts showing resistance and the tension slowly escalated and finally in November 1841 insurrection broke out in Kabul.
On January 6, 1842, the British began their withdrawal from Kabul. The retreat in the brutally cold weather cost the many lives of British troops. And when the remaining British troops reached the mountain pass at Khurd Kabul they came under attack from the Afghan people and this retreat became a massacre.
Now if we talk about the invasion of Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1979. Soviet Union was the most powerful empire at that time. The reason for landing on the soil of Afghanistan was not because of its barren lands but to take over the control of our Gwadar region, which is the only deep hot water port in this region. In Russia all the sea ports were dead frozen in winter season and became non-operational for half the year and this thing didn’t suit the economy of the super power.
By putting this matter on table the Pakistan’s Military top Officials decided to take some action against this development with the help of US. So Pakistan called out for Jehad in Afghanistan and then thousands of young Mujahideens from all over the world came to Afghanistan to fight Soviets. Pakistan provided them base and training facility to fight Gorilla war. On the other hand the US launched the Operation Cyclone which was the code name for the CIA program to arm the Afghan Mujahideens during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Operation Cyclone was one of the longest and most expensive covert CIA operations ever undertaken; funding began with $20–30 million per year in 1980 and rose to $630 million per year in 1987.
US senator Charlie Wilson was very pro-active in those days and he was the one who persuaded the congress to release the fund for Mujahideens and armed them with FIM-92 Stinger missile launchers, which turned the Soviet occupation into a deadly expedition causing the devastation of their heavy fighting vehicle at a crippling rate. The soviets finally started withdrawal from the Afghanistan and on Feb 15, 1989, the last Soviet troop departed on schedule from Afghanistan.
Now, with the start of the new millennium another super power with the dream of capturing Afghanistan invaded it. After the 9/11 US launched the military expedition in Afghanistan in the name of “War on Terror.” As I said that afghanis always welcome the foreign invader and once they are settled then they start their resistance.
After the launching of Operation Enduring Freedom on 7 Oct, 2001, US military started moving forward in Afghanistan and withiin the time of only a month they reached Kabul the centre of Taliban. US Military and Northern Allies reached Kabul on 13 Nov, 2001 and they found no confrontation there, only a group of 20 Talibans was there to resist them and they got killed in just 15min gun battle.
In September 2002 the Talibans started re-uniting themselves under the command of Mullah Omar. Talibans began a recruitment drive in Pashtun areas in both Afghanistan and Pakistan to launch a renewed “jihad” against the Afghan government and the U.S-led coalition. They made their new Army of young Mujahideens . The Talibans started recapturing their lost lands again and now in 2010, Taliban control 33 out of 34 provinces of Afghanistan and are under no pressure to negotiate with the ‘Governor of Kabul’ as he’s mockingly called in Afghanistan due to his rule being limited to parts of the Afghan capital.
Daily US soldiers are dying in Afghanistan and they are becoming mentally incapable of fighting against Taliban. The suicide rate of US soldiers in Afghanistan is increasing day by day. The families of US soldiers are demanding the termination of war and their protest is increasing gradually. And back in US their economy is destroying. This war on terror is becoming so expensive that they cannot afford this and as a result, US economy is declining, and the remaining part is played by the recession of 2007-2010. This financial crisis is considered to be bigger than the Great Depression of 1930s. The unemployment rate in US has broken its records, nearly 20, 00,000 are out of job so far.
Now US is also talking about its withdrawal from Afghanistan and Obama has also given the July 2011 as the date for the start of US withdrawal, though with no end date fixed. It’s like that another super power is going to dump in the mountains of Afghanistan because it is said that “there are a hundred ways to enter Afghanistan, but for an exit, there is No Way Out.”
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