In October 1838, the British Governor General of India, Lord Auckland from his summer retreat in Simla ordered British Indian troops to march into Afghanistan in order to secure the Afghan throne for the ‘legitimate ruler’ Shah Shuja. On April 25, 1839 British Indian troops occupied Kandahar and thus began a century long Western military engagement with Afghanistan. The ground for this war had little to do with Afghanistan itself. The British fear of Czarist Russia’s aggressive designs on their possessions in South Asia prompted them to impose a pro-British monarch on Afghanistan. This obviously did not stabilize Afghanistan and prompted a long drawn war between Afghans and the British Indian troops that continued till 1842. Afghanistan continued to pose threat to the British imagination. In 1878 soon after the Congress of Berlin in Europe, Russianssent a ‘goodwill mission’ in Afghanistan. The British forcefully reciprocated the gesture against the wishes of Afghan ruler which led to the Second Afghan War. Through the treaty of Treaty of Gandamak signed in May 1879 the British acquired present day Quetta in Baluchistan, and the present Pakhtun Kawa and Khyber Pass in Pakistan. In return for subsidy the new Afghan ruler surrendered control over foreign policy to the British. In 1879 the British installed Abdur Rahman Khan as the Emir of Afghanistan. The British controlled Afghanistan through complex arrangements with local warlords and ‘tribal chieftains’. This phase in Afghan history ended with the Third Afghan War that had begun on May 13, 1919 when Afghan king Amanullah Khan attacked British Indian frontier. The stalemate in the war due to the British involvement in the First World War led to the independence of Afghanistan. From 1930 onwards tile the late 1970s Afghanistan witnessed peace and a slow process of development. But the great game over Afghanistan, however, never ended.
Long after the British Empire collapsed in South Asia, Russia finally entered Afghanistan in 1979 in order to assist the then ruling Marxist PDPA government in Kabul. This led to civil war within Afghanistan. The Carter administration began a covert low intensity conflict in Afghanistan to dislodge Soviet backed regime from power in the country. The ensuing civil war did not end with the Soviet retreat and subsequent collapse of PDPA regime which fell from power not because of military success of the rebels but because of the reluctance of new Russian regime to supply Marxist PDPA with energy resources necessary to conduct the War. With the collapse of PDPA came the era of Afghan war-lords who happily quarreled among themselves till Pakistan sponsored Talban captured political power. As Taliban controlled Afghanistan became safe haven for Islamist revolutionaries who attacked mainland US on 9/11/2001. Angry super power dismantled the terror machine of Taliban and installed Karzai regime to power.
Today, however, US faces far more complicated tasks in stabilizing Afghanistan. Pakistan is no longer a reliable ally and internal resistance to US sponsored Pakistan’s army’s war in Pakhtun Kawa proved to be unpopular and brought the current quasi-civilian regime close to the brink of collapse. India is interested in Afghanistan in order to secure leverage over Pakistan as well as to conduct trade with post- Soviet Central Asia. China, a resurgent power, is interested in the region because of shared border and mineral resources. So is true about Iran, a regime already engaged in low intensity conflicts with US. Karzai regime is unpopular and corrupt. He is governing Afghanistan through loyal war lords and ethnic leadership in a manner not very differently from the British imperial government a century ago. The Great Game continues but in a far more complicated manner.
President Obama’s ‘war of necessity’ is thus a far more difficult war than US intervention in Iraq. Obama administration needs to define its goal in the region. If it engages in nation building project, it has to legitimize its presence through United Nations. But that would intensify resistance and would imply a costly war both in terms of human resources and materials which American public may not have the appetite to engage in. A retreat would renew a far more complicated civil war and US would lose all political credibility in the region. Intense ethnic strife would make it difficult for any regime to consolidate its position in Kabul. However, if US could negotiate a power sharing arrangement between Pakhtun dominated Southern Afghanistan and leaders representing the ethnic mosaic of central and north Afghanistan. This de facto partition can lead towards two governments one based in Kandahar and the other based in Kabul. The Kandahar regime may in all possibility be a Pakistan sponsored regime but it has the possibility of excluding Al-Qaida and the other extremist criminals. The north and central Afghanistan should be under a democratically elected government which would have the protection of US through a permanent military base. Only this arrangement can enable Obama administration to exert control over Afghanistan and secure US military and commercial interests in the region. But such a strategy requires multilateral diplomatic negotiations between Pakistan, Afghan leaders and NATO allies. India, China and Russia should be taken into confidence through backdoor diplomacy. This is the only way to end the great game that began in an era of imperial domination but continued in the post-colonial era of emerging nation states. Afghanistan was better governed when it was a quasi sovereign state rather than and imperial protectorate.
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