Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam
171. Afghanistan, Land of Valor, Land of Sorrow - 2
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA
The Ghaznavid Empire weakened after the death of Mahmud and was overrun by nomadic Turks from beyond the Amu Darya. One of these tribes, the Ghorids captured Ghazna and went on to conquer northern India (1192 CE) and paved the way for successive Muslim dynasties who ruled for more than five hundred years.
In 1219, Genghis Khan descended upon Central Asia and ravaged Khorasan, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. Great cities were razed, libraries burned, scholars impaled and dams were destroyed turning fertile valleys into deserts. The destruction was so complete that many of the ravaged lands never recovered from the destruction.
The Afghans resisted the Mongols and paid a heavy price for it. In one of the battles near Bamyan, the Mongols suffered a reversal and a grandson of Genghis Khan was killed. In retribution, Genghis razed Bamyan and the surrounding areas to the ground, killed the men and enslaved the women and children. Even the Mongol historians referred to Bamyan as the city of sorrow. Genghis advanced up to the Indus River, and then turned around in 1223 CE leaving behind a trail of death and destruction in vast swaths of Central Asia.
The Ghorids briefly reclaimed Afghanistan in the following century but the country was almost continuously fought over by the Uzbeks, Turkomans, Persians and the Afghans. Timurlane advanced through Kabul (1397 CE) on his way to Delhi destroying it once again. In the year 1509 CE, Babur, an Uzbek prince and a great grandson of Timur, captured Kabul and briefly made it his capital (1509-1526). In 1526, he defeated the Lodhis of Delhi and founded the Mogul dynasty of India. For the next two hundred years, Kabul and the Pashtu-speaking regions of Afghanistan were a part of the Mogul empire. The northern areas were controlled by the Uzbeks while Kandahar in the South was wrested from the Moguls by the Safavids of Persia (1622CE). Afghan uprisings against the foreign dynasties continued but it was not until 1708 under Mir Wais that the Afghans were finally successful in retaking Kandahar from the Safavids and establishing their own rule. The Persians returned under Nadir Shah (1738 CE) but the Afghans reasserted themselves under Ahmed Shah Durrani (d 1773). Ahmed Shah expanded the Afghan domains to include all of modern Afghanistan, Pakistan, eastern Iran, and portions of north India. Durrani is celebrated as a hero of Afghan resistance. However, in the 18 th century, the implosion of the Mogul and Safavid dynasties rapidly took over Afghanistan too and it fell into disarray and internecine warfare. Peshawar was occupied by the Sikhs and Herat by the Persians.
In the 19 th century Afghanistan became the prize in the “great game” played between Czarist Russia and the British Empire. Russia coveted Afghanistan because it was a possible outlet to the warm waters of the Arabian Sea. The British interest was to contain Russia and advance its own economic interests. After the Anglo-Sikh wars (1845-49) and the fall of the Sikhs in the Punjab, the British made several attempts to capture and control Afghanistan. The Afghans were triumphant in the first Anglo-Afghan war of 1939-45. However, the British returned during the second Anglo-Afghan war of 1878-80 and forced the Afghans into accepting British supervision over their foreign affairs. Meanwhile, the galactic advance of the Russian armies swallowed up Samarqand, Bukhara, and the Fargana Valley (1868-73) while the British occupied Baluchistan (1858) reducing Afghanistan to a landlocked kingdom completely dependent on external powers for access to the outside world. The Treaty of 1878 fixed the borders between Afghanistan and Russia but did not end the rivalry between the two great powers. The British invaded Afghanistan once again and forced the Emir of Kabul to cede the areas east of the Khyber Pass. The Durand Line separated British India from Afghanistan but was not recognized by the Afghans. It became a bone of contention between the modern states of Afghanistan and Pakistan and is currently a hot spot in the ongoing American led war against the Taliban.
Afghanistan was neutral during the First World War. Despite enormous pressures from the Turks and from some of his own people, Emir Habibullah of Kabul stayed out of the war. In the later stages of the War, the Turks contemplated an attack on British India through the Turkoman regions of the Russian empire and Afghanistan. The calculation was that the predominantly Muslim populations of Southern Russia, Afghanistan and northwest India (today’s Pakistan) would rise up against the Allies and help the Turkish war effort. It was a strategic calculation which if successful would have turned the tables against the Allied powers. The temptation to be responsive to such an overture from Turkey was enormous. Istanbul was at the time the seat of the Caliphate and the spiritual center of Sunni Islam. But the Ottomans were militarily too weak to successfully conduct such an audacious campaign. For the Afghans, the neutrality paid off and Afghanistan emerged with its prewar boundaries intact, an outcome notably different from those of Ottoman territories in the Middle East that were carved up between the British and the French.
Scanning the decades since the First World War, a few milestones that shaped the destiny of Afghanistan stand out. First, it was the ascension of King Amanullah in 1919 and his success in evicting the British. Second, the dethroning of King Amanullah in 1929. Third, it was the coupe against king Zahir Shah by his own brother in law Dawud in 1973. Fourth, it was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. Fifth, it was the rise of the Taliban in 1995-96. And lastly, it was the American bombardment and invasion in 2001. Each of these milestones stands out in succession, each contributing to the tragedies that have enveloped this hapless land.
Shortly after the First World War, King Habibullah was assassinated (1919) and Amanullah ascended the throne of Kabul. This marks the beginning of the modern phase of Afghan history. Amanullah organized armed resistance against the British and after a decisive military campaign forced the British to relinquish their hold on Afghan affairs.
King Amanullah was a far-sighted monarch. He desired to take Afghanistan out of the middle ages and into the modern age. An open admirer of Ataturk, he travelled to Istanbul to observe and learn from the Turkish experience. Ataturk had banned the wearing of the beards and the fez, forbidden women to wear the hijab, discarded the Arabic script and had adopted the Roman script for the Turkish language. Amanullah contemplated similar reforms for Afghanistan. Ataturk advised him against it saying that the experience of each country was different and what works in one culture may not work in another. Amanullah did introduce a few reforms. He built schools, universities, roads, hospitals and encouraged intellectuals to participate in the modernization of Afghanistan. The noted journalist Mahmud Tarzi was among those who answered the call and started journalism in Kabul.
In 1929 King Amanullah was overthrown by a warlord Bacha Saqaw in a coupe which many Afghans suspect was engineered by the British who would not tolerate a modernized Afghanistan next door to a colonized British India. This was a tragedy for Afghanistan from which it never recovered. It took the Afghans away from gradual, sustained reforms towards escalating chaos, alternating between extremist religion and anarchic communism. Bacha was the son of a water carrier. Upon usurping the throne, he took the title of Habibulla Kalakani. He was an illiterate and incompetent man who surrounded himself with similarly illiterate men. He nullified the reforms instituted by Amanullah and installed a fundamentalist regime. Intellectuals were banished. His excesses were too much even for the normally conservative Afghans. Within a short time, this corrupt regime was overthrown by General Nadir Khan. His rule, however, was short lived and he was murdered in 1933. His son Zahir Shah became the king.
There was no change in the tribal structure of Afghan society during Zahir Shah’s rule and he depended on his immediate family to oversee the affairs of state. Zahir Shah had the good sense to keep Afghanistan neutral during the Second World War. Things changed after the war and the departure of the British from the subcontinent. The new nations of Pakistan and Afghanistan were embroiled in the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The West touted its free markets and personal freedoms while the Soviets emphasized social development and class harmony. These slogans meant little to the emergent countries who were struggling to find their way out of colonialism, and the principal issues they faced were forging national identities and laying the foundation of economies that would help alleviate poverty, disease and hunger.
(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)
