Afghanistan

In 1994, the Afghan mujahideen commander, Abdul Haq, rebuked the United States for forgetting about Afghanistan once the communist-backed government of Mohammad Najibullah had fallen in 1992. He predicted that Washington would rue its neglect: ‘Maybe one day they will have to send in hundreds of thousands of troops,’ he told The New York Times. ‘And if they step in, they will be stuck. We have a British grave in Afghanistan. We have a Soviet grave. And then we will have an American grave.’

Few organisations defend their reputation more vigorously than the Australian Defence Force (ADF). Long since clasped to the national bosom, the ADF has no intention of being shoehorned out of its prized position at the heart of Australian identity and culture. The first duty of its public affairs personnel is to protect ...

To go into any bookshop, if you can still find one, is to be amazed at the space devoted to militaria: endless shelves of books not just about the two world wars and Vietnam, but all wars in all times. This vicarious fascination with war echoes another phenomenon of our time: the rise of overt public respect for soldiers.

Two months ago, I was in Islamabad to address an international conference on suicide terrorism. The Pakistani army was engaged in heavy fighting with the Islamic militants in the Pashtun-dominated northern Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan. The security situation was deteriorating. Senior Pakistani intelligence officers were worried that it would lead to an escalation of suicide attacks. Their assessment was supported by the other government officials, including doctors working in the region, who told me of the widespread perception among Pashtuns that the predominantly Punjabi Pakistan army was committing genocide of the Pashtun nation and was thus turning the population against the army. The aerial bombings by Pakistani helicopter gunships and the US-NATO drones were causing many civilian casualties.

In its 250 years of statehood, Afghanistan has gone through numerous episodes of political rupture. The principal causes of these upheavals have remained more or less the same: an underdeveloped economy and the inability of the rulers to shift from a tribal political culture, to a more participatory national politics based on modern and democratic national institutions and rules of governance. As a result, with rare exceptions, the rulers of Afghanistan have depended on foreign patrons and not on the human and material resources of the nation to rule. This political milieu of buying the support of tribal leaders has led to fratricidal wars of succession and pacification, with devastating consequences, resulting in extended periods of political and social unrest and lawlessness. These bloody conflicts, often called jihad by the contestants, have facilitated and even invited foreign interventions by the British, Russians, Pakistanis, Iranians, and now the Americans and their allies.

Modern Afghanistan provides a nuanced understanding of developments in a country that has attracted the attention of academics and analysts for more than two decades. A number of good books have appeared dealing with politics in and around Afghanistan since the early 1980s. Amin Saikal’s recent book benefits from these accounts, but differs in one way: it is an insider’s account, with objectivity instilled by distance and academic training. As an Australian of Afghan origin, and as an expert on the politics of West and Central Asia, he draws upon a wealth of printed, oral, political and sociological research to delve into the creation and problems of Afghanistan.