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Abstract
Afghanistan appears to exist in a different time from ‘us.’ Modernization theory, linear narratives of progress, teleological tales of growth and common sense stories of development seem to have met their match when it comes to this landlocked country. This paper considers the ubiquitous construction of Afghanistan as the ‘Graveyard of Empires’ to explore the ways in which representation, memory-making, and an allegory of mythic import perform a constitutive function and help suture an otherwise disjointed history of Afghanistan. Conducting a sustained inquiry into the political valence of the Graveyard trope, the paper reveals that it is especially ill-chosen on three counts. (i) It is ahistorical, relying on a selective evocation of history. Related to this ahistoricism, it sets up the past as the ‘key’ to understanding the Afghan present. On this account, another future is not possible. (ii) It is geographically or at least ‘physically’ deterministic: Afghanistan is constructed as a land of unconquerable terrain, its topography menacing and ultimately unassailable. Not only does this present the physical environment as an immutable entity, it also feeds into representations of Afghans as rugged warriors, bred to be weathered and connately austere. (iii) It is racialized: Afghans as inhabitants, creators and living relics of this graveyard are constructed as inured to hardship, belligerent and always already girded for combat. Thus the ‘graveyard of empires’ becomes a politically charged trope that is engaged in a continual re-inscription of the Afghan population as an alien other.
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Notes
1 Carla Freccero (Citation2005) Queer/Early/Modern (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), p. 85.
2 Avery Gordon (Citation2008) Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), p. 190.
3 Ibid.
4 Rod Nordland (2017) The Empire Stopper, New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/29/world/asia/afghanistan-graveyard-empires-historical-pictures.html, accessed November 20, 2018.
5 With the first use in scholarly literature by Milton Bearden (Citation2001) Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires, Foreign Affairs, 80(6), pp. 17–30; on the ‘emergency episteme’ of knowledge production on Afghanistan in the West see Nivi Manchanda (Citation2018) The Imperial Sociology of the Tribe in Afghanistan, Millennium, 46(2), pp. 165–189.
6 For a short list, see David Isby (Citation2011) Afghanistan: Graveyard of Empires: A New History of the Borderland; and Seth Jones (Citation2010) In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan (London: W. W. Norton & Company).
7 See, for instance, Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires; see also Peter Hopkirk (Citation2006) The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia (London: John Murray). Cf. Rob Johnson (2011) The Afghan Way of War: Culture and Pragmatism: A Critical History (London: Hurst & Co.).
8 Milton Bearden (Citation2001) Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires, Foreign Affairs. Available at: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/afghanistan/2001-11-01/afghanistan-graveyard-empires; Max Boot, Frederick Kagan & Kimberley Kagan (2009) Yes, We Can: In the ‘Graveyard of Empires,’ We Are Fighting a War We Can Win, The Weekly Standard, 23. Available at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/yes-we-can/article/17353, accessed May 8, 2019.
9 Thomas Barfield (Citation2004) Problems in Establishing Legitimacy in Afghanistan, Iranian Studies, 37(2), p. 263.
10 Gordon (2006) Ghostly Matters, p. xvi.
11 Fernando Gentilini (2013) Afghan Lessons: Culture, Diplomacy and Counterinsurgency (Washington: Brookings Press), p. 79.
12 The painting, which depicted the rout of the British in 1842, following the first Anglo-Afghan war, is now displayed at the Tate Gallery in London.
13 Brydon was neither the sole survivor, nor the only man who arrived at Jalalabad safely on the eve of January 13, 1842, although the legend of the massacre of William Elphinstone’s army remains etched in many historical and popular accounts. See Fernando Gentili (2013) Afghan Lessons (Washington: Brookings Press) and D. S. Richards (1990) The Savage Frontier: A History of the Anglo-Afghan Wars (London: Macmillan, 1990). Cf. also Ben Hopkins (Citation2008) The Making of Modern Afghanistan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): and Manan Ahmed (2011) Adam’s Mirror: The Frontier in the Imperial Imagination, Economic & Political Weekly, 46(13), pp. 60–65.
14 William Dalrymple (2014) Return of a King: Battle for Afghanistan (London: Bloomsbury Press). Quotes are taken from his BBC interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-26483320, last accessed May 13, 2014. For Dalrymple, Afghanistan then and now is, as the Emir who surrendered to the British reportedly claimed in 1839, ‘a land of only stones and men.’
15 For more on this see, Raymond Jonas (2011) The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press).
16 Barfield, Afghanistan, p. 141. The first section of the Treaty reads: ‘His Highness the Amir of Afghanistan and its dependencies agrees to conduct his relations with Foreign States in accordance with the advice and wishes of the British Government. His Highness the Amir will enter into no engagements with Foreign States, and will not take up arms against any Foreign State, except with the concurrence of the British Government. On these conditions the British Government will support the Amir against any foreign aggression with money, arms, or troops, to be employed in whatsoever manner the British Government may judge best for this purpose. Should British troops at any time enter Afghanistan for the purpose of repelling foreign aggression, they will return to their stations in British territory as soon as the object for which they entered has been accomplished.’ Full text available in Tom Lansford (2017) Afghanistan at War: From the 18th-Century Durrani Dynasty to the 21st Century (California: ABC Clio), pp. 168–170.
17 Michael Barthorp (2002) Afghan Wars and the North-West Frontier 1839–1947 (London: Cassell).
18 Some scholars, including Barfield, who buy into the premise if not the terminology of the graveyard metaphor contest the claim that the British ‘won’ the Third Anglo-Afghan War by emphasizing the fact that Amanullah reclaimed control of the country’s foreign policy and titular ‘independence’ from Britain. This overlooks Britain’s growing disenchantment with Afghanistan and the end of the regular subsidies provided by Britain to Afghanistan, which effectively provoked the revolt that spelled the end of Amanullah’s government. For more on this, see Gerald Morgan (1973) Myth and Reality in the Great Game, Asian Affairs, 4(1), pp. 55–65.
19 See Olaf Caroe (Citation1983) The Pathans 550 BC–AD 1957 (Karachi: Oxford University Press); George Campbell (1879) Afghan Frontier: The Substance of a Speech Not Delivered 1879). See Digitized Afghanistan Materials in English from the Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection (2010), University of Nebraska-Lincoln, for the former; Hopkins, Modern Afghanistan, and Barfield, Afghanistan, for the latter.
20 For scholarship that focuses on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan see especially Henry Bradsher (1985) Afghanistan and the Soviet Union (Durham: Duke University Press); Barnett Rubin (1995) The Fragmentation of Afghanistan: State Formation and Collapse in the International System (New Haven: Yale University Press); Hassan Kakar (1995) Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979–1982 (Berkeley: University of California Press); and Rodric Braithwaite (2011) Afgantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan, 1979–89 (New York: Oxford University Press).
21 Gentilini, Afghan Lessons, p. 81.
22 Even authors who are sceptical of the use of the graveyard trope buy into some version of this account. See, for instance, two informative books that focus on the Mujahideen side of the equation: Mohammed Yousaf (1992) Afghanistan: The Bear Trap: the Defeat of a Superpower (Havertown, PA: Casemate); and Lester Grau & Michael Gress (2002) The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press).
23 However, Jonathan Steele in his Ghosts of Afghanistan: Hard Truths and Foreign Myths (London: Counterpoint, 2011) contests even the Afghan victory and argues that the Soviets were largely successful in their military endeavours in Afghanistan.
24 Gordon, Ghostly Matters, p. 80.
25 The American Presidency Project. Available at: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/message-the-observance-afghanistan-day, accessed November 10, 2018.
26 There is a vast literature on covert American assistance to the Mujahideen, much of it written or unearthed after September 11, 2001. For a detailed exposition of US involvement in the Soviet-Afghan war, see Steve Coll (Citation2004) Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (London: Penguin).
27 US Congressman Charlie Wilson, who was instrumental in funding the Stingers for the Mujahideen, reportedly claimed that prior to the introduction of the Stinger, the Mujahideen never won a set piece battle with the Soviets, and that after it was introduced, the Mujahideen never again lost one. See George Crile (2007) Charlie Wilson’s War: The Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History (London: Atlantic Books). See also Michael Phillips (2011) Launching the Missile that Made History, The Wall Street Journal, October 1. Although it should be noted that the extent to which this was a ‘game changer’ is disputed and there are those who argue that the stingers merely accelerated a decision that already had been taken.
28 The extent of outside involvement and support for Afghan insurgents should not be underestimated. Apart from supplying billions of US Dollars worth of arms to the Mujahideen, CIA involvement was substantial even before the introduction of Stinger missiles. National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinksi divulged the scope of this in on June 1, 1997, when speaking about the Carter administration’s Afghan strategy against the Soviets. In his words: ‘[w]e immediately launched a two-fold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again—for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt.’ George Washington University, NSA archive. Available at: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/coldwar/interviews/episode-17/brzezinski2.html, accessed May 11, 2018.
29 This includes over one million civilian deaths and the creation of ten million refugees. See Noor Ahmed Khalili (1991) Afghanistan: Demographic Consequences of War: 1978–87, Central Asian Survey, 10(3).
30 Hopkins, Making of Modern Afghanistan, p. 5.
31 Matthew Zarzeczny (2014) January 13, 1842: Only One Survivor of a British Army in Afghanistan, Cracked History, January 13. Available at: http://www.crackedhistory.com/january-13-1842-one-survivor-british-army-afghanistan/, accessed November 13, 2018.
32 On the shifting role of geography as a development factor in the public imagination, see Eric Sheppard (Citation2011) Geography, Nature and the Question of Development, Dialogues in Human Geography, 1(1), pp. 46–75. His argument is that although determinism of the ‘crude’ variety has been superseded by new ‘critical’ approaches, these communities of scholarship also endorse a sociospatial ontology that underwrites a stageist, teleological conception of economic development, which is enabled by globalising neoliberal capitalism.
33 Anne McClintock (1995) Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (London: Routledge) examines this imperial obsession with sanitation and hygiene through a history of soap as an icon of white civilization. ‘Equatorial’ Africa, in the colonial imagination, was the land of the unclean and impure.
34 Malou Innocent & Ted Galen Carpenter (2009) Escaping the ‘Graveyard of Empires’: A Strategy to Exit Afghanistan (Washington, DC: CATO Institute White Paper).
35 Available at: http://www.4thmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/obama-in-afghanistan-the-graveyard-of-empires.jpg, accessed December 3, 2018.
36 Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7kOX5L5i9U, accessed December 3, 2018.
37 Gordon, Ghostly Matters, p. xvi.
38 Quoted in Stephen Tanner (Citation2009) Afghanistan, p. 292.
39 Robert Cassidy (Citation2011) David Isby’s Afghanistan—Graveyard of Empires: A New History of the Borderland, Parameters, 41, pp. 153–155.
40 See especially the second volume of BBC Two’s two-part documentary on Afghanistan: ‘The Great Game.’ Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jk6ch, accessed May 8, 2019.
41 Nivi Manchanda (Citation2018) The Imperial Sociology of the Tribe in Afghanistan, Millennium, 46(2), pp. 165–189.
42 I borrow the term from Debra Thomson, who also speaks of ‘racial aphasia’ in a related context: ‘Through, Against, and Beyond the Racial State: The Transnational Stratum of Race,’ in: Alexander Anievas, Nivi Manchanda & Robbie Shilliam (eds) (2014) Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line (London: Routledge), pp 44–61.
43 See especially Hopkins (Citation2008) Making of Modern Afghanistan and James Hevia (Citation2012) The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire-Building in Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
44 Gordon, Ghostly Matters, p. 18.