One may think that this headline refers to the current scandalous behavior of Congress, but although it does apply to it, that topic will be covered in the September installment when we will know what happened on August 2 and its aftermath. The present essay deals with the causes which led us to the brink of default on our debts. Although the Republicans are holding Obama responsible, we have to go back to the decisions of the Bush administrations (Bush 41 and Bush 43) to understand what is happening now. Obama inherited two wars, a national debt which had doubled over the past 8 years, and an impending economic meltdown. None of this was his doing but the attempt to dig the country out of the hole which the Bush administration had dug by creating more debt has not yielded the expected gains. Unemployment is still unacceptably high and the true figure, which includes laid off workers who no longer actively look for employment and those who are underemployed (e.g. MBAs packing grocery bags) is, of course, way beyond the 9.2 % official figure. But, as mentioned, this aspect will be covered in more detail next month when we will know what the power brokers in Washington have inflicted upon us.

            As readers of these essays will readily appreciate, our library is beginning to overflow. The bookshelves in our main living quarters are full and ever so often some have to be relegated to the lower level of the house, where they are still available but not quite so readily. This was the case last month and in sifting what will go into the basement I came across a pristine book by Hans Walter Berg entitled: Das Erbe der Groszmoguln – Voelkerschicksale zwischen Hindukusch und Golf von Bengalen, which might be translated as: The Mughal Legacy – Fate of peoples between the Hindu Kush and the Gulf of Bengal. It was published in 1988 and I had bought it in the early 90s during one of my visits to Vienna but never found the time to read it. When I now looked at it I was amazed at how topical the contents were. Had the Bush people read it, and taken the contents to heart the history of the past decade might have been considerably different. President George W Bush himself could not have been expected to know something about the countries he invaded because he had stated openly that “I read only headlines” and that he relies on what others, especially Condi Rice, told him. Responsible officials in the State Department did know, but they were overruled by the neocons who wanted to remake the world in their image.

The author of the book, which unfortunately has not been translated into English, had been since1952 the Asia correspondent for ARD, the major German news network. He was thoroughly familiar with the area and had interviewed the leading political figures of the time in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. He holds a PhD from the University of Munich and also a MA from the University of Michigan for Far East History. He is, therefore, clearly a person one should listen to. For today’s essay I shall limit myself to the essential features about Afghanistan and Pakistan because these are the areas of major concern right now.

            Berg used the Mughal Empire as background because the current states in the area are still influenced by Mughal traditions which form an essential part of their history. The empire lasted about two hundred years (1526-1726) and in its heyday stretched from Afghanistan through the northern half of India to what is now Bangladesh. The rulers were Muslim but managed not to alienate the Hindus to any appreciable extent. As far as the character of the kings was concerned it was a strange mixture of barbaric ruthlessness with a love of architecture, the arts and poetry. The world has to thank them for the beautiful buildings in Lahore and northern India, especially Agra. On the other hand, the rule was that “a king has no friends.” This extended to the king’s sons because their choice was “either kingship or the bier.” Some of them did not want to risk waiting for the father’s death and instead imprisoned him as had happened to the most celebrated Mughal, Shahjahan. He had built the Taj Mahal as the final resting place for his beloved wife but was never allowed to complete the planned identical monument, but of black marble instead of white, on the other side of the river which was intended to house his remains. His son, Aurangzeb, made sure that no more money would be spent on these building projects. Shahjahan had to spend the rest of his days locked up in the Red Fort from where he could view, but never visit, his wife’s tomb.

The Mughal Empire decayed because of constant internecine fights among the princes and this provided the British with the opportunity to expand and eventually consolidate their rule over India. Although they tried to gain possession of Afghanistan they failed in this endeavor. Even after three wars the country retained its independence due to the fierce fighting instinct of its inhabitants. The spirit of the Mughals with constant fights against attempting conquerors, and between the various tribes, extends into our time and only the names change under which the fights are carried out. My initial information came from the book and it was subsequently supplemented from articles on the Internet.

To understand our current problem in Afghanistan we have to go back to the second British-Afghan war which was concluded in 1893 with an agreement between the British Foreign Secretary for India, Henry Mortimer Durand, and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan. Durand drew a line, which has been named after him, which delineated the border between British India and Afghanistan and which is today the major source of our problem in the war against the Taliban (the name means “student”). Although the Amir was forced to accept the Durand line at the time, the people never have because it split the Pashtun tribal area in half. In 1947, with the partition of India, the western portion became Pakistan but the Durand line remained unchanged as the western border.

The Taliban are Pashtuns and they do not recognize the Durand line. For them it is part of the colonial past which has been imposed by infidels and they will continue to do their level best to correct that injustice. Although the fight is carried out in the name of Islam, to counteract Western secular modernity, the underlying ethnic problem is not to be minimized. It has been said that all Taliban are Pashtuns but not all Pashtuns are Taliban, which is correct. What Pashtuns want is a country of their own “Pashtunistan,” (land of the Pashtuns), a term I had never previously heard of. This is the reason why the Soviets have failed in their military effort and why ours is destined to follow that example. It is the same situation as in Vietnam where the Viet Cong and Viet Minh could readily cross the border to Cambodia but we were according to international law not supposed to do likewise. Now the border is with Pakistan but since that one does not exist for Pashtuns our troops are exasperated that when they chase the Taliban they just wave to them from across the Pakistani border. When we hector Pakistan to “seal the border” and aggressively carry out the war against the Taliban we fail to understand that Pakistan is an artificial country cobbled together from various Muslim tribes for the sole reason to prevent Muslim subjugation by a predominantly Hindu India. The separation in 1947 was accompanied by a bloodbath where millions of Hindus and Muslims were killed and it has stained the relations between the two countries to this day. Since, as a result of the Durand line, half of the Pashtuns reside in Pakistan and the other half in Afghanistan it is hopeless to assume that the Afghan war can be won with our current mindset. Quetta in the south and Peshawar in the north are the main supply and refuge bases for the Taliban and these are in Pashtunistan.

            One would think that after 10 years of war between us and factions of the Afghan people our media would have told us something about the aspirations of the locals but that is obviously too much to expect from our “free society.” Yet, Pashtunistan exists not only in the minds of some Afghans but can be found in Berg’s book and on the Internet. Its flag consists of three snow-covered mountain peaks on a red background and the maximal wished for borders are depicted below. The map comes from the Internet and is in the public domain.

The green area represents Pashtunistan and the line delineates the current international border. It is obvious that Pakistan can never be expected to give up more than half of its territory but it is equally clear that nationalistically inclined Pashtuns are not likely to accept their current borders in perpetuity. Looking at this map one can also see why the complaints of our government about the porous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan are useless because, as mentioned, the Afghans don’t regard this line on the map as a border and freely travel among members of their tribe, regardless what country Western politicians have assigned them to.

To understand what our troops are confronted with one has to know something about Pashtunwali, the code of honor, or dignity, Pashtuns are to live by. It predates Islam and is still enforced in rural areas where tribal chiefs rule. The hope to replace it with Western values in the short span of a few years is a dangerous illusion. As one Afghan is reported to have said to an American, “you have the watch but we have the time.” Westernization can work to some extent in the major cities but the majority of the people live in rural areas where the ancient rules apply. But as we have seen again in the last few weeks even Kandahar is not safe because first the governor of the province, Hamid Karzai’s half-brother, and then the mayor were assassinated. How long Karzai himself will be allowed to live is another question. 

Islam is supposed to unite all the tribes, but Pashtunwali demands in addition: Nanawati, which guarantees a fugitive asylum; Mehmastyia which orders hospitality even to a mortal enemy once he has crossed the threshold of your house, and Badal which demands “blood for blood.” When a member of your family has been murdered a member of the assailant’s family has to be killed. Americans believe that everything can be solved with money and in the second half of September 2001 the CIA walked in with briefcases literally full of millions of your and my dollars to hand out to the “Northern alliance.” It consisted of Afghan warlords from various tribes who were only too happy to fight the Pashtuns in the south regardless whether they were Taliban or not. A look at the map, shown above, reveals that the area controlled by the Northern Alliance represented a fraction of the northern portion of what is labeled as Afghanistan. Obviously they took the money and with the help of our bombing campaign defeated the Kabul Taliban government. But, this ended their obligation to us. Thereafter they continued with their tribal wars and planting opium to fund them, which had been banned under the Taliban. As our troops found out, “you don’t buy an Afghan; you rent one!” This truth has yet to sink into the minds of our policy makers, especially when they complain about Karzai’s unpredictable behavior. He is a Pashtun after all.

Likewise, the obligation of Badal is ignored by us but honored by the rural locals who make up the majority of the people in the aptly named “graveyard of empires.” We believe that we can win the war by drones, but for every insurgent they kill there is “collateral damage”: fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and children whose death has to be avenged. Badal does not end with one generation but can extend to subsequent ones. The bereaved family will take the money which is offered, but in addition exert some type of blood revenge whenever possible. The fact that these killings of innocents are perpetrated not only by impersonal machines but that they are guided by infidels to kill Muslims is a ready recruiting source for new mujahedeen’s for years to come.

Had the Bush administration known about Nanawati it would not have been surprised that the Taliban did not deliver Osama bin Laden to us when we asked for his extradition into American hands. He was a fugitive in their country and therefore enjoyed the right of sanctuary. While they ostensibly agreed to turn him over to the International Court, provided evidence for his crimes had been presented, they could not hand him to his enemies just because they demanded it. But Bush never wanted bin Laden to be captured alive or handed over, he was merely the excuse for the invasion. The reason was, as we shall see, considerably more mundane and in the spirit of American capitalism.

As far as the personality structure of Afghans in general is concerned Berg quoted from the 1895 edition of Germany’s counterpart to the Encyclopedia Britannica: “they are born warriors, unafraid and courageous in attack, treasonous and insatiable in revenge.” Berg noted that this was an oversimplification and could not be extended to every Afghan national, but as we have seen it does hold true for the Afghan enemy our troops are currently facing. The word treasonous in the statement needs modification. They can be loyal to friends and family but since the code of honor does not apply to foreign occupiers, especially infidels, they have no compunction about disregarding those sentiments.

The American public has also been misled about the goals of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. We were told that they wanted to export communism as part of “World Revolution” and that was all there was to it. Berg documented the reasons in more detail. Suffice it to say that Afghan government leaders had been murdered in rapid succession and chaotic terror reigned in the country. The latest victim, on April 27, 1978, was Prince Daud Khan, who although friendly with the neighboring Soviet Union did not want to establish communism in his country. The military Putsch was carried by a handful of officers who had been trained in the Soviet Union. They wanted to bring communism, although officially they declared themselves merely as reformers who carried out the will of the people. Moscow had been surprised by these “facts on the ground,” but was now placed into the position of having to support this new government come what may.

During a reception at the German embassy in Kabul, Berg met with the information minister of the new regime, Suleiman Laeq, and asked him why foreign correspondents were no longer allowed to enter the country, since he himself had to cross the Khyber Pass illegally. Laeq replied that the country needed to be protected from false propaganda and then went on to exp-lain: “We want a People’s Republic in the true sense of the word, a state in which the hitherto disenfranchised workers, peasants and intellectuals exercise power instead of feudal lords. We want an independent, block-free, foreign policy and finally end 150 years of colonial past, in which Afghan kings were mainly lackeys of foreign powers. We want to free our people from the fetters of an ossified societal order and secure them a socialist one as well as economic progress and freedom.”  When Berg asked how he could reconcile the Islamic tradition of the people with his Marxism, he replied: “Islam is the religion of our land and we are ready to respect its ordinances. This is why all our edicts are issued in the name of Allah, the Almighty, Beneficent and Merciful. Our socialist policies serve only the well-being of the people, and since Allah wants his believers to prosper he will certainly bless our efforts.”

I have mentioned this not because it reflected what was happening under the new regime but for the fact that the rhetoric is the same as ours and all one has to do is substitute the word “socialist” for “free enterprise.” In spite of Laeq’s assurance that the foreign policy was to be “block-free” the Kabul government increasingly used Soviet advisors, and the reforms were resented by the faithful in the rural areas. The mujahadeen movement arose, which began to spread terror throughout the country. They not only became active in 25 of the 29 provinces but also operated in Kabul, Kandahar and Herat, western Afghanistan’s provincial capital. During these terror attacks Soviet assistance missions were also attacked and their people murdered. A major massacre occurred in March of 1979 in Herat where the rebels, aided by deserting troops from the Afghan army, attacked the residential area of Soviet advisers and killed everyone in a most brutal manner. The fighting between government troops and the rebels steadily escalated which eventually left Moscow no choice but to intervene militarily to establish a degree of order in that chaos.

In 1985 Gorbachev called the Afghan war “a bleeding wound,” a term which also characterizes our current predicament. Berg’s book ends in 1988 with the Geneva accord signed between the Foreign Secretaries of Afghanistan, Pakistan, the U.S. and the Soviet Union. In it the USSR committed itself to withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan within nine months. The treaty also regulated the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan and imposed the obligation upon the US as well as the USSR to no longer interfere in any form or fashion into the internal affairs of Afghanistan. Since the mujahadeen were not part of the negotiations they ignored the agreement and continued their war against the Kabul government with help from their Pashtun relatives in Pakistan. Mohammad Najibullah’s regime survived the withdrawal of the Soviet troops till 1992 when he was forced to resign and make way for an interim government, which in turn was overthrown by the Taliban in 1996. In the process Najibullah, who had not left the country, was murdered.

Before continuing with the post-Soviet history of Afghanistan a few words need to be said about our love-hate relationship with Pakistan which goes all the way back to the Eisenhower administration. In those days we gave the Pakistanis $500 million (1962 value) for military aid and built their intelligence services (ISI) on the model of the CIA. This was to counteract India. Nehru had formed a block of non-aligned nations but was suspected of favoring the Soviet Union over us. Gary Powers’ doomed U2 flight over the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960, which wrecked the Paris summit meeting between Eisenhower and Khrushchev, did not start, as we had been told from Turkey, but Peshawar Pakistan. When India detonated its atomic bomb, Pakistan felt duty bound to follow suit but while we only admonished India we cut off all aid to Pakistan.

As Berg wrote, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was for Pakistan’s Zia-ul Haq a gift from Allah. Not only could he legitimize his autocratic rule as a response to the danger the Soviet Union might pose to his country, but in February 1980 he was visited by Zbigniew Brzezinski, at that time President Carter’s national security advisor. He offered Zia $400 million of military and economic aid which was refused with the comment, “peanuts.” After some tough negotiating a contract was signed in September of 1981 which guaranteed aid to the tune of $3.5 billion over the next six years. Our largesse waned after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan but was resumed in full force after 9/11 until a few days ago when, after the row over the bin Laden raid, Washington suspended payment of $800 million.

This attitude of on-again, off-again is understandable from the point of view of our lawmakers who feel that they can mete out praise and punishment whenever and to whomever they please, but it is seen by the recipient as America’s unreliability. We also regard Pakistan as a “normal country” with a government that can control its various provinces but that is likewise an illusion. The current civilian government is relatively powerless and within the country there are numerous factions pursuing their various aims independently. Even within the army and the ISI there are circles within circles where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand does. This situation is actually not all that different from what goes on in Washington especially in regard to the CIA. The major point is that we can demand that Pakistan accedes to our wishes in regard to the war against the Taliban, but the government is simply unable to follow through. Pashtuns are in leading positions in the army as well as the ISI and are reluctant to shoot their tribe members because Americans want them to. It’s literally against their religion.

Leaving Pakistan’s problems aside for the moment it is useful to look at the timeline of our relationship with the Taliban and a major reason for the October 2001 invasion. In the 1890’s Lord Curzon, who has been previously mentioned in these pages for the Curzon line which delineated the borders between Poland and the Soviet Union in 1919, stated that: Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Transkaspia, Persia …[are] for me pieces of a chessboard upon which a game for world domination is played. This was the much cited “Great Game” between the Russian and the British Empire where each side was worried about the intrusions of the other. It was dramatized by Rudyard Kipling in his Kim. With the demise of the British Empire, America stepped into its shoes and is eagerly trying to woo the area into our fold. It abounds with natural resources, which we want, and is in addition a nodal point for traffic from East Asia to the West. 

When we lost “our man in Tehran,” the Shah, Iran became a headache which thirty years of effort have failed to cure. Since the world is in urgent need of oil and gas which abound in that strategic region and since we trust neither the Russians nor the Iranians another way has to be found to gain access to the Caspian’s wealth of oil and gas. This is where the route of a new pipeline enters the field of history. The easiest would be through Iran but that country is hostile and in addition the narrow Strait of Hormuz at the southern end of the Persian Gulf, through which most of the world’s oil travels, could be blocked at any moment. It was, therefore envisioned that the pipeline should go from the Caspian through Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea. It was an ideal solution. The ex-Soviet Republics of Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan would no longer have to rely on Russia and the Strait of Hormuz problem would also be solved.

The website http://ringnebula.com/Oil/Timeline.htm provides a timeline for some of the negotiations which have been carried out to bring the pipeline to fruition. Unfortunately not all of the information can be trusted and the references which are provided in the text do not appear at the end. I shall, therefore only summarize aspects which are also documented elsewhere.

Unocal’s official quest began in 1995 when the company signed an agreement with Turkmenistan to purchase natural gas rights for transport through the proposed pipeline route. Negotiations continued off and on till 1988 and in January of that year Dick Cheney, the CEO of Halliburton at the time, was quoted as having said, “I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.” I shall return to this statement later. Also in January Unocal signed an agreement between Pakistan, Turkmenistan and the Taliban to arrange for funding of the gas line project. But in May of the year Unocal announced a delay in finalizing the project due to Afghanistan’s continuing civil war and in December Unocal issued a statement that it had withdrawn from the pipeline project due to “business interests.” The conditions were clearly not conducive to this type of enterprise.

             Nevertheless, the pipeline dream was not dead because the Bush-Cheney administration had exceedingly close ties to oil companies. Although the discussions during the “energy summit meetings” in February of 2001 have never been fully disclosed there are, two articles of importance. One is by George Monbiot of the Guardian under the title “America’s Pipe Dream”, which contains the mentioned Cheney quote. The article was published two weeks after the Afghanistan bombing campaign began and lays out the background, including the relationship to Pakistan, as well as the goal. In regard to the latter the author stated, “If the US succeeds in overthrowing the Taliban and replacing them with a stable and grateful pro-western government and if the US then binds the economies of central Asia to that of its ally Pakistan, it will have crushed not only terrorism, but also the growing ambitions of both Russia and China. Afghanistan, as ever, is the key to the western domination of Asia.”  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/23/afghanistan.terrorism11.  This was the goal, but it has eluded us.

The other report from BBC News was dated May 13, 2002 with the headline, “Afghanistan plans gas pipeline.” The article stated that “Afghan interim ruler Hamid Karzai is to hold talks with his Pakistani and Turkmenistan counterparts later this month on Afghanistan's biggest foreign investment project, said Mohammad Alim Razim, minister for Mines and Industries, told Reuters. ‘The work on the project will start after an agreement is expected to be struck at the coming summit,’ Mr. Razim said.” The summit was indeed held on May 30 in Islamabad and another memorandum of understanding was signed but in view of the deteriorating security situation nothing has come of it since.

Thus, it is clear that Lord Curzon’s Great Game is still in full swing with all of us serving as the pawns. But the era of these colonial enterprises is about to come to an end even for America. Nationalism is still on the rise and we will soon be unable to afford the wars to sustain our global predominance. It is obvious that a military solution to the Afghanistan debacle is out of the question. We have been there longer than the Soviet Union and the accomplishments are as fragile for us as they were for them. Obama is reducing the troop levels with the goal of total removal in a few years. What comes thereafter is the proverbial $64 question. There is no likelihood for peace in the Afghan-Pakistan relationship unless the question of Pashtunistan is resolved and none for peace between India and Pakistan unless the Kashmir problem is removed. The end of Islamic terrorism likewise cannot be expected unless all our troops are withdrawn from Muslim countries and a just settlement has been achieved with the Palestinians.

Let us summarize what has happened since the Soviet Union’s military arrived in Afghanistan to prop up an unpopular regime which was threatened by forces of fanatical Islam. The reason for the invasion was fear because it was felt that militant Islam was about to spill over into the southern Border States. We interpreted it as aggression and as an opportunity to destroy the evil empire. In so doing we supported the mujahadeen thereby creating the instrument of our own problems which would come to haunt us decades later. We supported bin Laden and built the Bora Tora fortress complex with CIA money.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, which had prior to WWI been part of the Ottoman province of Basra and thereby Mesopotamia, we jumped on the opportunity to get rid of his regime although we had supported him in the Iraq-Iran war. The war had bankrupted Saddam; he was in debt to the Kuwaitis who, furthermore, behaved arrogantly when he tried to negotiate the debt. In addition his forerunners had previously tried to regain Kuwait. It is an artificial emirate carved out of the Ottoman province of Basra by the British for their purposes, and which denied Iraq direct access to the Persian Gulf. In our quest to get rid of Saddam, because he was seen as a threat to Israel, we persuaded the Saudi king to allow our troops into his country for his protection. It was claimed that his country was next on the list of Saddam’s insatiable greed, but the evidence was manufactured just as that for Saddam’s possession of WMDs. We simply wanted to station bases on Saudi soil.  For the pious bin Laden this was the ultimate outrage because “Crusaders and Jews" have no place in his Holy Land. This event galvanized him to form Al Qaeda to pursue jihad on his terms.

We then used the 9/11 tragedy as the pretext for “just revenge” to first invade Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq. But even the Afghanistan invasion had less to do with our security or bin Laden but was a continuation of the Great Game for natural resources. The war was not conducted in a manner to ensure the capture of bin Laden, and the destruction of Al Qaeda, but to establish a friendly regime in Kabul. It was to give us what had been denied to the Soviet Union. An example for this statement is that the Bush administration failed to provide our marines with the wherewithal, which they had asked for, to take Tora Bora and instead delegated the capture of bin Laden to Afghans, who were known to be unreliable. The validation of this statement is in Bush’s Wars by Terry Anderson. What was the result? The same as for the Soviet Union! Bin Laden, the patsy, is now officially dead but his organization has metastasized. Our troops will come home to glorious speeches about their bravery, just as those of the Red Army as described in Berg’s book, and the people of Afghanistan will have to bear more hardships. The pipeline is not likely to be built by us and the other natural resources the country has, will likewise not be developed by us.

This should really give us pause to think what the human race is all about. Three aspects come to mind. In Goethe’s Faust we can read a self-description of Mephisto: “I am a part of that force which forever desires evil yet creates good.” I believe there is a corollary in the conduct of our politicians: they always desire good yet create evil!  Another aspect is the Taj Mahal, the structural Mughal legacy which should be pondered. A magnificent structure, beautifully adorned with Holy Writ, which houses decayed corpses! Finally the ultimate wisdom of the ages which we also ignore in this hour of national peril: Whom the gods want to destroy they strike with blindness. To this one might add: There is none as blind as he who doesn’t want to see!