Air University Review, September-October 1982

Afghanistan: The Far Frontier

Afghanistan is a land rarely understood by either the Middle Eastern or Islamic specialist. As part of that realm of oriental nations sometimes called the Northern Tier, Afghanistan has been conveniently excluded from the mainstream of contemporary Arab and Islamic events. A product of backwash Muslim invasions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it has traditionally sat as a buffer between British and Russian imperial interests, as well as more recent Soviet and United States cold war conflicts.

A heterogeneous nation of many diverse cultural and religious groups located in a geographically segmented land, Afghanistan has become a common word to most Americans only since the Soviet invasion in late 1979. Nancy and Richard Newell’s The Struggle for Afghanistan and John Griffiths’s Afghanistan: Key to a Continent are contemporary studies that attempt to clarify some of the mystery that pervades this nation on the Amu Darya River.

An Englishman with a great deal of personal experience traveling and working in Afghanistan, John C. Griffiths devotes more than half of his book to an attempt to bring the reader up to date. He builds a mosaic of Afghan history, graphically leading the reader along a path blended with the many sectarian and primordial groups found in Afghanistan.

The people are described in narrative form through the experiences of Griffiths while traveling around the country. The Afghan, whether he be Tajik, Pathan, Nuristrani, or Hazar, is presented as an independent, free-spirited individualist, traditionally not inclined to be tamed by outsiders. Griffiths traces the pattern of resistance that has enabled Afghanistan to maintain her independence through an era that has seen her once powerful neighbors placed under the imperial control of either the British Raj or the Russian Bear. As Griffiths points out, the British fought four very expensive frontier wars in discovering the stamina of Afghan independence.

*John C. Griffiths, Afghanistan: Key to a Continent (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1981, $25.00), 225 pages.

The chapter dealing with the Afghan people, "Who Are the Afghans?" is particularly poignant and elaborates the serious problems Afghan governments have always faced in ruling this unruly people:

Though often the most dramatic, relations with other countries are not the most critical of Afghanistan’s problems. The real tasks facing its governments are internal: the problem of unity and minorities; the conflicting pressures, social and economic, of traditionalism and modernization (particularly in regard to the status of women and to Islam); and the difficulties of imposing sophisticated political methods and institutions on old tribal loyalties and attitudes. (p. 78)

It is rapidly becoming more apparent that this problem of national unity has become the single most important factor in the attempt at legitimacy by the present Soviet-sponsored Parcham government.

It is this legitimacy that the Soviet intervention has so clearly abrogated. Consequently, the event has caused a rare sense of national purpose to unite many sectarian minorities, as well as the various majority Pathan groups. This unity of purpose, however, has not developed into a unity of effort. The same cleavages that have caused problems for every Afghan government since the great Shah Durani have kept the resistance movement fragmented in its attempts to obstruct Marxist governmental consolidation.

The book by the Newells, The Struggle for Afghanistan,** gives a good journalistic analysis of the various resistance movements in contemporary Afghanistan and also defines the problems in attempting to coordinate the efforts of these groups:

**Nancy Peabody Newell and Richard S. Newell, The Struggle for Afghanistan (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1981, $14.95), 236 pages.

Attempts to unify or coordinate the resistance have faced great obstacles. Its social basis is the primordial group—the household, the extended kin group, the clan, the sub tribe or tribe, often the hamlet or village or valley neighborhood or sectarian community. (p. 32)

As a result, the Newells point out that:

Inevitably, the fragmented resistance movement has been divided along regional ethnic and sectarian lines. Local groups have coordinated their activities only within the limits of distinct regional or linguistic communities. (p. 65)

In addition to a current analysis of the various guerrilla groups and their objectives, the book also provides an excellent description of the rise of urban Marxism, a phenomenon that has developed primarily out of the University of Kabul and its metropolitan environs. Of particular interest is the account of the factional competition within the Marxist movement between its two principal wings, the Soviet-supported Parcham and the Khalq. It is the rivalry between these revolutionary centers that leads to the rise and fall of the key leaders: Taraki, Amin, and, most currently, Karmal.

Both books are excellent, brief narrative accounts of historical events leading to the Soviet intervention. Both provide the reader with an encapsulated background of Afghan culture and politics. The currency of this information makes it difficult to document, but the long-term experience of the writers in the country and their intimate understanding of the political mechanics help to overcome what, in most cases, has been a barrage of rumors, reports, and partial truths.

These books effectively complement each other. The Struggle for Afghanistan provides a current update of political developments in Afghanistan prior to and during the Soviet intervention. Afghanistan: Key to a Continent gives a good cultural-historical backdrop to these recent political developments. Though neither book can take the place of the scholarly masterpiece on Afghanistan by Louis Dupree, both are well worth reading for their current and timely analysis on a subject that still remains very elusive.

Major Robert M. Young, USA (B.A., Texas Christian University; MA. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California), Foreign Area Officer, is an instructor in the Department of Political Science, USAF Academy. His previous assignments include Inspection Officer of the United Nations Forces in the Sinai, Aide-de-Camp to the Commander of the U.N. Peacekeeping Forces in the Middle East and Cyprus, and Operations Officer for the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon. Major Young was a U.N. Representative at the Military and Political Peace Talks held in Israel and Egypt.

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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