Abstract
Kaushik Roy’s book is striking for many reasons and is rife with symbols and dualism. On the one hand, ‘war’ symbolises decay, dystopia, destruction and degeneration, while on the other, ‘society’ signifies progress, fecundity, utopia and regeneration. Since both these aspects of life come from a neighbouring nation Afghanistan, which has been caught up in a vortex of external conflict, internal feuds and insurgencies for quite long, it would only be insightful to unravel its past so as to understand the underlying context that gave rise to its fuzzy and volatile make-up. Besides, a close engagement with the history, topography and polity of a nation reassures a better understanding of its present development and future trajectory. Roy takes the readers into the belly of the battleground and traverses a phenomenal distance covering about five centuries beginning with Afghanistan’s occupation by Mughal rule from the fifteenth century to that of American invasion till the present times. The book gives a bird’s-eye view of the warzone and explores the negotiations, ‘strategies’ and ‘tactics’ of the rulers and the ruled.
The author has employed various rich sources of archival material comprising official and quasi-official histories of campaigns, regimental histories and memoirs of the British officers stationed in India, besides the autobiographies of officers who participated in the war in Afghanistan. The sources also include translated Persian histories and memoirs of the Mughal emperors and accounts written by Mughal scholars, newspapers and journal articles.
As warfare and violence have been a historical reality and an unfortunate preoccupation of the present which defines and shapes the destiny of nation-states, the author tries to read and analyse the codes and subtexts of warfare, internal dissensions and insurgencies by bringing the past and present into perspective. By undertaking this exercise, Roy also tries to anticipate Afghanistan’s future.
The book is divided into five different time periods which resemble neat geological slices of time. The first period encompasses three centuries from the Mughal Empire and warfare in Afghanistan (1500–1810), while the second stretch consists of the British Empire and warfare (1810–1947). The third phase includes an internecine period of Soviet invasion (1979–1988) and the fourth span deals with US involvement till Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) intervention in Afghanistan and finally discusses the future conflicts in Afghanistan.
Roy deals with the formation and breakdown of Afghanistan and its effect on the society due to the dynamics of warfare between three different interested nations on a longue durée, that is, the British, the Soviets and the Americans. He further builds up a gigantic war montage and a "diorama in action" in this space of bloodshed and deceit, regroupings and mergers. Roy weaves the elements of ecology, terrain and logistics to explain sub-conventional operations and state-building in Afghanistan. He further grapples with the moot question as to why the Mughals, British, Soviets and Americans won conventional wars but were defeated in unconventional operations or ‘counter-insurgency’ (henceforth COIN) in Afghanistan which includes irregular war/small war/sub-conventional operations or low-intensity conflicts.
The first chapter deals with the topography, origins of Afghans, various ethnic factions, issues of empire building, conventional military operations, COIN in Afghanistan under the Mughals and the Afghan revival (1707–1810) besides the Mughal–Safavid–Uzbek tripolar rivalry and its effect on Afghanistan. The second chapter attempts to capture the historiographical gap which has missed out on the interconnections between British policies towards Afghanistan vis-à-vis the tribal population along India’s North West Frontier (NWF). Roy also discusses the tactics, technology and logistics of conventional and sub-conventional warfare conducted by the British and Indian troops in Afghanistan and the NWF. The dialectical relationship between social and political conditions within Afghanistan and the turbulence in its foreign policy have been attended to in detail. Furthermore, the complex interconnections between the NWF defence against the Pathans/Pashtuns/Pushtuns and power projection in Afghanistan in response to the Russian threat remain central to the chapter.
The third chapter discusses the Russian intervention in Afghanistan and focuses on Afghanistan’s development as a buffer state between competing empires (Russian and British) and competing alliance systems (Soviet and American). This situation coalesces with Rubin’s definition of ‘rentier state’ (p. 155). It also deals with the structural weaknesses of state-building in Afghanistan in the mid-twentieth century and the ‘Afghan Revolution’ in the 1970s leading to the Soviet invasion and its aftermath. It further gives a historical account of the fragmentation of Afghanistan beginning with the palace coup in 1973 and the sporadic attempts at destabilising the government due to constant bickering between the rebels and the loyalists. According to Roy, an over-reliance on foreign-aid chiefly from the Soviets as well as the Americans who had commercial interests and had pumped in money for economic and military-aid ultimately weakened the nation’s confidence. More fuel was added to the fire by the rise of the Mujahideen created by General Zia-ul-Haq and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which prevented the rise of stable Afghanistan in the 1980s, after the post-Soviet withdrawal era. This in turn resulted in the rise of the Taliban and the subsequent US–NATO intervention.
The fourth chapter compares and contrasts the peacekeeping activities of the USA in Afghanistan. Roy gives a brief history of the origin and rise of the Taliban which in Pushto means students studying in deeni madari or religious institutions. The Talibs go to different alims (religious scholars) to gain religious knowledge and after completing their studies in a deeni madari become a mullah who is then qualified to become an imam, qazi and a mufti. (pp. 192–193). A chain of deeni madaris was established along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border by General Zia-ul-Haq in order to create a body of religious-oriented students to fight the Soviet troops in Afghanistan. These schools which followed Deobandi ideology were used as hideouts for the Afghan terrorists and insurgents who were fighting the Soviets. The Taliban wanted to impose a radical Sunni Islamic Caliphate in Afghanistan. Roy eludes us to the fact that Afghan insurgency finds as much encouragement due to religious reasons as due to a feeling of marginalisation by the Pashtuns because of Uzbek and Tajik-led Northern Alliance who are in turn supported by the Coalition and the foreign troops. However, Roy points out to the threat to Afghanistan from the neo-Taliban and other loose agglomeration of insurgent organisations along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border that are showing tactical smartness in terms of doctrine and organisational framework forcing a shift in the US COIN doctrine of use of minimum force and security for Afghan civilians.
The fifth chapter attempts to contextualise the nature of the ongoing war in Afghanistan in the backdrop of recent debates regarding the changing character of war in the twenty-first century. The author raises questions regarding the existence of conventional warfare and a new form of insurgency as also whether the COIN in Afghanistan is part of the West’s ongoing Global War on Terror or Long War.
On a prescriptive note, Roy suggests the USA to focus on human intelligence instead of relying excessively on weapon systems. He further advises them on the use of air mobile brigade for transport of troops to quell disturbances in the inaccessible regions. A successful COIN operation needs to be a ‘just war’ and the author recommends light ambush drill and picketing the mountaintops as well as the hill sides for the US–NATO troops. According to him, a new COIN doctrine is necessitated which will focus not on the enemy but on the common people of the region dominated by insurgency and therefore suggests that the focus should be on people-centric COIN. Furthermore, Roy contends that local Afghan forces be equipped and trained by US–NATO forces and that from the NATO and US armies should learn the local vernaculars and function as trainers and officers. He advocates for building ‘mixed and class regiments’ which could be a model for security managers associated with organising the Afghan National Army (ANA) to function as paramilitaries, such as the Khaibar Rifles and Tochi Scouts, in the British army during the late nineteenth century. In the end, Roy asserts that Afghanistan is neither experiencing a New War nor can it be described as Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW) but rather has displayed significantly high level of continuity from the Mughal to the recent era. Besides, he adds that despite the sweep of technology in modern warfare, factors, such as history and culture, topography and terrain, have restricted the containment and suppression of ‘rebel’ activities by the state-sponsored pacification campaigns.
Speaking on historiography, Roy laments the fact that most of the modern sources have been generated by enemies of Afghanistan, that is, the Mughals, the British and the Americans which lends a biased view of history and the past. While Roy gives us a historical overview of Afghanistan's vast temporal stretch of the warfare with its gaps and fissures, he has not been able to do justice, Roy has not been able to do justice with ‘society’ which is the other major axis of his thesis. Issues that shape the everyday lives of civilians in both the past and the present, such as social support system, public amenities, inter-ethnic strife and struggles, health, education, poverty, gender inequality and other such markers, do not find much space except for a very brief mention about the drug economy, which is the nation’s lifeline (p. 211). It also fails to acknowledge important concerns on the domestic front, like corruption by private contractors who siphoned off massive amounts out of foreign-aid funds and have become the infamous ‘9/11 millionaires’ and the new ruling elite in Kabul. Already, the mushrooming of post-war ghost towns born out of foreign-aid and ‘poppy palaces’ in places like Sherpur has led to the country being labelled as a ‘nacro state’. This multi-billion drug industry is supported by ancillary trade in weapons, human trafficking and sex trade due to a near absence of civic and military administration that has accelerated the process of splitting up the socio-economic fabric of this warring nation. Afghanistan is de facto being ruled by the ‘second tier’ state of tribal drug warlords and neo-elites who have axed out the nation into respective ‘zones of influence’ and ‘theatres of war’. As a result, today the nation stands reduced to mini-fiefdoms and crony empires which run on phantom economies.
The book by exposing the historical reasons for Afghanistan’s cultural lag and its socio-economic morass offers valuable insights into the annals of warfare in Afghanistan. It is an informed publication on the future of military warfare, strategic studies and is a valuable read for those dealing with the past and present of Afghanistan.