ONCE more, Afghanistan is living up to its nickname as the “graveyard of empires”.
In the past it was the Greeks followed by the Mongols, the British and in the 1970s by Soviet Russia.
Now it is the turn of the Americans and their allies to be humiliated.
The current conflict is down to the US invasion in 2001 which was supposedly aimed at dismantling al-Qaeda’s bases there by removing the Taliban from power after the September 11 attacks,
The US mission in Afghanistan was to topple the Taliban, rebuild core institutions and eventually hand over the country to be run by a democratically elected government with its institutions protected by the Afghan military and police.
However as soon as the US put forward a date for the withdrawal of its military that plan totally disintegrated.
The United States is not the first major power to discover that Afghanistan is ungovernable in the long term.
On Christmas Eve in 1979 the Soviet Union sent troops and tanks to Afghanistan supposedly to restore order following a coup.
But the invasions had the opposite effect and instead provoked a nationwide rebellion by fighter known as the mujahideen who drew upon Islam as a uniting source.
Ironically, these fighters had the backing of the United States and were joined in their fight by foreign volunteers who soon formed a network, known as al-Qaeda,
The mujahideen also fought among themselves and from these fragmented groups came the Taliban in 1996 which then seized the capital Kabul.
They imposed a severe interpretation of Islamic law that forbade female education and prescribed the severing of hands, or even execution, as punishment for petty crimes.
Also in 1996 al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden arrived in Afghanistan and established the terror group’s headquarters there.
After the September 11 attacks, which were planned from Afghanistan, the US campaign began, covertly at first, hoping that a strategy for overthrowing the Taliban could be achieved without deploying a large military force.
As the British and the Russians learned to their cost in the past this could not be achieved and two decades on the Americans have now suffered a humiliating defeat.
Afghanistan has a long history of domination by foreign powers and strife among internally warring factions.
Alexander the Great conquered the country in 329 BC as did Genghis Khan in the 13th century, but it wasn’t until the 1700s that the area was united as a single country. During the 19th century, Britain, looking to protect its Indian empire from Russia, attempted to annex Afghanistan, resulting in a series of British-Afghan Wars.
After the British were defeated Afghanistan became an independent nation in 1921.
In a series of reforms in the 1965s and 1960s women were granted more freedoms and were allowed to attend university and enter the workforce.
It is now feared that under Taliban rule women and girls will have no rights and be treated as slaves and the property of men.
