Remote, rugged, barren
one of few pieces of Asia & Africa not incorporated into 19th century European empires
a route rather than a destination
Chinese & Indian Buddhist pilgrims struggled over its high mountain passes
Alexander's Macedonians fought their ways through its mountains and deserts down to India
Central Asian Turks & Mongols sang of the delights of its rare gardens and limpid air
Russians and British used its craggy heights & boulder-strewn valleys only to play their
"Great Game" of espeionage and cold war against each other
Brits tried three times to add it to their Indian empire before giving up
Why, in 1979, the Russians neglected history and sought to conquer Afghanistan still baffles both Russians and Western students of strategy
ironic logic in Russian policy - Russian version of the domino theory that so worried American strategists, but in reverse
Brezhnev feared a Communist failure in Afghanistan would impact the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and other Turkoman peoples of Soviet Central Asia infecting them with anti-Communist aspirations
Afghans just wanted foreigners to leave them alone
always had stoutly opposed foreign entry
struggle against them was the substance of their sagas and myths
people of SE area, Nuristan swear that descend fomr Alexander's legions
Hazaras of high Hindu Kush mountains count Genghis Kahn's hordes as their ancestors
More than almost any other society, Afghans live their history
to understand guerrilla war of 1980s, begin with the Great Game of the 19th century
British reached Pakistan by 1820
to the west was Sind with a motley collection of local rulers who were forced to accept a treaty aimed to exclude European traders AND American settlers
Brits then turned northeast on Indus river toward the Punjab to encounter the Sikh leader RANJIT SINGH who had begun to create an empire to rival the British, a forlorn ambition
After Singh died in 18239 Brits incorporated his territory gaining control of the Indus valley which brought them into contact with the Pathan peoples in what was later to be called the
Northwest Frontier and Afghanistan
Brits were never able to draw a line of boundary
Russian advance began with Ivan IV (the Terrible) who in Russia's first great military adventure (1552) conquered remnant of the vast Mongol Empire, the Khanate of Kaaan. which transformed Russia from a petty city-state into a multinational empire
Kaaan was Islamic society with elaborate political, commercial & intellectual structures and a fully formed legal and religious code. Ivan's churchmen set out on a throughgoing regime chance "to convert the pagans to the faith."
Being a multiethnic society, each newly defeated group presented a key to further annexation - Next was the Khanate of Astrakhan, conquered in 1556 opening the Volga down to the Caspian Sea.
