by Sarah Chayes
CHAPTER 10: KANDAHAR, AFGHAN CAPITAL
1.E.g., Olaf Caroe, The Pathans (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1990) (1st ed.,1958), p. 256.
2.Abdurrahman Khan (amir of Afghanistan, d. 1901), Mustatab Siraj at-Tawarikh (Kabul: Kabul Matba’ 1331 [H]), p. 10. See also Mahmud al-Huseini al-Munshi (d. c.1775), Ta’rikh-i Ahmadshahi (Moscow: 1974), p. 50.
3.Ganda Singh, Ahmad Shah Durrani (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1959), p. 29, describes three hundred camels under escort of an Afghan guard. Singh opines that the convoy “had encamped in the city to rest for a few days and to collect five hundred animals for their onward journey.”
4.According to some accounts, they were moved there by force, in a form of ethnic cleansing, by Safavi Shah Abbas I. See Laurence Lockhart, Nadir Shah (London: Luzac, 1938).
5.See Laurence Lockhart, “The Revolt of the Abdalis,” in The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty and the Afghan Occupation of Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1958), pp. 95–108.
6.Lockhart, pp. 473–85.
7.On long-distance overland trade, see Rudiger Klein, “Caravan Trade in Safavid Iran,” in Etudes Safavides, Jean Calmard, ed. (Paris/Teheran: Institute Français de Recherche en Iran, 1993). On the Safavid dynasty, see ibid., Lockhart, and Peter Jackson, Lawrence Lockhart, eds. “The Timurid and Safavid Periods,” Cambridge History of Iran (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 189–412.
8.Note that Safavi Shah Isma’il assisted Babur in one of his briefly successful efforts to capture Samarqand, which he considered his Timurid birthright. See R. M. Savory, “Safawids,” in Encyclopedia of Islam New Edition (Leiden: Brill, 1994), VIII: p. 767.
9.Wheeler M. Thackston, The Baburnama, trans. Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, (New York: Modern Library, 2002), p. 254.
10.Ibid., p. 256.
11.Ibid.
12.Klein, p. 310.
13.Ibid., p. 313
14.Michael Barry, Le Royaume de l’Insolence (Paris: Flammarion, 2002) (1st ed.,1984), p. 95. Cf. M. Longworth Dames, “Afghanistan: Islamic, to the Rise of the Afghan National State,” in Encyclopedia of Islam, p. 229.
15.Singh, pp. 11–13; Lockhart, “The Campaign Against the Abdali Afghans,” in The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty, pp. 321–27; Lockhart, Nadir Shah, pp. 31–33, 51–54.
16.Singh, pp. 13, 15; Lockhart, Nadir Shah, p. 54, suggests that Nadir Shah’s remarkable generosity toward the Abdalis stemmed from a foresightful plan to weld them into a fighting force that would be personally loyal to him, as he did.
17.Singh, pp. 16–17; G. P. Tate, The Kingdom of Afghanistan (Karachi: Indus Publications, 1973) (1st ed., 1911), pp. 57–65.
18.Lockhart, “The Reconquest of Kandahar,” in Nadir Shah, pp. 112–21.
19.Tate, p. 65; Singh, pp. 17–18; Lockhart, Nadir Shah, p. 120.
20.Cf. John Keay, India: A History (London: Harper, 2000), pp. 385–86.
21.Mahmud al-Huseini al-Munshi, pp. 36, 37; Lockhart, Nadir Shah, p. 259.
22.Mahmud al-Huseini al-Munshi, pp. 37–40.
23.Lockhart, Nadir Shah, p. 262; p. 332; Singh, pp. 20–22; Tate, pp. 67–8.
24.Caroe, p. 254. Bawdy jokes still current suggest that Ahmad Shah was in fact Nadir Shah’s “boy.” The practice of older men taking prepubescent males as lovers and openly bestowing favors on them has roots in ancient Greece and Persia. It remains extremely commonplace in southern Afghanistan.
25.Mahmud al-Huseini al-Munshi, pp. 40–42.26. Singh, p. 18, quoting three primary sources, says Ahmad Shah became “a bank-bashi,” or treasury officer, though it is difficult to imagine a horse guard captain also fulfilling this administrative task. Still, it is likely that a man enjoying the personal confidence of the monarch would be aware of the movements of large amounts of revenue.
27.Singh, p. 22, without much clear referencing, writes that the Abdalis did get some of Nadir’s treasure, including the royal seal and the Koh-i-Nur diamond. But his description of a chaotic grab for plunder and disintegration of the army does not jibe with his contention that the Abdalis had to flee from “hostile Persians” who surrounded them “on all sides,” p. 24.
28.Mahmud al-Huseini al Munshi, pp.45–49.29. Singh, p. 28, thinks the jirga took place much earlier, on the road to Kandahar. But local legend reveres the shrine at Shir Surkh, just outside the modern town.
30.Caroe, p. 255; Singh, p. 25.
31.Personally, I suspect Ahmad Shah of staging some of the scene. Given his possession of the crack troops of half a continent, I question Ahmad Shah’s demure pose. The darwish remained by his side till death.
32.Singh, p. 33, describes a kind of hybrid between a Persian-style bureaucracy, with “great offices,” and a respect for Afghan tribal leadership, in which the chiefs of the various tribes, not just Ahmad Shah’s own, were allowed to govern their internal affairs and accorded respect and distinction. See also Abdurrahman Khan, p. 11.
33.Barry, pp. 106, 166, 268, 302.
34.Mahmud al-Huseini al-Munshi, p. 56, expands poetically on Ahmad Shah’s generosity with that founding caravan, saying he gave some of the treasure to the heads of the tribes, to the Qizilbashes and the Kabulis, and to everyone else: “amir wa faqir wa saghir wa kabir wa barna wa pir wa dost wa mawafiq wa manafiq (commander, beggar, small and great, young and old, friend and ally and hypocrite).”
35.Ibid., and Elphinstone, p. 424.
CHAPTER 12: THE BORDER
1.Peter Hopkirk, The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (New York: Kodansha, 1992); Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia (Washington: Counterpoint, 1999).
2.Abd ar-Rahman Khan, The Life of Abdur Rahman, Vol. 2, Mir Munshi Sultan Mahomed Khan, ed. (Karachi: Oxford, 1980) (1st ed., 1900), p. 264.
3.Ibid., p. 246.
4.From Martin Ewins, Afghanistan: A Short History of Its People and Politics (New York: HarperCollins, 2002).
5.Abd ar-Rahman Khan, Vol. 2, p. 237.
6.See Sir H. Mortimer Durand, “The Amir Abdur Rahman Khan,” in Proceedings of the Central Asian Society, XVIII (1907), p. 4: “Yakub Khan had resigned his throne, leaving British forces in possession of Kabul and Kandahar, it became necessary to provide for the future government of the country, which we did not want to keep.”
7.I owe this analysis, again, to Michael Barry, Le Royaume de l’Insolence (Paris: Flammarion, 2002), pp. 161–62.
8.See Waller Ashe, ed., Personal Records of the Kandahar Campaign by Officers Engaged Therein (London: David Bogue, 1881), pp. 3–4: “We must remember that its strategic value is very considerable, being the first and only place of any strength, or where supplies in any quantity could be obtained, between Herat and the Indus…. The importance of holding can scarcely be overestimated in either a political or a military point of view.” See also M. E. Yapp, Strategies of British India (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 440; C. Collin Davies, The Problem of the Norwest Frontier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), pp. 10–15; and Frank Noyce, England, India, and Afghanistan (London: Cambridge University Press, 1902), pp. 117–23. This one is a nearly contemporaneous essay written as part of the requirements for graduation at Cambridge University, and so would reflect establishment opinion of the time.
9.Abd ar-Rahman Khan, Vol. 1, p. 227.
10.Ibid., p. 208.11. Durand, p.
20.12. Ibid., p. 5.
13.Ashe, p. 116.
14.Durand, p.15.
15.Ibid.
16.Ashe, p. 36.
17.Ibid., pp. 29–30.
18,Ibid., p. 2.
19.British Army, Intelligence Branch, The Second Afghan War, 1878–80 (London: Murray, 1908), pp. 501–2.
20.Ashe, p. 62.
21.Ibid., p. 63.
22.Ibid., p. 56.
23.Ibid., p. 51.
24.Ibid., p. 56; British Army, Intelligence Branch, p. 493.
25.Ashe, p. 86.
26.Ibid., p. 93.
27.Ibid., p. 98.
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28.Ibid., p. 152.
29.Barry, p. 172. See the delightfully naive view of this in the 1902 Cambridge University Prize Essay cited above: “It furnished the first occasion for Abdur Rahman to display his loyalty towards the British, and Sir Frederick Roberts’s wonderful march from Kabul to Kandahar owed much of its success to the new Amir’s vigorous and tactful handling of the tribes which lined the route.” Noyce, pp. 118–19.
30.Abd ar-Rahman Khan, Vol. 2, p. 176.
31.Ibid., p. 135.
32.Ibid., p. 135.
33.Durand, p. 15.
34.Ibid., p. 16.
35.“Whether viewed from a perspective of regional economics, ethnography, or basic geography, the line seems illogical.” Jeffrey Roberts, The Origins of Conflict in Afghanistan (Westport: Praeger, 2003), p. 29. “The new boundary line was not based upon sound topographical data, for, during the process of demarcation, it was discovered that certain places marked on the Durand map did not exist on the actual ground. Many ethnic absurdities were perpetrated.” Davies, p. 161. “The result was not altogether satisfactory and the unrest which had been prevalent along the frontier…was little, if at all, diminished.” Noyce, p. 143.
36.Abd ar-Rahman Khan, Vol. 2, p. 157.
37.“Seeing that every Government was trying to get hold of as much as it possibly could, I also tried to take as much share as possible in these provinces which formerly belonged to Afghanistan and were now under independent chiefs, by making friends with them.” Ibid., p. 149.
38.Ibid., p. 159.
CHAPTER 14: PLUNDER AND SUBSIDY
1.Afghans like dogs, and they use them to guard their houses and protect their flocks. But in Islam, dogs and cats are ritually unclean. Muslims perform ablutions before praying and, like urinating on themselves, touching a dog “breaks” the ablution and they have to do it over again before beginning their prayers. This is why “sniffer” dogs can be so distressing to Muslims.
2.For an excellent discussion of PTSD, see Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character (New York: Scribner, 1994).
3.See, for example, the following comment of Abdur-Rahman Khan, ruler of Afghanistan from 1880 to 1910, regarding the annual subsidy he received from the British viceroy in India. “The payment of this subsidy does not minimize my dignity: on the contrary, it raises the value of my friendship.” Mir Munshi Sultan Mahomed Khan, ed., The Life of Abdur Rahman, Volume 2 (Karachi: Oxford, 1980), p. 256.
4.See Seymour Hersh, Chain of Command (New York: HarperCollins, 2004), p. 188, and George Packer, The Assassins’ Gate (New York: Farrar Straus and Giroux,2006), p. 45.
CHAPTER 15: SHOWDOWN WITH SHIRZAI
1.Throughout this entire episode, we were accompanied by a documentary film team, Brian Knappenberger and Anton Gold. They captured every scene I describe on film, and the extremely instructive and visually stunning results were broadcast in 2003 on PBS’s Frontline as “A House for Hajji Baba,” and in a longer version called Life After War, on the Discovery Channel. The team’s presence not only added joy and sparkle to our lives, but immeasurably enhanced my reflection on the issues that emerged.
2.Sarah Chayes, “Rebuilding Akokolacha, and why America must get more involved—not less—in Afghanistan,” Christian Science Monitor, December 10, 2002, pp. 12–13.
3.E.g., April Witt, “Afghan Governor Strains to Shed Warlord Image, Gul Agha’s Rule in Kandahar Dismays Some in Kabul,” Washington Post, April 15, 2003, p. A-22.
CHAPTER 17: MILITARY MATTERS
1.This problem eventually came to the attention of the Kandahar base command. In late 2004, I introduced six men as laborers on base—the first and only ones to work there who did not owe alliegance to Shirzai. They were explicitly chosen by base command to serve as a lance-head to begin to break the Shirzais’ monopoly. By 2005, the monopoly was significantly weakened, with the Shirzais winning only some 40 percent of contracts on base, down from 80 to 90 percent. The details in this paragraph were communicated to me in private by U.S. Army officers responsible for the relevant contracts. Cf. James Glanz “Audit Describes Misuse of Funds in Iraq Projects,” New York Times, January 25, 2006, p. A1.
CHAPTER 18: SECURITY
1.Interestingly, the female delegates seem to have been less intimidated than the men. One stepped to the podium and made ringing mention of the warlords’ pasts, waving a hand at a nearby neighborhood destroyed by one of the delegates’ shelling. One female focus group participant said: “Who cares if they turned the microphones off when we criticized them. We could just shout.” See Sarah Chayes “Topak Salaran Basta,” Loya Jirge Focus Groups Study, January 2003, available on www.afghansforcivilsociety.org.
CHAPTER 19: THE COMING OF ISLAM
1.Clifford Edmund Bosworth, Sistan Under the Arabs, from the Islamic Conquest to the Rise of the Saffarids (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1968).
2. Asadi de Tus, Le Livre de Gerchasp, Volume 1, Clement Huart, ed., and trans. (Paris: Geuthner, 1926), p. 39. My translation from the French. Of course, no translation out of Persian can begin to do justice to the sound of its poetry, blessed as Persian is with vowels that are both rich and clear, inviting frequent assonance as well as rhyme.
3. Abul Qasim Firdowsi, The Epic of the Kings, Reuben Levy, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1967), p. 15, and for this version of Jamshid’s reign, pp. 9–11.
4.For a discussion of the achievements of Islamic Persia, see Richard Frye, The Golden Age of Persia (London: Phoenix, 2000) (1st ed., 1975).
5.Approximately.
6.Firdowsi, p. 50.
7.Ibid., pp. 50–52.
8.Jos J. L. Gommans, The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, c.1710–1780 (Delhi: Oxford India Paperbacks, 1999); cf. Rudyard Kipling, Kim: the character of Mahbub Ali, a Pashtun horse trader, spy, and friend of Kim’s, or Kipling’s short story “Drey Wara Yow Dee,” narrated by another Pashtun horse dealer from Afghanistan.
9.Cf. Mary Renault, The Nature of Alexander (New York: Pantheon, 1976), pp. 33–34.
10.Some etymologies of the name Kandahar trace it back to the Persianized version of Alexander. But though there is good reason to believe that Alexandria in Arachosia, one of the cities the Macedonian conqueror left in his wake, was indeed located beside modern Kandahar, archaeologists do not agree upon the exact site of the city. The true origins of the name Kandahar are subject to a similar dispute. See C. E. Bosworth’s article on Kandahar in the Encyclopedia of Islam.
11.Firdowsi, p. 109.12. Strabo, Geography, XV 2:9: “Alexander took these [lands inhabited by the Aracoti and other tribes, near the Indus] away from the Arians, and established settlements of his own, but Seleucus Nikator gave them to Sandrocottus [Chandragupta] upon terms of intermarriage and of receiving in exchange five hundred elephants.” Horace Leonard Jones, trans. (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classics, Harvard University Press, 1930), p.143.
13.Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli and Giovanni Garbini, “A Bilingual Graeco-Aramaic Edict by Asoka,” in Serie Orientale Roma 29 (1964) (Rome: IsMEO, 1964).
14.Ibid., p. 60.
15.Ibid., p. 109.
16.For this whole episode, ibid., pp. 195–211.
17.Hugh Kennedy, The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 2nd ed. (London: Pearson, 2004), p. 59. See also Marshall G. S. Hodgeson, The Venture of Islam, Volume 1, the Classical Age of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1977) (1st ed., 1974), pp. 197–200.
18.Hodgeson, pp. 208–11.
19.Asadi de Tus, p. 74.
20.Ibid., p. 98.
21.Bosworth, Sistan, p. 20. Cf. Frye, pp. 51–52, 92–93.
22.Al-Baladhuri, Futuh al-Buldan Part II, Francis Murgotten, trans. (New York: Columbia, 1924), p.144.