Afghanistan ... Occupations, hidden support and fall of empires - 1

Geographical importance and origin. carefully drawn borders

The English dubbed it the "graveyard of empires", and the withdrawing US president, Joe Biden, recalled it with the same name. Why was Afghanistan throughout its rich history at the crossroads of the world's major empires? And why these empires were unable to survive in it? And where lies the absent solution to this country whose path is still uncertain?

For centuries, Afghanistan remained a coveted place for various empires as well as a cold war scene, and then turned into a hideout full of caves to return to confront the largest military power in the world (America), which withdrew from it after 20 years of war.

In this four-part file, we will discuss the history of this country and how the great powers fought over it, leading to the American withdrawal and the Taliban's control of power, and finding out the solution to the problem of Afghanistan, which is the same problem that the countries of the Middle East suffer from.

In the first part of this file, we will return to the history of the country and the background of the conflict.

Location of Afghanistan... carefully drawn borders

Afghanistan occupies a great strategic importance through its geographical location in Central and South Asia. This site is in the middle of a diverse region of ethnicities, interests and ideologies. On its land, the goals and intentions of the great and major powers and the surrounding countries intersect, so it has become one of the most important hot spots in the world.

Afghanistan is located in the far east of the Iranian plateau, and because of its proximity to the Himalayas, which resembles an arc that surrounds it and is impenetrable, it has become a link between the great empires in Central Asia, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent.

The great historian Arnold Toynbee Arnold pointed out that the emergence of civilization from its cradle in Mesopotamia (Mesopotamia) clearly shows the map of the ancient world and distinguishes between countries located in remote unknown places and those located in important strategic areas, placing Syria and Afghanistan in this last classification as being located In two distinct regions, Syria was the link between the civilizations that arose in Europe, Africa and Asia, while Afghanistan was the point at which the roads branching between the civilizations of India, East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and then to Europe.

He wrote, "Put yourself - not in Europe - but in Iraq, and you will see clearly that half the roads of the old world lead to Aleppo and the other half to Bagram (there was one of the largest American military bases in Afghanistan)".

Toynbee indicates that Bagram was one day a candidate for the Great the Cyrus to establish his military state, Kapish-Kanish, and was also a candidate for the founding of the city of Alexandria, which was established by Alexander the Great in the Caucasus after that.

to repel Russia

Leader Abdullah Ocalan says in his plea, titled “The Kurdish Issue and the Democratic Nation’s Solution”: “The Iranian state, on which several dynasties sat on its throne, was reconstructed after the First World War as a modern nation-state that was produced by England’s calculations of hegemony, similar to what happened in the example of the Republic. Turkey and the entire Afghan kingdom.”

And he continues: "England, which reduced the Turkish Republic, Iran, and the Afghan monarchy, in this period, structured and established each of them as a buffer nation-state on the way down to the south of the Russian Federation, and not transforming these areas into classic colonial regimes does not come from their weakness, but rather from fear of Russia's expansion Federalism. Buffer state policy is an English system generally successfully applied, from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the present day."

Confronting Iran and protecting the British Crown

American historian Stephen Tanner says in his book - Afghanistan: Military History from the Age of Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban: "I think Toynbee would have been happy to confirm the validity of his theory if he had lived to see the transformation of Bagram Airport into a major base for the Soviets in the eighties of the twentieth century, or to see the armies of Britain and Germany and Australia - and not only America - at the beginning of the same century, lands at this vital point between the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush mountains.

According to the American historian, at the end of the nineteenth century, European observers demarcated the country's borders with the aim of creating a model country from their point of view, located on the border between British India and the tidal or sweeping current coming from Russia in Central Asia.

Therefore, we find that the Afghan border follows the Oxes River (Amudria (Gihon)) in the north and Hari Rad in the south facing Iran.

In the space between them, the Russians carried out a military maneuver aimed at seizing an important oasis before they agreed on a fixed line of the border.

In the south, there was no debate about the Afghan frontier with Baluchistan in modern Pakistan, since the whole area was nothing more than a barren desert, a death trap for any armies that penetrated it, and fit only the tough men who chose to live in it.

In the east, a British expedition led by Durand Mortimer made a great effort to mark a line through the middle of the Pashtun ethnic group with the aim of diminishing Afghanistan's political importance while achieving the greatest geographical advantage for the British defenders of the British Raj.

According to the historian; This planning resulted in Afghanistan's present frontiers in the east—most of which were not actually on the ground but theoretically only on mountaintops—became the best defense for the British crown jewel.

The historian added that Durand did not imagine that in 1947 the British would evacuate India; He did not even imagine that there would be a country called Pakistan. Yet the British and Russians mapped Afghanistan as a vast country of 250,000 square miles (about the size of Texas) dominated by the Hindu Kush in the center and inhabited by various ethnic groups on either side.

As for the finger of the Afghan land, which extends to China in the northeast, in a worthless land that extends about fifty miles and is considered a thorn in the back of the country; The British imposed it on Afghanistan so that the Russian lands would not extend to the borders of India.

Tomorrow: Russian-British conflict, hidden US and Pakistani support, and the Taliban declare the emirate

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ANHA