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self-laudatory.
Apne muh miya meethu hona
Alexander the Great, said, ‘May God keep you away from the venom of the cobra, the teeth of the tiger and the revenge of the Afghans.’
Why has this unfortunate country been the chessboard of empires?
A legend maintains that Alexander the Great’s mother sent him a letter taunting him for being stuck in Afghanistan for three years after conquering Anatolia, Mesopotamia and Persia in a year.
Alexander sent her back a sack full of Afghan soil, asking her to spread it around her palace. She did as her son had told her to do. But when the Macedonian nobles walked over the Afghan soil they began to bicker and fight amongst themselves.
Hindu Kush means the killer of Hindus,
mea culpa.
Latin phrase which means "through my fault"
It was one such kind old man who longs for his land and his child in Rabindranath Tagore’s ‘Kabuliwala’.
‘Pathan is the name of the community and we will name the country as Pakhtoonistan.
whether he was ‘a Muslim, a Pakistani or a Pashtun first’. He gave a much-quoted reply that he was ‘a six-thousand-year-old Pashtun, a thousand-year-old Muslim and a twenty-seven-year-old Pakistani.’
‘We are content with discord; we are content with alarms; we are content with blood; but we never will be content with a master.’
Whoever travels without a guide Needs two hundred years for a two-day journey
In the summer of 1839, the British army marched up the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. Its aim was to replace Dost Mohammad, a Khan who had never done the British any harm, with Shah Shuja, a Khan who had never done the British any good.
More than an army on a purposeful mission, this vast group seemed more like one on a picnic outing.
They needed 30,000 camels just to carry their baggage. One of the generals needed 260 camels to carry his uniforms, while a brigadier had to make do with only 50 camels. Another group of 30 camels was reserved for carrying claret, six camels carried only cigars and cheroots and one camel carried only eau de cologne. One regiment employed two camels to carry Manila cigars, while other camels carried jams, pickles, cheroots, potted fish, smoked salmon, hermetically sealed meats, plates, glass, crockery, wax candle and table linen.
A Kabul wife under burkha cover Was never known without a lover
IT IS REMARKABLE THAT THE methods of the colonial powers were almost similar and so, too, was their opinion of the people they were colonizing. Reading their views now, it would appear as if they were doing a favour to inferior races by agreeing to colonize them.
‘In Asia, the harder you hit them, the longer they remain quiet.’
‘rule the Punjabis, intimidate the Sindhis, honour the Baluch and buy the Pashtun.
Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, Though they come from the ends of the earth!
Most of it was driven by the conviction of the narcissistic colonial powers that they were the civilized ones who had a mission to tame the uncivilized Asians.
Lord Lytton did not need any further encouragement; and from that point onwards his behaviour towards the Afghan Amir was that of a school bully.
And yet when I think of Sher Ali, as he lies in his sepulchre low, How he died betrayed, heartbroken, ‘twixt infidel friend and foe, Driven from his throne by the English and scorned by the Russian…
The British saw Russia as a threat, not Afghanistan.
The internal wars in Afghanistan had weakened its government to such an extent that the country was regarded by foreign powers as a ‘corridor’ or a ‘buffer zone’ rather than a powerful sovereign land.
he (Britisher) does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles.’
Radcliffe Line
In fact, the level of rage against him was so high that he left India immediately upon completion of the border plan. And he vowed never to return again because he was afraid of being killed by one side or the other.
The next day he sailed for England, where he quickly forgot The case, as a good lawyer must. Return he would not, Afraid, as he told his Club, that he might get shot
And unlike Radcliffe, Mortimer Durand did return to Afghanistan.
Many of the borders that exist today, from the Middle East to India, reflect not any one plan, but a series of opportunistic proposals by competing strategists of colonial powers.
ONE COLD MORNING IN NOVEMBER 1853, a British customs officer, Carne, and two of his aides were inspecting the area for the purpose of enforcing the British salt monopoly, when men belonging to the Hasanzai tribe shot the three dead.
From the Caspian to the Indian Ocean we are without friends.
Since a large country like India with leaders such as Gandhi, Nehru and Patel might refuse to accommodate Britain’s strategic interests after independence, a bit that was conveniently accommodating had to be carved out of it.
Therefore, Pakistan was essential to the British project because through it, the UK could control the main artery leading into Central Asia.
‘We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers.’
All this is an incendiary mix. A mix that is made even more dangerous by the fact that the US, Russia, China, India and Pakistan are all nuclear-armed.
Moreover, the Taliban and the other terror networks in the Af-Pak region may only be one lucky grab away from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
A lot will depend on the jostling among foreign powers. If that be the case and if we assume the result of that tussle among the Taliban, the US, Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran and India would be extended conflict over many years, then the chance of peace or some form of normality coming to the region is slim.
IN ONE OF HIS MANY prescriptions for the region, Rudyard Kipling wrote, ‘Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old.’
To paraphrase Hillary Clinton’s famous rebuke to Pakistan, a snake bites whoever crosses its path.
These mass punishments continue to be practised even now. When an army major was killed in Miranshah Bazaar in 2016, the entire bazaar was bombed out by the Pakistani army.
‘Of the twenty-one attempted invasions of India over the centuries from the north and the west, eighteen were successful.
Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg.
its a lakes name
“You fish on your side, I fish on my side, nobody fishes in the middle.”
