CommentsTHE EPPERHART EXPRESS--The most famous Afghan war veteran is fictional. He is known worldwide through the stories of one of history’s best-selling authors. A former army doctor, John H. Watson was introduced to readers in A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle’s first work featuring detective Sherlock Holmes.
The conflict in which Watson was wounded is real. It’s known generally as the Second Anglo-Afghan War. It started in 1878 because the Afghans didn’t want to admit a British diplomatic delegation. The reason the British tried to force an ambassador on the Afghans was because the Russians had already done so. After two years of warfare, thousands of casualties and a rebellion, the British gained some territory for its Indian Empire and authority over Afghanistan’s foreign affairs.
By the way, the First Anglo-Afghan War was fought about 40 years earlier. It, too, was about British interests in the region and a perceived threat from the Russians.
Russia got its turn a hundred years later when intervention in support of a pro-Soviet Afghan government ignited a decade of warfare. The fundamentalist guerrilla forces successfully bled the U.S.S.R. of manpower, weaponry, and money. With the collapse of communism, the Russians left a vacuum that was quickly filled by the Taliban.
Then came the events of September 11, 2001 and America’s demand that the Afghans turn over Osama bin Laden. And so the United States became deeply embroiled in the deadly politics of this mountainous nation at the crossroads of Central Asia. Like Britain and Russia before, the U.S. assumed the role of the biggest of all the tribes fighting over Afghanistan.
Like much of the region, Afghanistan’s story is one of nearly constant tribal conflict. Foreign powers have, in turn, experienced the agony of trying to impose their will upon a place where government is often more an ideal than reality.
Over the course of the last 15 years, the United States has poured countless human and monetary resources in its effort to bring stability to Afghanistan—an effort that has proved as fruitless for America as it did for Britain and Russia.
Recently, Donald Trump laid out his “plan” for dealing with Afghanistan. In a speech at a Fort Myer, Virginia, he told the audience his first instinct was to order the military to pack up and leave. But, then he sang a much different tune.
Trump declared victory was necessary because of the region’s importance to U.S. security. He vowed there would be no “hasty withdrawal” and that America would use all its “instruments of power” to defeat terrorists in the area. The military would be given all the resources it needed and a green light to fight. Finally, Trump singled out Pakistan’s tolerance for terrorists and threatened action on that front.
Does any of that sound familiar? Did the word “escalation” come into your mind like it did mine? Trump said the U.S. is done with nation building. Our only mission now is to beat terrorists. I hope it works, but I’m not holding my breath.
(Doug Epperhart is a publisher, a long-time neighborhood council activist and has served on the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners. He is a contributor to CityWatch and can be reached at: [email protected])
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