The Great Game, by GS Goraya

 Searching for Peter Hopkirk's classic history The Great Game, I happened upon this one instead. At first I mistook it for Hopkirk's. It is shorter, and appears to be a university thesis. So it's clear and well-organized, and I got a lot out of it - if not much in the way of history or wargaming inspiration! In particular, I realized that the conventional Western view of Afghanistan, which I share since I mostly got it from British sources, is simplistic and misses much subtlety and multiculturalism. Checking my preconceptions...

Takeaways:

• Afghanistan is not a "grave of empire," but has been conquered time and again, with many different ethnic groups meeting and coalescing in what was for long a "crossroads of empire." Ironically, the British were aware of this, since they looked for Alexandrian, classical and Semitic cultural features in the peoples of Afghanistan. The British and Russian "game," mostly the British, hemmed this crossroads in. (The analogy of hemming, the sewing term, is expressly used as a reference to clearing up "loose threads" - or borders - and bringing them under control). Once Afghanistan lost its ability to communicate by trade with the outside world, now held by nominal British political control, it became a poorer country. Landlocked countries always have economic difficulties, but ones that have their external relations controlled by another are even worse off. Some attention is paid to the creation of Pakistan, which controls much of what was once Afghan territory - including a route to the sea - and Goraya suggests that this is the root of Afghanistan's independent international relations. There are parallels here with the separation of "island" populations that lead to the endangerment and extinction of species.
• Afghanistan's nominal independence since the 19th century always has been that of a buffer state - first between British and Russian imperial states, then between Commonwealth and Communism. The purpose of the Wakhan corridor was to provide neutral ground between three spheres of influence - British, Chinese and Russian.
• Afghanistan is not an anarchic state, impossible to control (hence the "grave of empires" thing), but has a structure. This is not of provinces or states, but of kinship and kingship. This "anarchy" was seen as a romantic and almost democratic throwback by some explorers, but the structure is there, simply not formalized as in a so-called "modern" state.
• The colonial, and later national, conventional structure of "modern" Afghanistan was overlaid on this initial structure, but did not replace it. There are parallels here with the infamous "straight-line" borders of Africa and the Middle East, imposed by colonial overlords with no consideration of the underlying communities. Goraya refers repeatedly to the simplistic reduction and labeling of multicultural spaces as "frontiers," or "settled and unsettled" spaces. Other parallels come to mind, of America's Westward Expansion into an "empty" frontier.
• The kinship/kingship structure has a subtle religious component, and this is the root of what the British would have called "Ghazi fanaticism." When the king or chief was imposed on the group from without - as was done before the first war - this was, in effect, imposing a new link between God and man. Not a good idea. The imposed king actually told the British his people wouldn't accept a puppet!

A short volume, but punchy and clear in its summary of Afghanistan's relationship with the outside world. Recommended.