Afghanistan: Even After 200 Years

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article5141513.ece

Elphinstone, the first European diplomatic envoy sent to Afghanistan, had been dispatched from Delhi to coax the “King of Caubul” into an alliance against Napoleon, to explore this terra incognita, and - in the unlikely event that he survived - to report back to London on the “wild and strange” land beyond the mountains.

For a month Elphinstone slogged through the desert wastes, encountering bandits, warring clans and ferocious tribal chiefs off their heads on opium and alcohol who could be spoken to only in the early afternoon, that being the “interval between sobriety and absolute stupefaction”. For guidance, he had to rely on accounts of Alexander the Great's expedition, written more than 2,000 years earlier.


Afghanistan, he wrote, could be understood only through its kaleidoscopic tribal structures. “The societies into which the nation is divided possess within themselves a principle of repulsion and disunion too strong to be overcome,” he noted. When the British marched into Afghanistan to bring about regime-change a few years later, Elphinstone, now in retirement, advised that the venture was hopeless.

There are small signs that the realities Elphinstone understood two centuries ago may finally be sinking in: General David Petraeus, fresh from Iraq, plans to enlist tribal leaders against the Taleban; a political settlement, John Hutton, the Defence Secretary, insists, is essential to a long-term peace.

Before he [Obama] sets off, he might ponder the insights of the very first emissary to that beautiful and benighted place, and the words of an Afghan tribal elder who accosted Mountstuart Elphinstone, two centuries ago, to explain his turbulent world.

“We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood,” the old man said. “But we will never be content with a master.”