A Concise History of Afghanistan’s International Relations - (Origins of the Afghan State, the Great Game, and Afghan Nationalism) - Michael Rouland

Long before the Cold War standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union and the subsequent conflicts between al-Qaeda and the West, Afghanistan endured centuries as a frontier zone between larger opposing empires: Persian in Western Asia; Mughal in South Asia; and Turkic in Central Asia. Economically, the area has remained on the margins. Even when Peshawar, Ghazni, Turquoise Mountain (Ghor), and Kandahar emerged as metropoles during the indigenous Kushan (first to third centuries), Ghaznavid (tenth to twelfth centuries), Ghorid (twelfth to thirteenth centuries), or Durrani (eighteenth to nineteenth centuries) Empires, their income was drawn from their Persian or Indian dominions.

Afghanistan was constrained by mountainous barriers that created particular ethnic and tribal allegiances. The foundation of the early Afghan state rested on confederations of core groups that projected power outward rather than establishing strong, centralized political rule from within. From the mid-tenth century to the mid-eighteenth century, the rulers of Afghanistan were of Turco-Mongolian origin or led a military dominated by TurcoMongolians. Not until the Durrani Empire did ethnic Pashtuns emerge as a political force in Afghanistan.2 Thus it is crucial to consider Pashtun rule in the context of Afghanistan’s rich multiethnic heritage.3 In Afghanistan’s Endless War, Larry P. Goodson observed: “If Afghanistan has been marked by a history of invasion and conquest, no less has it suffered from almost continuous internal strife among the native peoples living in its remote mountain valleys.” 4

In the early eighteenth century, the territory that came to be known as Afghanistan was divided between the Safavid (Persian) and Mughal (Turco-Mongol) Empires. Ahmad Shah commanded a military unit under the ascendant Persian ruler Nadir Shah in his campaigns against the Mughals. When Nadir Shah was assassinated in 1747 and the Safavid Empire collapsed, Ahmad Shah (r. 1747–72/73) established an independent city-state around Kandahar. He adopted the name “Dur-i-Durran,” or “Prince of Pearls,” and used the term “Durrani” to distinguish the tribes affiliated with him. According to an early-nineteenth-century British account, Afghanistan after Ahmad Shah became an “orgy of intrigue, treachery, torture and murder . . . [an] ever-shifting kaleidoscope of betrayal.”1 Ahmad Shah Durrani and his son Timur Shah Durrani (r. 1772/73–93) expanded their domain, conquering territories from Kashmir to the Arabian Sea and from the Amu River (da Amu Sind) to the Indus River (Abasin). The Durrani realm at the end of the eighteenth century included modern-day Afghanistan and most of Pakistan, making it the second-largest Muslim empire of its day.  Ahmad Shah Durrani, poet, warrior, and king that he was, wrote of his nostalgia for Afghanistan during ten campaigns to expand his rule over Kashmir, Punjab, and Sind:

Whatever countries I conquer in the world, I would never forget your beautiful gardens. When I remember the summits of your beautiful mountains I forget the greatness of the Delhi throne.2

This fondness for his Afghan homeland provided a lasting challenge to his heirs. Unlike the rulers of other Central Asian empires who moved their capitals to strategic and economically viable locations, Ahmad Shah consolidated power in the Pashtun bases of Kandahar, Kabul, and Peshawar. Thus the Durrani Empire was “a coat worn inside out,” according to Thomas J. Barfield.3 Kandahar, Kabul, and Peshawar were poor and sparsely populated compared to the rest of the Durrani Empire. The wealthiest territories remained on frontiers in every direction

British penetration into South Asia in the eighteenth century created another layer of challenges for future Afghan leaders. Afghans unintentionally aided British occupation of the Pashtun borderlands and, more critically, allowed the rise of Sikh power in Punjab.4 Once Durrani’s descendants destroyed the Mughal Empire, they could not maintain such a vast and diverse empire and prolong their dominance over Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, the Hindu Kush, Peshawar, Punjab, Kashmir, Baluchistan, and Sind. Moreover, each time the Durrani leader left his seat of power in Kandahar, emerging plots from rival Pashtun tribes and other ethnic groups threatened to depose him.5 Afghan rulers slowly lost their territories to the Sikhs and the British: Punjab (1801), Kashmir (1819), Sind (1820s), Peshawar (1834/1879), and Baluchistan (1879), until Abdur Rahman Khan focused his authority in Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, and the northern Afghan provinces in the 1880s. As of this writing, four urban centers remain: Kandahar in the south, Herat in the west, Balkh in the north, and Kabul in the east. Peshawar and the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa) make a fifth region, which the British gave to Pakistan in 1947. Peshawar was historically important to Afghan rulers as their summer capital and continues to be strategically significant as the eastern gateway to the Khyber Pass, the link between Central and South Asia. - Read More at the A Concise History of Afghanistan’s International Relations

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