Opportunism and invasion of Afghanistan...this administration is sociopathic...Afghanistan
Posted on Monday, December 8, 2003. “The Afghan may be said to be born with a dagger in his belt, a sword at his side, and a knife between his teeth.” Originally from Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 58, iss. 346, March, 1879. By Zadel B. Gustafson.
SourcesAbout seven thousand miles eastward, as the bird flies, is the beautiful wild inland country of Afghanistan—a land of lofty closely grouped hills connecting by difficult passes the smiling vales between which they rise into the region where the snow upon their summits never melts, their brows white in eternal winter, their feet bedded in flowers and bathed by sparkling summer streams.
This Asiatic Switzerland is peopled with over five millions[1] of a warlike race, whose record is one of the bloodiest and at the same time most romantic in profane history. The istan or land of the Afghans resembles Switzerland in the grandeur of its natural features, and the Afghans, like the Swiss, are brave and absolutely fearless of death; but here the likeness ceases, for the Afghans are a turbulent people, blood-thirsty and treacherous, and most unlike the sturdy, intelligent, and peace-loving though brave nation of the little Swiss republic.
The courage which inspired the Swiss hero Arnold von Winkelried when he gathered the Austrian pikes into his own breast[2], that his troops might pass over their slain chief to victory, was the courage of the purest patriotism. An Afghan chief would have embraced death with an equal intrepidity, but from the impulse of ferocity, and from personal bravado.
“In the Afghan's eyes,” says Colonel Ferrier, “courage so called is the greatest of all virtues; it stands in the place of every other; and to take vengeance upon an enemy, to kill and massacre plenty of human beings, passes with them for courage. As soon as a prince or chief or person of lower grade is in the possession of absolute power, he is expected to prove that he has it by the massacres he orders. They can not comprehend why an enemy vanquished or disarmed should be pardoned, and they regard such an act as one of weakness and pusillanimity. In their estimation he who makes the most victims is the most powerful, the most honored, and it is very doubtful whether there is a family in Herat which has not heen deprived of some one of its members by Shah Kamran's barbarity. Yet now that he is dead, the people flock in crowds in pilgrimage to his tomb! With such sentiments it is not surprising to see the history of this nation traced in blood!”
A more incomprehensible study than that of the Afghan character, with its constant tumults of all the passions, its reckless indifference to life and to death, its total ignorance of the sentiment or principle of honor (as we understand it), its delight in brutal exploit, its headlong obedience to its own crude and violent emotions, could hardly be offered to the healthy young New England mind; for there is probably no life on the face of the earth grounded in principles so morally stalwart, and so little believing in the restraint of the passions or in the license of individual will, as the life of the Puritan stock peopling New England. For us to conceive of a life and character so radically unlike and so violently different in its manifestations is difficult; yet it is a timely study now that this distant land and its undisciplined people are for some time to come to take part in a drama they themselves probably understand least of all among its actors.[3]
As to the origin of the Afghan people, Eastern writers hold various opinions, but the majority agree in believing them to the descendants of one of the ten tribes of Israel, which is the claim of the Afghans themselves. Their name Afghan is the plural of feghan, an Arab word meaning noise or tumult, and Afghanistan literally signifies the land of the quarrelsome. According to the interesting manuscript of Abdulla Khan, of Herat,[4] “The whole Afghan nation was brought together by the arrival of the Abdalees (so named from Abdal, son of Tsera-bend who was the son of Afghan) in the Suliman Mountains, and then consisted of twenty-four tribes, of which Afghan (the son of Saul, King of the Jews) was the father. This prince had three sons, Tsera-bend, Argoutch and Kerlen, and each of them was the father of eight sons, who gave their names to the twenty-four tribes.”
These tribes multiplied and spread over the romantic country of their choice, building towers on its heights, founding cities on its fertile plains, and transmitting with their warlike, heroic qualities their terrible feuds and their unpronounceable names from father to son.
The Afghan may be said to be born with a dagger in his belt, a sword at his side, and a knife between his teeth, and from the moment he can walk alone he is on the watch for known or suspected enemies, and on his own part hesitates at nothing by which he can push himself forward in the race for power or wealth. If father, mother, wife, or child become obstacles in the path of personal ambition, it is the worse for them, especially if the goal be wealth, for with the Afghani avarice and cupidity are predominant and intense. In such a crisis an Afghan does not reflect or vacillate, but accomplishes either by direct atrocity or artful trap the desired end.
Their slaves and the prisoners taken in their unceasing skirmishing—for they have not the system or organization of real warfare—are victims not only of the will and temper of their masters and captors, but of a terrible caprice that takes pleasure in personally inflicting tortures and barbarities that seem incredible. Instead of industries, pillage, forage, and massacres are the routine of Afghan life, and each Afghan well knows that he is almost certain of his portion of its desperate vicissitudes, the rich and despotic chief or serdar of one day being often upon the next overcome and reduced to a servitude such as he has himself imposed.
In spite of their savage character and reckless mode of life, a certain crude barbaric sense of justice makes itself felt. The assassin is in turn slain by the nearest of kin to his victim; and if this avenger happens to be a child, the retribution is postponed until he is old enough to effect it. He can condone the offense if he will, and which he will more readily do for money than for any other consideration; but he is arbiter.
As the Afghans are a nation of thieves, and live upon the fruits of this vice, they are lenient toward it, and a thief is not punished with death before the fourth offense, the earlier ones meeting with comparatively light penalties; but for all crimes the Afghani has always the chance left of buying himself free from his sentence, if he is rich enough to do so. The Afghans are, withal, superstitious, ignorant, and generally uncleanly. With them life is a game whose end is almost always certain to be violent, and which they play as if they were a nation of Attilas.
But yet the Afghan character is not without redeeming gleams of better traits, and its very vices and excesses appear to be in part owing to those external conditions for which they are irresponsible, but more to those transmitted qualities and tendencies which constitute an essentially tragical nature, made up of such agitations as seem to prevent the possibility of their ever becoming a peace-loving or peace-living nation. It is more than possible that the immense and varied force of the Afghan character, compressed as it has been for centuries within a circle of activities so narrow and rude, might ultimately manifest itself as greatly in good as it has hitherto done in evil if the vast opportunities of civilization were opened to it. Within the last twenty years, since the influx of Russian commerce into Afghanistan, the Afghans have shown a susceptibility of change and improvement that, in view of their record in the past, is astonishing and full of promise, and they have had some rulers who have reigned with wisdom, patience, and honor, and some chiefs who have shown clemency in the hour of victory.
The Afghans are tall, of large and well-knit frames, muscular, and hardy. Their strong, heavy features and dark skins give them a fierce expression of countenance; their black eyes—“their lids tinged with antimony to add force, beauty, and dazzling brilliancy to them”—are full of fire, so that their swift, bold, and flaming glance is very impressive. They wear their hair shaved from the forehead to the top of the head, the rest falling in black thick masses to the shoulders. The dress of the people is of cotton, or of cloth called barek, made of camel's-hair, and is worn in two long and very full robes, the material used by the wealthy classes being of silk or cashmere; blue or white turbans and slippers complete the costume.
The garments of the young chiefs are often quite gay with gold-lace or gold-thread embroidery. This ornamentation is done by the women in the harems, who are very skillful with the needle.
Comte de Gobineau[6] in his Romances of the East thus describes a young Afghan chief, whose name was Moshen, meaning beautiful: “His complexion was richly tawny, like the skin of fruit ripened by the sun. His black locks curled in a wealth of ringlets round the compact folds of his blue turban striped with red; a sweeping and rather long silken mustache caressed the delicate outline of his upper lip, which was cleanly cut, mobile, proud, and breathing of life and passion. His eyes, tender and deep, flashed readily. He was tall, strong, slender, broad-shouldered, and strait-flanked. No one would ever dream of asking his race; it was evident that the purest Afghan blood flowed in his veins.”
The beauty of young Afghans is frequently spoken of by Eastern writers, but it would seem from the very nature of things as though this glowing description must be overdrawn; just as the handsome, pensive young Uncas of our well-beloved West Indian romancer, James Fenimore Cooper, can hardly be recognized in the modern Modoc. Still, abundant testimony claims a dark and hardy beauty for the Afghan in his prime.
The country is divided into many principalities or provinces, the most important being Cabool, Herat, Kafiristan, and Candahar.
Cabool is the chief city of Afghanistan. It lies between magnificent hills—its site being, however, an almost perfect level. The Hindoo Coosh Mountain rears, turret-like, between Cabool and other Afghan countries; it has seven passes, only one of which, the Abdereh, is passable during the five or six months of winter; and owing to the extent and violence of the spring floods the other passes are available only for a little while in autumn.
If the site of ancient temples or ruins were decided by the fitness of things, one might reasonably look for the tower of Babel in the city of Cabool, for there are spoken in it no less than eleven or twelve different languages, and it is doubtful if so many races and such a “confusion of tongues” could be found in any other one place.
The mountains east and north of Cabool are beautiful with a deep green mountain pine, called the archeh; they are rich in springs, their sides are smooth and covered with a fine quality of vegetation and plenty of grass. The mountains to the westward are different, they are barren and wear no grass above the valleys, their streams flow in precipitous glenns that can not be descended. The fruits of both hot and cold climates are here. Of the cold district fruits there are apples, pears, grapes, peaches, apricots, quinces, and pomegranates, jujubes, damsons, almonds, and walnuts, and even cherries in abundance; some of these fruits are of great circumference and weight. The warm district fruits are citron, sugar-cane, and orange. Their honey they obtain from the hilly country to the westward, and to Sir Alexander Barnes they owe the introduction of the potato.
The climate is extremely delightful, there being nothing equal to it in the known world, if we may accept the enthusiastic reports of those who have travelled there, or if we believe in the exquisite descriptions of Moore's musical Oriental poem, “Lalla Rookh,[7]” whose author travelled in the East in spirit—through the most exhaustive, faithful study—though never actually setting foot on Asiatic soil.
In the summer, however sultry the day may have been, a posteen (lamb-skin cloak) is acceptable to wind about you at night; and though the winter snow-falls are heavy, the weather is seldom intensely cold. The bade perwan, or pleasant breeze, is a wind that during the spring blows steadily over Cabool from the north; but as the town Perwan lies in that direction, it may easily have been the origin of the name of this persistent wind.
There are four beautiful intervals in and around Cabool highly cultivable, and fed and freshened by many clear springs. Some of these meadows are much infested by mosquitoes, but others are remarkably free from these little torments. An extensive forest to the southeast of the city supplies it with fire-wood and timber. The Balar Hissar (palace of the kings) division of the city is walled around with stone. Here are inclosed barracks, stables, palaces, and gardens, and here the governor resides. The Balar Hissar tower itself is on a high hill overlooking the city. In the city are four very large bazars, where wares from almost every mart in the world can be found. In 1842, after the Afghans treacherously surprised and massacred the British army quartered in Cabool, killing Sir Alexander Burnes, and Sir W. Macnaughton, the British retook the city, and completely destroyed one of the largest and most superb bazars ever constructed in the East, and generally despoiled the city, retiring from it after enacting this terrible revenge. The streets of Cabool are very narrow, scarcely permitting “two horse-men abreast.” The houses, usually two or three stories high, are built of wood and brick, with level roofs on which the people sleep i n summer nights, the somnambulist heing protected by the sort of lattice-work which is built around the edges of the roofs.
In the shops along the ground-floors of these streets an excellent dinner can be had for one penny, and sherbet, ice, and all the delicacies of a first-class Afghan dinner can be had for about three half-pence. If the Afghans were a peaceable people, what an El Dorado would their land be for “tramps!”
On the sides of the picturesque hills that surround the city of Cabool are many beautiful summer homes, with lovely and fragrant gardens walled in, and the view from the Balar Hissar is extended, and comprises not only the softened charm of the spicy vales and hill-side gardens, but the sublimity of the mountains receding from shade to shade of purest blue and tintless white into the glistening skies.
harpers.org |
