Just Finished Reading: Butcher & Bolt – Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan by David Loyn (FP: 2008)

As this incisive and eye-opening book makes abundantly clear, Afghanistan is an easy country to invade and an impossible one to hold. If the recent Coalition Forces had known their (easily available) history they would have known that and many lives on both sides could have been saved. For centuries now the same mistakes have been made over and over again giving short shrift to the idea that we learn from history. Clearly we do not. From the First Afghan war in the early 19th Century, to the Second Afghan War mid-century and the inevitable Third War from the late 19th into the early 20th centuries the same attempts were made to control the country (as if the nation of Afghanistan actually existed) in the same way and failed in the same way. The Russian Occupation, which never apparently planned for an extended stay, similarly failed despite the brutality of their response to being attacked and their equal disregard for their own conscript casualties and those of the local population (combatant or not). The Allied Forces did no better in their invasion after the destruction of the bases there after 9/11. Easy in, impossible to hold, difficult to leave. Reading the accounts over the past 200 years could have told them that – although excuses would no doubt be found for it being different ‘this time’ even in a situation where our advanced technology is completely negated. This indeed is the main trust of the book.

Essential told in two halves – the historic and the recent – the author, who spent a great deal of time in the region and personally interviewed commanders on both sides of the divide (so much so that he was called a traitor by some and threatened with criminal proceedings), continually points out where things went wrong because of a fundamental mismatch between the image and the reality of Afghanistan perpetrated by people, both political and military, who felt that they had no need to understand the country they had invaded or the people who lived there. Over 200 years when myth met reality the real always won and people died because of it. As several commentators rightly said on the back cover this is a book that everyone thinking of campaigning in Afghanistan should be forced to read and think over. No doubt there are probably plans somewhere for a future occupation either by the Russians, the West or China and unless they understand what they are getting themselves into they will, like armies before them, leave the country ignominiously and leave behind chaos that will no doubt produce yet another generation of terrorists to fall upon the world. The only thing I think we should do with Afghanistan is leave it alone. Let them fight their endless tribal wars whilst keeping a watchful eye on things to see that this does not spill over into their neighbours backyards as it has already done in Pakistan (I believe the technical term for this is 'blowback’). If necessary call in the occasional airstrike or drone mission when things get dangerous enough and then leave well enough alone. It’s a modern variant of ‘butcher and bolt’ I agree but at least in might keep things contained on their side of the mountains rather than ours. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the region.