Afghanistan: the graveyard of empires?

If you’re interested in history whether it’s modern history or antiquity, you probably came across the famous sentence describing Afghanistan as the graveyard empires, in reference to the defeat the british colonial army in Afghanistan, as well as the soviet failure in 1988 during the soviet-afghan war, “some medias include the us during the war on terror in the comparison“.

In this article I’ll try to reply to the question of the reality of this sentence, that is becoming more popular in both historical books and other medias.

ANTIQUITY:

let’s first talk a little bit about Afghanistan’s antique history. The area that is now Afghanistan was once called Bactria by the greeks and the Persians. The region was a part of the median empire before falling in the hands of the Persian achaemenid empires after Cyrus the great’s invasion. Written records exist of a rebellion in the region following the Achaemenid conquest, but these same records agree on the crushing defeat of the rebellion. Later on and just like pretty much all of the achaemenid empire, Bactria was invaded by Alexander ‘’the great” of Macedon with little resistance according to Goukowsky.

After the death of Alexandre the great and the division of his realm between his generals, Bactria was inherited by Seleucos an then was part of the Greco-bactrian kingdom, the Kushans, the Sassanians, the kouchans, and the hephtalites. This section on afghan antiquity is intended to point out the fact that many empires have fought for afghan lands during the antiquity as it lays in the crossroads between china, India, and Persia. And so for the same reason Afghanistan witnessed a succession of successful foreign invasions.

ISLAMIC ERA:

Even tho Afghanistan is actually a muslim majority state, it wasn’t a part of the early muslim empires or at least not completely the eastern part remaining fully independent, and conserving its traditional culture and religion, and although this was a major blow for the invading Arab force, the consequences of such defeat weren’t that great, as it haven’t stopped Mahmoud of ghazni of invading east Afghanistan in the eleventh century.

MODERN PERIOD:

Modern period is probably the one that has the most events that are used as a justification of the expression “graveyard of empire” referring as mentioned previously to the British and soviet invasions, so let’s have a deep dive into these two historical events.

By british failure most people refer to the first Anglo-afghan war as there were two other anglo-afghan conflicts the second one being a british victory and resulting in the fall of Afghanistan under british protectorate, while the third one resulted in afghan independence after Afghanistan’s victory. As the reader would remark the first anglo-afghan war wasn’t the last nail in the coffin for the british empire which kept expanding during the rest of the nineteenth century, However the afghan victory in the third anglo-afghan war and during the soviet invasion are more interesting and had more importance, note the the former’s outcome is very debated with many considering it as a british tactical victory, while the latter is considered as an afghan victory due to western support for the mujaheddin.

So to put it simple, is Afghanistan the graveyard of empires? No. Is Afghanistan a welcome mat for foreign invaders? No. History is always more complicated than that