Knowing Afghanistan:Can there be an end to the saga?

Document Type : Original Independent Original Article

Author

Professor of Political Geography and Geopolitics Islamic Azad University of Tehran – South

Abstract

 
War on terrorism, as the motto which formed the cornerstone of global policies of former neo-conservative administration of the United States, is increasingly becoming ineffective in Afghanistan with the dreaded consequence of spilling over into Pakistan. This inevitable consequence of War on Terrorism in Afghanistan has brought the West face to face with the ‘nest of terrorism’ that CIA built in Pakistan’s so-calledmadrasasof extremist Wahhabi teachings in the first place, with the enthusiastic assistance of Nawaz Sharif’s government in Pakistan, the Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia and the Al-Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates in late 1990s. In their evil planning they found it necessary to invent a state history for Afghanistan based on former British colonial designs for the region during their geopolitics of Great Game with Russia in 19th century. They invented the Afghan state by putting together territories they severed from the veiningPersian Empire of the time. This process of state-manufacturing in Afghanistan though served the colonial purposes at the time, never proved to be working in the sense that is expected of a genuinely founded nation and nation-state. The ills of this ill-designed state will naturally disallow any remedy that is not based on a genuine state-building process in that country. To produce such a remedy Afghanistan needs to address the ills of its state-structure by pinpointing the centrifugal forces that drives various ethnicities apart and to try and find some kind of accommodation among components that makes up the state of Afghanistan. The best method to achieve this in today world of politics would probably be a genuinely designed federalism

Keywords

References

  1. See open letters from Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh to President George W. Bush of the United States 2003,

www.payvand.com/news/03/mar/1027.htmland 2006www.payvand.com/news/06/apr/1165.html

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  2. On the local consequences of the Geopolitics of the Great Gamesee: Pirouz Mojtahed-Zadeh, Small Players of the Great Game, Routledge/Curzon, London 2004.
  3. Lord George Nathaniel, Marquis Curzon of Kedelston as quoted by Anthony Verrier in his, “Francis Younghusband and the Great Game, Jonathan Cape, London 1991, P. 1. 
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  7. Sir Percy Sykes, Ten Thousand Miles in Persia, John Murray, London 1902, footnote to page 364.
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  12. Extract of a letter from Sir John McNeil to Viscount Palmerstone, dated Mashhad, June 25, 1838, Blue Book, PP. 131-2, FO 539/1-10 (microfilm), PP. 131-3.
  13. Referring to the siege of Herat by the Iranian forces in 1837.
  14. Extract of a letter from Mr. McNaughton to Mr. McNeil, dated Fort William, November 21, 1838, “Correspondence relating to the Affairs of Persia and Afghanistan” section B., P. 2, FO 539/1-10 (microfilm).
  15. Gottmann, J. (1964), ‘Geography and international relations’, in Jackson, W.A.D. (ed.), Political and Geographic Relationships (Englewood-Cliffs New Jersey: Princeton Hall Inc.).
  16. George N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, Vol. II, P. 586.
  17. Ahmad Shah Dorrani was born in 1722, and died in 1772.
  18. Persian Frontiers, Section on boundaries with Afghanistan, RRX/7/I, FO 371/40219, P. 2.
  19. See introduction and relevant references.
  20. Curzon, op. cit., P. 586.
  21. Gottmann, Jean, op.cit.

 

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