Why Afghanistan?

Elmo

Why are other countries in Afghanistan fighting? The British and the Americans I suppose. But their could be other countries in there too.

I know the Russians were there as were the French.

I can kind of see why many Afghanis might be a bit pissed with other Army's blowing up their country. Does that make me out to be an extremist?

So why Afghanistan? I just don't understand.

donaghs

It was on the border between the Russian and British empires. The growing power and territory of the Russian Empire was a big worry for British Imperialists in the mid-19th century (until the rise of Kaiser Bill). The Skibereen Eagle (in the "Rebel County") supposedly wrote an editorial criticizing Russian Asiatic expansion and said it would be "keeping an eye on the Czar of Russia".

Afghanistan was viewed as a buffer state but different groups tried to gain the influence it, or just invade it. During the cold war it found itself in a similar role. Due to the US and their Muslim allies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the Soviets were beaten, but the country ended up being taken over by Muslim fanatics - the Taleban. And they gave shelter to Al Quada.

Fratton Fred

If you are talking about the current conflict, the answer is simple, there is a very clear UN mandate which is being lead by NATO.

There are 42 countries that contribute troops to the "International Security Assistance Force" 28 of which are NATO countries, 14 are non NATO, such as France and Ireland. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_8189.htm

Elmo

Fratton Fred wrote: »

If you are talking about the current conflict, the answer is simple, there is a very clear UN mandate which is being lead by NATO.

There are 42 countries that contribute troops to the "International Security Assistance Force" 28 of which are NATO countries, 14 are non NATO, such as France and Ireland. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_8189.htm

Over all history of the country.

ejmaztec

The Afghans seem to have a long history of being "best-friends" with whichever country could throw the most money at them.

One of those WW1 history programmes, repeated a couple of days ago (again:eek:), mentioned how the Germans tried to get them to send 50,000 troops into India to hopefully trigger off an uprising against British rule, and offered them a financial incentive to do so. Unfortunately for the Germans, the Afghans got paid more by the British to mind their own business.

Fratton Fred

Elmo wrote: »

Over all history of the country.

Have you not seen carry on up the khyber?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carry_On..._Up_the_Khyber

Hookey

Historically the area was always the route in to India for armies invading from the north going back to before Alexander The Great. He was followed by Aryans, Kushans, The Mongols and the Mughal (I'm skipping here). None of them particularly wanted Afghanistan, just the access, and because it was also on one of the great trade routes (well, a tributary of the silk road) it was a good base for bandits and mountain men to prey on passing traders and armies. When the British took over India they eventually butted up to the region and used raids from the Pashtun as a pretext to put their own puppet on the throne (Shah Shuja). It didn't work out too well for the Brits and it was another 30 years and another war before they came close to pacifying the place.

The reason they even bothered was to check Russian expansion; Russia has long had a desire for so-called Blue Water ports (Russia was hemmed in by the Baltic, The Black Sea, partially frozen northern ports on the White Sea, or Pacific ports too far away to be much use in a war - which contributed to their defeat in the Crimean War), so Afghanistan was seen as the southern route to the sea - get Afghansitan and they could threaten north-west India (now Pakistan) or Persia. When the Soviets finally invaded Afghanistan for real in 1980 the strategic objective hadn't really changed and the real fear was Pakistan was next, or more likely Iran (which was massively unstable having only had the Islamic revolution a year before) for the ports and the oil.

The Americans couldn't fight the Soviets directly, so they fought by proxy using the Mujahadeen, who were a bunch of Pashtun Medieval Islamist hillbillies but at the time lots of Americans regarded any religion as better than no religion (e.g. the communists), so they armed them (watch Charlie Wilson's War for a good little history of this), they won, kicked the Soviets out, but then turned into the Taleban. In the meantime Gulf War I created Saudi anti-American feeling and formed Al-Qeada, who used Afghanistan (and Sudan) as a training base. So, 911 happens, they track back Al-Qeada to Afghanistan and send in the troops. The problem is that trying to impose "western democracy" on the place is an exercise in futility, and unless operations against the Taleban operate on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border, you can't beat them militarily either (and "beat" probably means commit genocide).