OP-ED: When history does not teach

Calling something ‘national’ does not make it so
There have been several worn-out cliches thrown out by arm-chair analysts regarding the withdrawal of Nato forces at the end of a 20-year intervention that was originally triggered by the fact that Osama bin Laden (OBL) and his thugs were using the country for an all-out war on civilization, a war whose nadir was reached when they struck New York on that fateful September morning 20 years ago.

Let’s just say that it’s makes nobody an intellectual, let alone a historian worth the name, to parrot some version of “nobody has defeated the Afghans.” Even a cursory look at 19th century South Asian history will point to the depth and scope of defeat the “Afghans” faced at the hands of Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s armies. In fact, for a couple of generations, mothers west of the Durand Line would warn their children to sleep lest “Hari Singh Nalwa showed up.” Nalwa was the general of the Sikh Empire who has gone down in history as the “scourge of the Pathans.” 

That is not to say the tribesmen who inhabit the largely unforgiving terrain of that country called Afghanistan are cowards; quite the opposite, as everyone from Alexander the Great through Genghis Khan, several tsars and British prime ministers, and a few Soviet presidents and their American counterparts have found out. 

Their courage and spirit of the Pathans or Pashtuns, when channeled correctly, does wonders for folks on whose behalf they fight. Their longtime nemesis the British Empire learned this nuance very well; the spiritual and historical descendants of the British Empire across the Atlantic Ocean apparently didn’t.