Forward the Light Brigade?

Farewell Kabul is a moving account of, primarily, the war in Afghanistan after the earth-shaking events of 9/11. Written by a journalist who fell in love with Pakistan and Afghanistan on attending Benazir Bhutto’s wedding reception in 1987, the book recounts this love affair, driven by her journalistic quest to uncover the raison d’être of the war, which incidentally was to eliminate Al-Qaeda initially but was transformed over time into a war against whosoever the West suspected as being ‘Taliban’.

The book starts with the brilliantly reconstructed ‘retreat’ of British and US forces from Camp Bastion in the Helmand province after the conclusion of what may well be described as the Fourth Anglo–Afghan War. Christina Lamb wonders aloud whether the 453 British soldiers had died in vain when she reads the brass plaques bearing the names of those killed with the words of First World War poet, John Maxwell Edmonds:

“When you go home, tell them of us and say

For your tomorrow we gave our today”

She is highly impressed by the fighting skills of a rag-tag Taliban group. As an embedded journalist, she was on the receiving end of their ammunition when they staged a daring and ferocious ambush on British soldiers, and managed to engage one of the best-equipped and equally well-drilled armies of the world for hours in 2006. She describes the elation felt and expressed in the British camp when it was discovered that there were no British fatalities. To her relief, it was an amateurish performance by the Taliban. But someone who understands the Pushtun culture and mindset cannot rule out the possibility that it was a deliberate and calculated act aimed at scaring the daylights out of the ‘Angrez’ invader on the part of the Taliban – for them to live to tell the tale.

As corrupt and uncouth warlords became the eyes and ears of the US and UK forces in their operations targeting Al-Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, the race to extort massive amounts of money became a favourite sport of the warlords. One such blue-eyed warlord was Gul Agha Sherzai who had occupied the governor’s palace in Kandahar under US air cover. Sherzai was a typical Pushtun gangster with medieval dinner table manners – despite owning a set of spanking new Toyota land cruisers bought with American money. Lamb proudly shares the fact that she survived a lunch of fatty mutton broth whereas Jack Straw, then the British foreign minister, was bedridden for days after having had the same lunch with Sherzai.

"Rule Number One in politics: never invade Afghanistan"

Like millions around the world, she is dumbfounded by the Bush-Blair decision to invade Iraq and to drop Afghanistan midway through. As was the perception and allegation right throughout the war, she is unforgiving of the ISI for their alleged role in allowing sanctuary to the Afghan Taliban in Quetta (the infamous ‘Quetta Shura’ as the world knows it).

Lamb is relatively kind to her old friends such as Hamid Karzai, even though his bitterness against the US and Pakistan sounds like the rant of a cranky, middle-aged loner with a twitching left eye for added effect. The epithet of the mayor of Kabul is an overstatement, she discovers first-hand when she stays in the presidential palace for a few days as a fly on the wall. Although effusive in her praise for Benazir Bhutto, she is quite dismissive of Nawaz Sharif who, she recounts, once tucked into a whole chicken on the breakfast table!

Apart from her in-depth analysis of the political and military aspects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Lamb’s caricature of life in Kabul and Iraq is amusingly anecdotal, making the book a must-read. The frisking at Kabul airport by female security staff in their cubicles might be called a grope elsewhere, for example. Aid workers and diplomats were throwing parties themed “Tarts and Taliban” and “Graveyard of Empires”, to name but two, and the British Embassy apparently had a pub called “Inn-Fidel”. All such carousing created resentment among the locals in much the same way as in 1841, when the rumours of English soldiers turning Kabul into a brothel resulted in a revolt led by Abdullah Khan Achakzai. It is puzzling when one considers that no lessons have been learned from history.

Two poignant quotes from two Western leaders sum up the misadventures of foreign invaders of Afghanistan to date:

“I think Americans have learned it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them” – President Obama, recently.

“Rule Number one in politics: never invade Afghanistan” – Harold Macmillan, the British Prime Minister in 1963.

It is interesting to note that the much-vilified ISI and Pakistan army got it right in the end where America and Britain badly miscalculated and failed. The US and UK withdrawal from Afghanistan and the recent talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban have cemented and vindicated the ISI view that only Arab and foreign Al-Qaeda fighters should have been pursued, otherwise there was a danger of the war morphing into a liberation movement against an occupation army.

More than a decade later – and after thousands of deaths on both sides, funded by a whopping budget of approximately $ 800 million on the war – Afghanistan is hardly any different from the place it emerged as after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989: war-weary, lawless and post-medieval. All it needs is a trigger for the country to descend into chaos once again.

Tariq Bashir is a Lahore-based lawyer. Follow him @Tariq_Bashir