The Khyber Pass: A History of Empire & Invasion, by Paddy Docherty
Joshua Foust on Jul 10 2008 at 9:30 am | Filed under: Books, Foreign affairs
This book was written entirely in the passive voice. The passive voice was used to avoid assigning causation or personhood to various events. As a result, we learn that places were invaded, people were slaughtered, armies were founded, but no one can say by whom.
Good grief, that is exhausting. How is it a book almost exclusively in the passive voice got past the legion of editors and publishers to become a hardcover history? Seriously, how does that happen? It’s not that Docherty didn’t do his homework, nor is that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about—the history here is stunning, and eye opening even for me (and I’ve read a lot of histories of the area). The subject is a good one; the research excellent. But the writing? Nearly unbearable!
If you can get past passages like this:
The path to Sikh dominance of their homeland was torturous. When Guru Gobind Singh died in 1708 without an heir—the office of guru had become hereditary—there was no obvious successor; Banda Bahadur (Banda “the Brave”) was the likeliest to take his place, but his succession was disputed… Banda’s execution was followed by determined Mughal persecution of the Sikhs. The Khalsa remained as a troublesome obstacle to Mughal comfort in the Punjab and continued to contest for power over the following years. It was, however, invasion from without that provided the greatest shock to the rule of the Mughals, both in the Punjab and in the rest of the Empire: Nadir Shah of Iran swept into India in a grand raid in 1739.
Then you can really enjoy the history on display. Starting from Cyrus the great expanding the first Persian Empire across the steppes of Central Asia to found the Achaemenian Empire, to Alexander the Great sweeping through Transoxiana and the Indus River, to Chinghiz Khan, to Tamerlane, to the British, Docherty masterfully shows how the Khyber Pass has always been under violent contention… just as it is today.
One of the most interesting parts of the book was his discussion of Tamerlane. Given his prominent position in Central Asian history, I was surprised to see just how big of an impact he had on South Asia as well: Docherty is not shy in comparing his depredations to the terrible destruction wrought by Chinghiz Khan. He even built a larger empire, stretching from Baghdad to Delhi, and encompassing all of Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and most of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan—which is simply stunning in its size and complexity.
Of similar interest is the ways in which Afghanistan took shape under various conquering overlords, whether the explosion of art and literature in the northern city of Balkh, both as a proto-Greek center of Alexandrian craftsmen and later as Persia’s genesis of some of the world’s most beautiful poetry, or the Durrani empire, which included all of modern-day Pakistan as well as a huge part of modern day Iran.
The amount of history contained in this area is breathtaking, and incredibly difficult to internalize. But this history is vitally important.
In fact, in what is becomming a common refrain in this blog, it is important to know just how deeply engrained conflict patterns in the area really are. After signing the Treaty of Gandamak in 1879, the British took over the Khyber region… and look at what they faced:
… control on the ground was dependent on relations with the Pathan [i.e. Pashtun] tribes who lived there and who could close the roads whenever they chose. Britain could man forts and guard posts throughout the length of the Pass, but the key to keeping it open was daily diplomacy with tribal leaders: subsidy, appointments, rewards and the threat of war were the means by which Pathan chiefs were persuaded to cooperate with the new regime and to keep the roads open. The raising of military forces from among the tribes—such as teh Khyber Rifles, recruited largely from the Afridi Pathans of the area—was also used as a means of binding the local population to the British. Given the complexity of alignments among the Pathan tribes and subtribes, and their tendency to erupt into fighting for trivial reasons, such efforts at keeping the peace on the frontier often failed. On these occasions, a punitive expedition might be launched into tribal territory to burn villages, seize livestock and arrest truculent tribesmen until the Pax Britannica was restored. Between the Treaty of Gandamak in 1879 and 1900, twenty-one such operations were launched: the North West Frontier was the liveliest border region in the world. The worst outbreak of tribal disturbances in the Khyber came in 1897, when the British even had to abandon Ali Masjid. Military control was not restored until the following year.
Apart from the annoying use of the passive voice, that passage is a stunning indictment of the U.S.’s policies in the border regions pf Pakistan. By reading the history of the region, one cannot pretend it can be brought to a perfectly peaceful end state, at home within the borders outsiders drew. Since no one really thinks the borders can be redrawn given the domestic politics of both countries and international opinion, there must be at least a certain acquiesence to fighting in the areas… and a realization that breaking the traditional cycles of conflict and conflict resolution will lead to very bad things, like Tehrik-i Taliban and Baitullah Mehsud.
Unfortunately, an understanding of this history is entirely absent in most of the current policy debates surrounding both Afghanistan and Pakistan. There is a tendency to write off the Pashtuns as if they are simply unspeakably violent death-zombies, without bothering to understand the historical and social forces that drive conflict in the region (Docherty even falls prey to this in claiming the Pathans feud for trivial reasons… it is not trivial to them, and understanding why is the key to forming a constructive relationship). But this history drives events there even now; as such, despite the sometimes terrible writing, Docherty’s book is an essential component to understanding why the region is the way it is today.
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