Afghanistan again

Friday, November 14th, 2008

I have said before that we are wasting our time there and I know I am not alone in that but I never expected to find an ally going back 200 years. I read this in the Times yesterday.

The first British emissary, indeed the first European envoy, to Afghanistan was Mountstuart Elphinstone (yes, a genuine name) and he went there with troops in 1808. He wrote a book about it. Perhaps his most perceptive observation was that Afghanistan was fundamentally unstable, a set of fighting tribes constantly at war and killing each other with central authority barely extending beyond the palace gates. But and this is the big but, they are just like my family for if their country is threatened, all differences are put aside and they join together to fight the common foe.

I suppose their attitude is best summed up in the words of a tribal elder that Elphinstone met all those years ago:

'We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood. But we will never be content with a master.'

I did not know this little piece of history but I am quite aware of the repeated failure of Western powers to change the place.

We should get the hell out and leave them to it.

Oh and just a side note. Sure al Qaeda may be using Afghanistan as a training ground but it does not seem they are training Afghanis. Tell me if I am wrong but I have yet to hear of an Afghani terrorist in the West.