Afghanistan: From the ‘Great Game’ to Today

You know the insightful Turkish idiom “One dumb person throws a stone in a hole, but 40 smart people cannot take it out”? Today, about 70 states are involved in the effort to correct the grave mistake the U.S. made by attacking Afghanistan. No one knows if these efforts will bring about any positive result.

“Powerful” states of almost every era did not leave the Afghans, who wanted to be free, on their own. When the British wanted to rule Afghanistan by installing their own puppet ruler in 1838, the British soldiers sent there were slain until none remained in Afghanistan. Then the British and Russian Empires wanted to partition Afghanistan between themselves, but this proved futile as well. The Russians then accepted the British sway over Afghanistan and were allowed to project an influence in Afghanistan by the British. Neither of these formulations worked. Following the period which is referred to as “The Great Game” in literature, both the Russian and British Empires have collapsed while Afghanistan has survived to this day.

The destiny of the Soviet Union, which sent its Red Army to Afghanistan to install its own “puppet regime,” is no mystery either. The Soviet Union was thrown into the dustbin of history and Moscow lost many of its satellite nations. The Afghan resistance, which lasted more than 10 years, played a great role in this demise.

We can now argue that the superpower of our times, the United States, has lost in Afghanistan as well. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan. American allies, sympathetic to the cause, supported Washington. The result of that decision is that the American military, the most powerful and technologically advanced army in the world, is now looking for ways to get out of Afghanistan.

Consider the solution the U.S. has found: delegating all responsibility to NATO so as to maintain the invasion, and placing the financial and logistical burden on the shoulders of as many countries as possible so that it can keep Hamid Karzai in power. Foreign ministers from nearly 70 countries — including the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and the UN, NATO and OIC secretaries-general — have gathered at a conference in Kabul for just that purpose.

Similar conferences had been organized in Istanbul and London. The fact that this conference is taking place in Kabul is seen as a success. That this is considered a measure of the success of the conference is a little strange because the Afghan people are not allowed to go out into the streets — a measure to ensure the security of the high-level participants. Nevertheless, the plane that the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon was on board was still fired at by missiles.

The message of the participants at the conference is not good news for the Karzai government. While NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen underscored how serious the situation in Afghanistan was by saying that “it cannot be disputed that the international community underestimated the size of this challenge in the beginning,” the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is preparing to tell the Karzai government, which is expecting renewed financial support, that they will not give him a penny. American media outlets have reported that Clinton will tell Hamid Karzai to “stop corruption” first. Yet, as the last 150 years of Afghan history demonstrate, corruption cannot be eradicated under the administration of “puppet rulers.”

Turkey is one of the countries that hope the resolutions made at the meeting will help. There is the hope that smarter policies will be formulated and the solid accomplishments Turkey has achieved in the two areas its forces operate will be emulated in other areas of Afghanistan as well.

We will be heading to the north of Afghanistan tomorrow to observe those activities that give us hope.