‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive’,
observed Holmes to the astounded Watson,
having noted that the doctor’s face spoke
‘of hardship and sickness’. He had seen action
in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, which,
like the First was all about The Great Game
and Russia, and both, like the Third, all
about the British Raj, that Jewel in the Crown,
and Afghan monarchs that might be cajoled
with sufficient treasure or sufficient blood,
while the true rulers, the tribal elders
of the ethnic groups, parleyed with all sides.
The Great Game continues, and with new players:
America, China, Iran, Pakistan,
Saudi Arabia. Are Taliban –
who, as some predicted never went away,
but fought a twenty year insurgency –
aka Mujahideen aka
‘freedom fighters’ (to quote Margaret Thatcher),
and the well-funded, so-called Islamic State –
that movable terror, that mobile nihilism –
pawns in the new game,
useful idiots in the exploitation
of the country’s many mineral fields?
Those who brought Enduring Freedom chose
not to eradicate polio
but supplied electricity throughout
enabling scenes of havoc and mayhem
to be broadcast on WhatsApp and Instagram.
So, record the lies about Afghanistan –
hypocritical, self-serving untruths,
which ignore the torture at Bagram Air Base,
which prioritise the lives of dogs. Record
that the liars are mostly privileged,
sanctimonious, nostalgic, white
imperialists, some moonlighting as hacks.
The Fourth war has masqueraded under
two different euphemisms,
Operation Herrick and then Toral,
and been fought with allies – with Nato,
and the erstwhile Afghan Army and Police –
and achieved no discernible victories,
no battle honours only body bags,
only more of the maimed and the desperate,
only incompetence and abandonment –
against lightly-armed zealots on Chinese-made
Honda motor bikes with a seemingly
endless supply of imported fuel
financed by hectares of exported drugs,
and for whom aspects of criminality,
particularly towards women and girls,
appear a brutal and sacred duty,
in a poor country corrupted with money,
a Ponzi scheme for foreign consultants.
Although its capital city, Kabul,
remains the only one in the world
without a railway station, the trade
in opium and hashish has blossomed,
Afghanistan becoming the world leader –
which might have rendered even Holmes speechless.
By David Selzer