The subtitle “Alexander the Great in Afghanistan” may sound a little confusing as that country did not exist in Alexander’s day, but the land and its people were very much the same. Frank Holt retells the story of Alexander’s conquests in the area. He projects them against the successive occupations by the English in the 19th century, by the Soviets in the 20th century, and by the Americans in this century. It turns out that all the armies and their leaders faced the same problems.
Alexander the Great spent three years campaigning in Bactria, as Afghanistan was called then, trying systematically to eliminate one warlord after another to see new warlords taking over behind his back as soon as he moved away. His fighting was the bloodiest ever, and he lost more men in these two years than he had since he left Macedonia seven years before.
Even the English got a taste of it when they went into the First Afghan War in 1838. Four years later, they had yet to reach their goal and only one European survived the disastrous expedition. The Second Afghan War was fought from 1878 to 1889, but the success of the British – like that of Alexander two thousand years earlier - was short-lived, and as General Roberts rightfully put it in those days: Afghanistan should be left alone.
This is quite a statement, but nobody listened. Nobody learned from Alexander’s experience (I will not call it a mistake, for what would have been right?), and nobody learned from the British either. The Soviets tried it in 1979 while the Americans entrusted the mujahideen warlords with their money and munitions for their bloody crusade. Eventually, the Afghans rebelled, the Soviets moved out, and the Taliban took over, bringing “law and order.” On 9/11, the world was taken by surprise, and another superpower landed in Afghanistan.
It is a unique experience to follow Frank Holt as he goes back and forth in time, considering Alexander’s options and scrutinizing his actions, comparing them to what the British and the Soviets did so many centuries later. The landscape has not changed, and the people have not changed. Its warlords still rule Afghanistan, and their subjects live on as they lived for centuries, attending their own business and mistrusting all foreign intrusion.
This book is as much the history of Alexander the Great as it is the history of more recent times, making it so captivating. It is definitely worth reading, although sad to realize that we have not learned anything over the past two and a half thousand years since Alexander fought there.
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