And what about the Soviets? To be sure, the quagmire they faced in Afghanistan -- with all of its economic, political, and psychological consequences -- was a major factor in the collapse of their political system. But even the most skeptical historians concede that around 1984 or so, the Soviets were actually getting the better of the mujahideen. It was the U.S. decision to send shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles to the Afghan resistance, which robbed the Russian helicopter gunships of their superiority, that allowed the guerrillas to stage a comeback.
The bottom line, though, is that the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan represented a radical break with the country's past, not an extension of it. The Soviets and their Afghan communist allies wiped out entire communities and devastated wide swaths of the countryside, sending millions of refugees fleeing across the borders. They systematically targeted traditional institutions and elites, leaving behind a power vacuum that was eagerly seized upon -- but never quite filled -- by a new brand of revolutionary Islamists, promoted by Pakistan and abetted from afar by eager cold warriors in Washington.
These communist attempts to impose utopian designs on a deeply traditional society triggered what Barfield describes as Afghanistan's "first national insurgency" -- one that transcended old dividing lines of tribe and ethnicity. As Barfield points out, the war against the Soviets was sharply different from previous rebellions in Afghanistan's history as a state, which were relatively fleeting and almost always local affairs, usually revolving around dynastic power struggles. "From 1929 to 1978," he says, "the country was completely at peace." In some respects, one might hazard, the current insurgency -- as an almost exclusively Pashtun affair -- harks back to an earlier, more fragmented pattern of Afghanistan's history. But that, by itself, doesn't make it an insurmountable problem. Just the opposite, in fact.
Unfortunately, popular views of the place today are shaped by the past 30 years of seemingly unceasing warfare rather than substantive knowledge of the country's history. Anti-war activists routinely blame the post-2001 Western military presence in the country for the destruction of national infrastructure and the widespread cultivation of opium poppies -- both of which actually date back to the Soviet invasion and the civil war that followed. Others play up the notion of Afghanistan as inherently immune to civilization: "We are not going to ever defeat the insurgency," said Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on CNN in 2009. "Afghanistan has probably had -- my reading of Afghanistan history -- it's probably had an insurgency forever, of some kind."
Barfield contends that the Afghans have long understood the tendency of foreigners to view them as untamable savages and have been happy to leverage the stereotype to their advantage. "The Afghans use hyperbole of history to exaggerate [their] strengths in order to deter invaders," he says. "In this case, a poor knowledge of their history goes a long way to convincing others to stay away, but it can be a dangerous illusion." Back in 2001, Barfield says, Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden recycled the myth to themselves -- only to watch Taliban rule, and al Qaeda's safe haven, collapse under U.S. bombing.
I made my first visit to Afghanistan that same year. The Afghans I met were neither xenophobic nor bellicose. What they wanted most of all was peace, and they didn't trust their own leaders to bring it. "We're sick of fighting. We hate war. We want to have a free election," one grizzled -- and illiterate -- warrior told me. "And let's have the United Nations come in and make sure it's fair, so the warlords don't interfere." I heard similar views from many Afghans. Nowadays that vision sounds a bit like a dream, and it's hard to say precisely how many of his compatriots shared it for real, but I can't help recalling the sentiment. One thing is for sure: If we really want Afghans to attain the future they deserve, clinging to a fake version of their history won't help.
