Abstract

Afghanistan has a deep history that shapes the perceptions of the people who live there. Just how deep that memory goes, even among people who are illiterate and informed only by oral tradition, is striking. In the mid-1970s, the nomads I was living with in northern Afghanistan roundly condemned the Mongol invasion of the country—in 1220—and the long-lasting destruction it caused. It was a shame, they complained, that I had not been able to visit their region before that time when its economy was in better shape. More recent historical events were also widely recalled. Taliban propaganda portrays Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai as an American Shah Shuja, a cutting reference to the king the British brought to power in 1839 during the First Anglo-Afghan War. When British troops deployed to southern Afghanistan in 2006, residents feared they had been sent to take revenge for the Afghan victory at the Battle of Maiw and that took place there during the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1880. In addition, plans for withdrawing the bulk of international forces from Afghanistan in 2014 immediately make Afghans recall the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 that began a slide to civil war. By contrast, the international appreciation of Afghan history is quite shallow. For many, it begins only in 2001, when the Taliban were removed from power by the US, or in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded the country. More than that, foreign perceptions of Afghanistan are too often based on beliefs that have little historical substance and distort Afghan realities. Teachers introducing Afghanistan to their students might therefore want to get beneath the surface of today’s headlines.

Keywords: Afghanistan, American History, China, India, International Relations, Political Science, Russia, South Asia, Soviet Union, United States, World History

How to Cite:

Barfield, T., (2012) “What History Can Teach Us About Contemporary Afghanistan”, Education About Asia 17(2).

Rights: https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/what-history-can-teach-us-about-contemporary-afghanistan/