Tuesday, October 28, 2014

The West's Wars on Afghanistan (video)

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly; William Dalrymple, AsiaSociety; KPFA
Faces of Afghanistan: Indo-Aryan-Scythians like this refugee in Peshawar, Pakistan (OX)
(Goa Literary Festival) William Dalrymple book release: Return of the King

Bamiyan today, Kapilavastu yesterday (OX)
Historian William Dalrymple's The Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42 is a new look at the First Afghan War, in which British and [corporate] East India Company troops invaded Afghanistan to install a puppet ruler, Shah Shuja, on the throne in Kabul, only to be ferociously expelled by an indigenous uprising less than three years later.
Ever since Sid left, Afghanistan has gone to pot
Working from Afghan primary sources never previously utilized by a Western historian, Dalrymple paints a sweeping canvas of imperial folly, leading to military catastrophe, that has uncomfortable resonances with today's NATO operations in Afghanistan.

Cover of White Moguals Paperback
White Mughals and more
Dalrymple underscored some of those parallels in a trenchant op-ed published in the New York Times, in which he wrote: "The same tribal rivalries exist and the same battles are being fought in the same places under the guise of new flags, new ideologies, and new political puppeteers. The same cities are being garrisoned by foreign troops speaking the same languages, and they are being attacked from the same hills and high passes."

AUDIO: Dalrymple on NPR
In the same piece, however, Dalrymple went on to explain that "History never repeats itself exactly, and there are some important differences between what is taking place in Afghanistan today and what took place during the 1840s." More
at

No comments:

Post a Comment