In response to the terrorist attacks against the United States that shocked the world on 11 September 2001, the United States launched a war on terror against Afghanistan to eliminate the Taliban, which harboured Al-Qaida terrorists. Twenty years later, the US military withdrew from Afghanistan, and at the same time the Taliban launched a large-scale offensive, and the Afghan government announced its surrender, and the Taliban officially took over the Afghan power.
In this two-decade war between the United States and Afghanistan, the United States has completely failed, and the defeat of the United States has made the title of the graveyard of the Afghan empire resound around the world.
So how did poor and weak Afghanistan allow Britain in the nineteenth century, the Soviet Union in the twentieth century, and the superpower of the twenty-first century to sink in this magical land?
Britain invades Afghanistan for the first time
After the British invaded most of India in 1837, they intended to control Afghanistan in order to prevent Russian expansion into the Indian Ocean, and Russia had long had ambitions to expand its power into the Indian Ocean through Afghanistan. Therefore. Afghanistan became a home turf for Britain and Russia. In the same year, Britain sent people to negotiate an alliance with Afghanistan, but in the end, there were differences on some details.
As soon as the British left on the front foot, the Afghan back foot quickly turned to Russia to receive the Russian specialty. When Britain saw that Afghanistan was so ignorant, it found an excuse to start a war. In November 1838, British troops began to advance into Afghanistan, and as the famous Empire of the Sunset, the Afghan government surrendered to the British when the army approached Kabul in April of the following year. At that time, the British supported a pro-British government in Afghanistan. But the Afghans' struggle against the British invaders did not stop, and in November 1841, the local armed uprising in Afghanistan left the British army in a desperate situation and had to agree to withdraw from Afghanistan.
In January 1842, when the British army of 16,500 men began to retreat, they were repeatedly attacked along the way, and finally almost completely destroyed, and only a few survived, and the first invasion of the British army was defeated.
The British invaded Afghanistan for the second time
In the seventies of the nineteenth century, the Soviet Union's power expanded again, and in order to contain British power in the Indian Ocean, a military delegation was sent to Kabul, hoping that Afghanistan would establish an alliance with Russia. When Britain heard this, in order to protect its interests in India, it launched a second war of aggression against Afghanistan. Although Britain once again won Afghanistan with hard power, in the face of the successive uprisings in Afghanistan, Britain quickly fell into the quagmire of war with Afghanistan. Coupled with Russia's silent support for Afghanistan, Britain had to negotiate with Afghanistan, and eventually Britain controlled Afghanistan's foreign relations, and Afghanistan acquired a large amount of wealth and arms.
Then in 1919, when the new king of Afghanistan took the throne, his first thing was to write to the British Governor-General of India, asking Britain to recognize the independence of Afghanistan, and the British naturally rejected this kind of slap in the face. It was at this time that the first nonviolent non-cooperation movement broke out in India, and Britain, eager to end the war, had to recognize Afghan independence.
So on the tombstone of the Imperial Cemetery, the name of England was first engraved.
The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan
In the fifties of the twentieth century, Afghanistan and Pakistan had a serious confrontation over the territorial issue, and the Soviet Union seized this favorable opportunity to express its firm support for Afghanistan's position on this issue, seized the opportunity to attack Pakistan, which was close to the United States, and suddenly pulled Afghanistan into the arms of the Soviet Union.
By the seventies, the Soviet Union had decided on a southbound strategy. It attempts to use Afghanistan as a base to go south and open up land passages, go straight down to the Indian Ocean, threaten the oil-producing areas of the Middle East and encircle Europe in a roundabout way and echo its Pacific strategy, and finally achieve its goal of world hegemony. To this end, the Soviet Union began its political, economic, cultural and military infiltration of Afghanistan in 1973.
That had changed in 1979, when Afghanistan's top leader, unlike his two pro-Soviet leaders, came to power trying to break free from Soviet control, claiming to normalize relations with the United States, emphasizing national autonomy and diplomatic independence, and not allowing the Soviet Union to control Afghanistan's intelligence apparatus.
Although Afghanistan and the Soviet Union maintained friendly relations at that time, they were actually bed-sharing dreams. Because Afghanistan was an important strategic location, once it could not control the Soviet Union's strategy of Hardness Yang, it could not be implemented, so a large-scale invasion began to quietly prepare.
In December 1979, the Soviet army, relying on superior forces and modern weapons, sent troops to Afghanistan in a surprise attack. It then took only a month for the Soviets to complete the occupation of Afghanistan and prop up a new puppet regime. Then the Soviet Union pointed its attack at the resistance forces dominated by rebels, and it was at this time that the Soviet Union discovered how difficult the hard bone of Afghanistan was.
Most of Afghanistan is a mountainous desert with a harsh natural environment, and no one wants food and no food, and the Soviet Union's efforts in Afghanistan will not get any positive feedback, but the Soviet Union will also pay Afghanistan to build factories and schools. The Afghan rebels stayed in the mountains to fight a guerrilla war with the Soviet Union. Coupled with all kinds of assistance from various countries to Afghanistan, the USSR did not take much advantage of Afghanistan at all. Like Britain, the Soviet Union was mired in the war in Afghanistan.
Coupled with the problems already in the Soviet Union at this time, the Soviet Union finally withdrew all its troops in February 1989, thus ending the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The name of the Soviet Union appeared on the tombstones of the imperial cemetery.
The United States invades Afghanistan
The reason for the US invasion of Afghanistan was simple, the United States asked the Taliban to hand over bin Laden, the Taliban did not give it, so the United States came.
As for what happened after that, we have to sigh that the only lesson mankind has learned from history is that mankind has learned no lessons from history. The early period of the United States entering Afghanistan, like the British Soviet Union's entry into Afghanistan, quickly bulldoze the Taliban, who occupied the ruling regime at that time.
On the frontal battlefield, the Taliban are definitely not opponents of the US military, this is beyond doubt, but the Taliban are not stupid, and they can't do it head-on, why not fight a guerrilla war with you like the Soviet Union. So the Taliban disappeared into the mountains of Afghanistan, because the natural conditions in Afghanistan are relatively harsh, so the villages are scattered in the mountains where there are water sources. Usually, the Taliban take off their military uniforms and integrate into villages large and small in the mountains, acting as honest villagers. When the time is right, he suddenly jumps out to give the US military a moment, and then disappears into the crowd again.
In 2010, Chinese journalists interviewed U.S. military and Taliban commanders. I was surprised to find that they were all learning about protracted warfare from China, the Taliban commander said; When we talk about protracted wars, as soon as the US military comes, they will fight for a while, and if there are too many people, we will hide our weapons and welcome them as collaborators. When they turn around, we can take a gun and kill the American troops again. It can be said that the Taliban have completely integrated the enemy's advance and retreat, and the enemy's stationing in our country has been completely integrated.
In order to better respond to the Taliban attack, the United States also had to pick up a protracted war and look at it. The American soldier said; In order to deal with the Taliban, I had to study "On Protracted War", which is very useful for us to deal with the Taliban.
The essence of protracted war is not to kill many enemy troops, but to make the occupation of the enemy army a loss-making business, as long as the enemy's occupation benefits are less than the cost of its occupation, and they can achieve a positive financial cycle, then the enemy's defeat is an inevitable result, nothing more than how long it consumes. As a result, the price paid by the United States became more and more serious, the Taliban became richer and richer, and finally the US military had to flee from Afghanistan.
The withdrawal of US troops has added another heavy touch to the tombstone of the Afghan imperial branch, although Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union have planted their heads in Afghanistan, but is the word imperial graveyard really what the Afghan people want? This cemetery is in Afghanistan's own home, and we are indeed witnessing history, but how can the future of the Afghan people be witnessed?