The debacle was a major scandal back in London. An army of 4,700 British and Indian soldiers retreating from Kabul was slaughtered nearly to a man near the village of Gandamak, along with at least 12,000 civilians traveling with the army. The idea that Afghanistan was some kind of geopolitical quicksand for empires seems to have started with the First Anglo-Afghan War, which ended in 1842. Most of them stayed for decades, even centuries. So did numerous empires, peoples and tyrants you’ve probably never heard of: the Greco-Bactrians, the Indo-Scythians, the Kushans, the Sassanian Empire, the Maurys Empire, the Gahznavids, the Uzbeks, the Safavids and the Hotak dynasty. So did the Turks and the Huns, the Hindus and Islamic Arabs, the Persians and the Parthians. So did Timur, better known as Tamerlane, and his descendant Babur. But he ultimately smashed that resistance, founded what became the modern city of Kandahar and pushed on to India - leaving behind the Seleucid Empire, which lasted for 250 years. Alexander the Great faced fierce opposition from locals when he invaded around 330 B.C., and received a nasty leg wound from an arrow. It is also vital in acknowledging how much more likely smaller powers like Afghanistan are to suffer lasting trauma than any of their larger, more powerful invaders.Ĭertainly, the peoples living in what is Afghanistan today have resisted mightily one haughty conqueror after another who swaggered down the Hindu Kush. Understanding this historical reality is critical to grasping why the United States is unlikely to suffer serious long-term effects from its long and wasteful occupation of Afghanistan - or from the bloody, bumbling withdrawal. Afghanistan, in its long existence, has sadly been more like the roadkill of empires - a victim to their ambitions.

The only trouble is that it doesn’t have much to do with actual history.

Old graveyard forge of empires