Lessons of history are lost on the plains of Afghanistan

Several days ago, I was leafing through my old columns and found myself faced with Afghanistan! Only, it was the Afghanistan of the late 1980s, which was an immeasurably different kind of place than it is today - or so I thought.

In one column from that era, from the fall of '88, my words almost cheered: "The rich and powerful Russians are being forced to leave Afghanistan. They are withdrawing in a humiliating rout that already has them fleeing in increasing confusion to 'Fortress Kabul.'"

By February of '89, my report had gained in confidence, in historic resonance to, yes, some level of braggadocio. I imagine that many of you remember the scene I described: "Lt. Gen. Boris Gromov, commander of Soviet forces in Afghanistan, was marching slowly but resolutely across the 'Friendship Bridge' dividing the two countries at Termez.

"Incongruously, he had his young son on his arm. Even more incongruously, he was smiling, and said only that he was 'not looking back.'"

Then I, even more strangely, focused on the fact that Gen. Gromov, who was famously pictured as the last Soviet abandoning Afghanistan on that famous bridge, was physically very short. I explained the emphasis on this photo-shoot of memory as being due to my sudden realization that the Russians were not, as so many Americans had assumed, "10 feet tall."

After a while, I shook myself back into 2016 and proceeded to read the morning's papers. Gen. John F. Campbell, commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, had recommended that the U.S. military role in Afghanistan be expanded to help local forces confront the Taliban and other militants. This was, of course, in direct contrast to President Obama's promise to withdraw most American troops by the end of the year.

Oddly enough in historical terms, remembering how the U.S. supplied anti-Soviet Afghan fighters with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles during the Soviet occupation, the U.S. was now worrying about supplying its own Afghan army with air support.

Gen. Campbell, who will turn over his command in March to what Pentagon officials are predicting will be a "bloody 2016," could not have been clearer about his analysis of the lingering war. "I do believe we're going to have to have a continued modest forward presence ... for years to come," he testified on Capitol Hill. "We shouldn't sugarcoat it."

What a strange world we live in. After 14 years of war, the self-described "greatest power on Earth" sits tied up in a wild, faraway, tribal buffer state that neither Germans nor Brits nor Russians, nor even Philip of Macedon nor the Mongol kings, could vanquish for more than a brief passing of history's wand.

As a matter of fact, Afghanistan as a COUNTRY has virtually none of the institutions, education and equality among persons and groups that characterize genuine nations. Historically, it has always been a huge, amorphous borderland - in between Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China. Its people are tribesmen, acquainted not with urban civilized living but with tribal and clan blood feuds, which largely rule their lives.

The British, in particular, learned the hard way to regret their fascination with Afghanistan. After settling in as an occupier in the 1830s in Kabul and other Afghan cities, by 1842 the Brits' Grand Army of the Indus was being driven out by Afghan troops. More than 16,000 British troops began the perilous journey, through impassable snows and narrow mountain passes, followed by Afghan troops the British at first were foolish enough to think were protecting them.

In the last battle before today's city of Jalalabad, virtually all of the British troops were killed. All but one! A Dr. William Brydon somehow managed to come through, riding desolately into the waiting city on his badly wounded pony, which immediately lay down and died. The city lit fires for days to lead any other survivors to safety, but no one ever came.

The British "adventures" in Afghanistan were not so despairingly disastrous as were the Soviets' in the 1980s. The British did not lose their empire until after World War II, while the Russians marched out of Afghanistan in 1989 on their own power and then officially abolished the Soviet Union in 1991.

Forgive me if I refer back to that earlier column of 1988, titled "Soviets' Humiliating Rout in Afghanistan," when I wrote: "We do know that we are witnessing a breathtaking new period in international affairs. The Afghanistan démarche marks the first time since World War II that the Soviets have withdrawn from a country."

That was certainly not the last time Afghanistan - with its vast spaces, its rough-hewn fighters, its ancient ruins of cities and antiquities, its mineral wealth - will destroy an occupier. One cannot help but look at it and ask, "DOES history truly repeat itself?"

I'm not taking any bets.

Georgie Anne Geyer can be reached at gigi_geyer@juno.com.

© 2016, Universal