Would you agree that Afghanistan is ESSENTIALLY unconquerable?
Or is the whole "Afghanistan is unconquerable" idea just a myth?
Afghanistan has been conquered several times: From the Persian emperor Darius to Alexander the Great to the Kushans to the Islamic conquests to the Mongols and Tamerlane to the Moguls to the Persian Nadir Shah. It was only in the late 1700s than Afghanistan had a string of local Pashtun leaders. This spanned all the way to the famous Soviet defeat of the 80s.
Maybe the question should not revolve around "conquest" per se but establishing a working peace among the MANY ETHNICITIES that populate the hasty borders that colonial powers (namely the British) assembled as modern AFGHANISTAN. Maybe Afghanistan is less a MILITARY puzzle but more of how to help foster a multicultural confederation. The standard / conventional wisdom framing of the problem as primarily a "Taliban" or "military" issue misses the much larger cultural dynamics of Afghanistan. The Taliban is primarily a PASHTUN movement--with its own distinct power source and cultural motives.
If the West can help birth a SOLUTION in Afghanistan, it would go a long way in helping solve problems elsewhere. Afghanistan's problems are actually shared by many African and Asian countries--how to create a working centralized government in light of the reality of older cultural allegiances.
What do you think?
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