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3.2.1 Borders and pre-colonial substructures

The architecture of postcolonial states in Asia is raised over a fluid but defined matrix of pre-colonial polities that have existed on a sub-state, state, and trans-state scale. The two principal trans-state polities that dominated western Asia at the eve of European colonialism were the Ottoman realm and the Qajar Persian Empire. Each incorporated a number of diverse ethno-linguistic communities, many of which were either de jure or de facto administrative units.² On the periphery of these domains were smaller entities enjoying degrees of autonomy from administrative centres, usually on account of their tribal and/or nomadic populations. The Kurds, the Bedouin and Pashtuns were each such national groupings, nominally affiliated with a capital but largely left to their own indigenous political devices. Of these three, the Kurds were the focus of the most sustained and successful state attempts to accommodate and manipulate tribal dynamics.³

With Ottoman dissolution and the strategic encirclement of Qajar Persia by Russian and British forces by the turn of the twentieth century, the formerly trans-national domains of Turkey and Iran descended into entities more closely resembling national states, with their former territories giving rise to a number of sub-national states which were either colonised directly or emerged as new states under titular heads and governments placed into authority through colonial agreement. The Arab states and Afghanistan are examples of the latter. Turkey emerged as an independent state with a nationalist, anti-colonial head of state, but ideologically, strategically and politically it came under the direct influence of firstly Germany, prior to and during World War I, and then subsequently Britain. Huntington (1997:74-77) points out the social and ideological contusion experienced by Turkey through Kemalism, and posits that the resolution of this ideological complex still eludes Turkey and manifests in Turkey’s strategic uncertainty vis-à-vis its role in Europe and the Middle East.

The construction of states in Afghanistan and Arabia, however, revealed more direct political and social incongruities. The demarcation by Britain and France, in the aftermath of the Sykes-Picot treaty, of international borders with no political precedent or natural, indigenous basis, led to a crisis of legitimacy in the new Arab states that remains to be resolved. This has

2 Both Ottoman and Persian administration was based upon the Vilayet system, patterned on the Abbassid Wilayah system, often reflecting indigenous tribal, ethnic, linguistic or geographical features as the example of Ottoman administration of Iraq demonstrates. Persian administration alternately used the term Satrap, derived from the Turkic Etrap (Karpat 2002: 201).

3 Van Bruinessen, Martin Kurds, States and Tribes Utrecht University,1998 (unpublished) p. 5.;

http://www.let.uu.nl/˜martin.vanbruinessen/personal/publications/Kurds, states, tribes.htm . Accessed 9^th January, 2011.

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resulted in political structures that perpetuate a single head of state for decades and are characterised by repression and the absence of political and judicial transparency.

As for the case of Afghanistan, the demarcation of its boundaries was premised initially on the physical defence of British India from Russian encroachment (Johnson 2003: 697-99), and then subsequently on the determination of the limits of Russia’s eastward expansion (Sykes 1926:

134-35). These strategic considerations, along with the protracted nature of Britain’s own military involvement in Afghanistan through the nineteenth century, resulted in the determination of Afghanistan’s boundaries primarily through strategic and military expedient.

This process either ignored ethno-linguistic realities and indigenous structures of polity and organisation, or may have been designed to rupture the authority and influence of these tribal structures as part of a strategic logic that would ensure the survival of the successor states of Afghanistan and India. The lingering implications of the process of demarcation are the principal causes of the social, demographic and ethno-linguistic incongruities that underlie the instability prevalent in Afghanistan and Pakistan today.

The strategic vision through which the Afghan state was demarcated, and through which the tribal challenge of the Afghan borderland was considered, was largely a function of the geography and topography of the borderland. This chapter will proceed through addressing the geographic context of the borderland, tracing its strategic impact over time with a view to establishing the nature of its current strategic salience, and the role of the Pashtun tribes as strategic drivers in the borderland.

3.2.2 A gateway to India

To the south and west of the Afghan borderland stretches the arid and rocky expanse of interior Baluchistan and the Mekran desert, notorious for having decimated Alexander’s armies on their westward march home in 325 B.C.E. (Wood 2001: 211). To its north and east lie some of the highest mountain peaks in the world in the Pir Pangi, Pamir and Hindu Kush ranges. Between these geographical extremes lies the comparative mediocrity of the Suleiman mountain range, through which a number of passes have historically functioned as viable year-round access points to the fertile Gangetic plains for armies and caravans from the Central Asian highlands.

Thus the Afghan borderland functions as a geographical gateway between the arid south-central Eurasian landmass, and the well watered plains of the Indian subcontinent. This geographical gateway has functioned, and continues to function, as an economic tether between what are in effect two separate continents, a tether which has been sustained in

times of war, peace and political upheaval. What is today a borderland between the states of Pakistan and Afghanistan is in fact an historical constant that has had an impact on the scales of states, continents and civilizations.

For limited periods over the last two millennia however, the Afghan borderland has been subsumed by a single, greater polity unifying the high plains lying to the north of the Suleiman Range and the arable plains of present day Punjab. The most enduring of such polities was Gandhara. Centred around the Peshawar valley, Gandhara extended north to Kapisa, just north of present day Kabul, and south to Taxila in present-day Punjab, although in some historical texts the term Gandhara is taken to refer to an even larger region stretching as far westward as Kandahar (Fergusson 2004: 47). The trans-borderland Gandharan civilization emerged into prominence in the first century C.E. in the absence of any major population movement or military movement southward from Central Asia into the Indian subcontinent, thus emerging at a time of relative stability in an otherwise turbulent region. For a brief period between the second and third centuries C.E. the Kushans pushed southward from the remnants of Bactria through Gandhara, deep into the Deccan plains of the central Indian subcontinent, setting a precedent for the southward invasion of the subcontinent from Central Asia through the Afghan borderland (Puri 1999: 247-250). The Kushans, however, soon fragmented and were absorbed into the emerging Gupta Empire (Caroe 1956: 79). The Guptas expanded to incorporate the entire northern subcontinent including the Indus river valley, but did not expand beyond the Suleiman range. Hence, during the fourth century C.E. the Afghan borderland resumed its historical role as a borderland between the Sassanid Empire lying to the north and west, and the Gupta Empire of north India lying to the south and east.

It was the southward forays of firstly the invading Arabs and then the Islamised Perso-Turks, launched from central present-day Afghanistan, that eventually overran the declining remnants of the Gandharan civilization that lingered in the Afghan borderland until tenth century.⁴ The southward sweep of firstly the Arabs in the late ninth century C.E., then subsequently the Perso-Turk Ghaznavids (963-1187) met significant resistance from the tribal inhabitants of the Suleiman range, although the invaders were able to cross the Afghan borderland and penetrate present-day Punjab, subsuming the by then fragmented north Indian Kingdoms through decades of relentless campaigns (Rose 1997: 211). It is from this period that the tribesmen of the Suleiman Range enter historiography as a strategic factor.

Having initially resisted repeated Ghaznavid advances, the tribesmen were subsequently

4 Spuler (1970: 147) provides a detailed account of the Persianisation of the originallyTurkic Ghaznavids, and their expansion.

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instrumental in Ghaznavid southward expansion. Al-Utbi, a chronicler of the Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud (997-1030) records how Mahmud’s army relied upon ‘Satanic Afghans... who ascended the mountains like goats and descended like torrents of water’ (Grierson 1928: 7).

From this period, two prominent features of the tribesmen emerged; martial prowess in a mountainous environment, and the ability to switch loyalties with little or no moral qualms.

Led by these tribesmen, the Ghaznavids were able to subsume the borderland into a larger polity reaching from the central highlands north of the Suleiman Range in to the Gangetic plains. The Ghazni based Ghaznavid Empire was succeeded by the Ghor based Ghorids (1148-1215) over much of the same territory. The Ghorids, however, soon fell victim to the geographic challenges of the borderland and by the early thirteenth century, the Ghorid empire had divided along the Suleiman Range.

The northern portion came to be known as the Timurid domain while the Delhi Sultanate (1206-1527) inherited the southern portion of the empire (Islam 1999: 269). The border between them remained relatively fluid, with the tribes of the Suleiman range maintaining their independence from both, but providing safe passage along the vital trade links between them that crossed the mountain passes through autonomous tribal territory. The role of the Afghan borderland as a physical barrier, and the political and military obstacles it and its inhabitants presented to the Ghorids, cannot be understated in seeking to understand the causes behind the breaking away of the Delhi Sultanate from Ghor. As a geographic barrier, movement across the borderland was compounded by the powerful tribes who inhabited the borderland, and remained beyond the control of the armies sent to subdue them. This challenge effectively cut-off the Delhi Sultanate for periods, on an administrative level, from Ghor, leading to the increasing autonomy of the Delhi sultanate.

By the Mughal period (1526-1858), Pashtun tribes had settled across the Peshawar valley and northern KP, including the Swat valley. The tribes continued to be of strategic salience to the Mughals as protectors of the trans-Suleiman trade between Central Asia and the subcontinent.

In 1672, Khushal Khan Khattak (1613-1689) forwent his loyalty to the Mughal ruler Aurangzeb (1658-1707), and rose in rebellion against the Mughals, breaking vital economic links through the borderland.⁵ This rebellion was that order of a strategic threat that it drew Auranzeb from Delhi to the Kabul River at Attock to suppress the rebellion which was partially achieved by

5 For a fuller treatment of Khushal Khan Khattak see: Sayid Anwar ul Haq‟s ‘Mutakhi’bat Khushal Khan Khattak’ Pashto Literary Academy, Peshawar 1989. Also see: Ahmed Jaan‟s ‘Khushal Khan Khattak, De Pakhto Shaaraano haal’

http://www.khyber.org/people/literary/KhushalKhanKhattak.shtml . Accessed 24 ^th February, 2011.

1674. Following the rebellion, Khattak continued to unsuccessfully pursue trans-tribal unity until his death. Since that period, the Pashtun tribes have not collectively acceded to external suzerainty, instead seeking to project authority across and beyond the borderland through elusive pan-Pashtun polity.