Deeper Into The Lion's Den

The 1842 slaughter was the first of three bitter wars between the British and the Afghans. Like the Soviets, who invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the British were defeated by a barren and hostile land, with temperatures veering from searing heat to below freezing, and by the ferocious Afghans, who lived by a merciless code of honour and who waged guerilla war with cunning, expertise and limitless courage. By virtue of its location, Afghanistan was caught between the British and the Russian empires, an incredibly valuable buffer state where the great game of espionage and infiltration was played to the death. Split by the soaring peaks of the Hindu Kush, the arid and landlocked nation has claimed the lives of thousands of foreign invaders in the past two centuries. The present conflict between Western forces and the resurgent fundamentalist Taliban has already killed at least 474 foreign soldiers since hostilities began in 2001; and the pace is escalating, with 144 foreign troop deaths already this year. There was a blast near the US embassy yesterday. Afghanistan has never been fully conquered: even the huge Soviet military presence covered only the major cities and some arterial roads. It remains to be seen whether the West can turn the course of the nation's blood-soaked history and stay on long enough to impose some sort of order. It is not an easy task: in a nation where the average life expectancy is in the mid-40s, no Afghan under 27 has experienced real peace. When the Americans and their allies, including Australia, invaded Afghanistan in the weeks after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the New York World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, Taliban forces were rapidly ousted from power, melting away into the villages and over the border into Pakistan. Regressive and savagely anti-Western, the Taliban had turned Afghanistan into a medieval fiefdom, with public executions and savage reprisals for women venturing out of the kitchen. Following the Taliban's refusal to surrender al-Qa'ida chief Osama bin Laden, the US went into the barren, largely forgotten land and promised a new beginning. Five years later, ordinary Afghans are wondering how the world's greatest power managed to muck it up. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20377967-28737,00.html

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