Can Afghanistan Be Controlled? Another View!
Apr 12th, 2007 | Comments
Pashtuns – circa 1879
What is the secret of the resilience and bravery of the fiercely independent Afghan tribes who keep battling until the very end when the alien forces come to subdue them?
This question baffled all those who tried to conquer Afghanistan – the Mughal troops in the 16th and 17th centuries to the British in the 19th and Russians in the 20th centuries – and failed.
And now in the 21st century, the NATO troops are discovering that with all the technological power in their hands, they can’t make much headway in Afghanistan after so many years of occupation.
A young Indian scholar has given a new twist to this seemingly unfathomable question by referring to great Jewish rabbis who mention Afghanistan and Pakistan as the home of ‘Lost Tribes.’
Says the Israel National News: “Dr. Navras Jaat Aafreedi, a representative of the Afghanistan’s Afridi tribe and an historian, has a Ph.D. on Medieval and Modern Indian History, and his research paper was entitled: ‘Indian Jewry and the Self-Professed ‘Lost Tribes of Israel’ in India.’
“Dr. Aafreedi refers to great Jewish rabbis, such as Saadia Ga’on and Moses Ibn Ezra, who mention Afghanistan and the Pathan territories in Pakistan as the home of Jews descended from the lost tribes. He also notes that a number of medieval Arabic and Farsi texts refer to the same phenomenon.
“In the 19th century some British travelers and officers, like Sir Alexander Burnes and J.P. Ferrier, wrote about the Israelite origin of Afghan tribes. Pashtun tribes mainly live in the highlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and they are divided into 60 tribes and 400 clans.
“Many Pashtuns don’t conceal their descent. For example, Emir Abdul Rahman, the grandfather of the former Afghan Shah Amanullah, stated expressly in his History of the Afghans that the Afghan tribes were of Israelite origin.”
So is it yet another classic example of brothers annihilating their own kith and kin…owing to sheer ignorance??? But then who is interested in history???
Ages ago I read a masterpiece What is History? by E. H. Carr, and its interesting review by Professor Alun Munslow.
To read some interesting write-ups please click here…
Finally some quotes:
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.” – Henry Ford
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“History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in…. I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all – it is very tiresome.” (spoken by Catherine Morland in ‘Northanger Abbey’) – Jane Austen
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“Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” - Oscar Wilde
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“Patriotism ruins history.” - Goethe
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“Our ignorance of history causes us to slander our own times.” - Gustave Flaubert
