Beauty in a Cursed Land

…by Phyllis Chesler

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This was originally published in City Journal.
Rosanne Klass’s reissued memoir describes Afghanistan in a more innocent time.
City Journal | 21 November 2007

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The history of Afghanistan, once known as the “crossroads of the world,” is riven with brutal invasions and world abandonment. Barbarism, slavery, ruthlessness, and disease existed side by side with the country’s enormous physical beauty and the elaborate, formalized hospitality of its people. Conquerors razed Afghanistan’s extraordinary ancient cities and exquisite court palaces—Herat, Ghazni, and Balkh. Genghis Khan, and later Tamerlane, slaughtered significant portions of the Afghan population and returned to the country to conduct raids on the survivors, leaving precious little in the way of art or architecture. Alexander the Great also conquered Afghanistan on his way to India, though his soldiers tended to leave behind descendants rather than smoldering ruins.

Most Afghan kings were brutal to their own people, who were, after all, a permanently armed male population, always ready to fight for village, tribe, or warlord against central governments, including those of native kings and would-be conquerors. Even the Victorian-era British learned that Afghanistan could not be tamed; so, too, did the Soviet Union. America’s intervention in Afghanistan, though based not on colonialism or aggression but rather on justified political goals, has failed in its own ways.

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