Orientalism, Afghanistan, and the Recycling Rhetoric

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The British-Afghan wars in the 19th century, particularly the disastrous British defeat on the road from Kabul to Jalalabad in January 1842, transformed the rhetoric from a preconceived discourse of Orientalism to an official and political propaganda mechanism against Afghans. The “uncivilized” and wild Afghans had proven their savagery. The heinous crimes of uncivilized nations could not be left without response. There was a need to teach them a lesson, to conquer them, and to restore the honor of the civilized world. “Regarding our policy in attempting to keep possession of a country of uncivilized people, so far from our own… let our Governors-General and Commanders-in-chief look to that; but I have been a soldier’s wife too long to sit down tamely, whilst our honor is tarnished in the sight and opinion of savages. Let us first show the Afghans that we can both conquer them and revenge the foul murder of our troops,”[14] wrote Lady Sale in one of her letters from Afghanistan, which were debated in the British Parliament in 1842. The rhetoric of Lady Sale was reflected in the ferocity of a British soldier from General George Pollock’s army, also called the Army of Retribution, which entered Afghanistan in April 1842 to rescue Lady Sale and the other British captives. “ … A Kyberee [Khayberi] boy apparently about six years of age with a large knife, which his puny arm had scarcely sufficient strength to wield, engaged in an attempt to hack off the head of a dead sergeant. The young urchin was so completely absorbed in his savage task, that he heeded not the approach of a solider of the dead man’s regiment – who coolly took him up on his bayonet and threw him over the cliff.”[15]

Retribution eventually gave way to domination and control. The rhetoric helped the British to extend the constructed fear for further influence. Although Afghanistan has never become a direct colony of the British, the impudence narrative was instrumentalized to encounter the advance of the Russians. Savages cannot be trusted was common rhetoric in the British policy making circles regarding Afghanistan.[16] A direct interference for having a “friendly” government in Afghanistan was rationalized and wars were claimed to be necessary. The second British invasion of Afghanistan in 1879 was mainly based on the rhetoric of fear. Since Afghans were untrustworthy, a preemptive action was needed to deter the advance of Russians towards British-India.

Another practical use of the rhetoric is to illustrate the “moral power” of the dominant good and civilized “Occident” over the primitive and “uncivilized” “Orient.” The moral power of Orientalist discourse is the ability, rationality, and competency of the dominated west verses the irrationality, sluggishness, and immorality of the Orient. What “we” have, “they” don’t. “What “we” do and what “they” cannot do and understand as “we” do.”[17] Since the discourse is conceived to be the actual “knowledge” about the “Orient,” it has been instrumental to provide the moral supremacy for the dominated power in its political and military relation with the “east.” Lord Lytton, the British Viceroy in India, who declared war against Afghanistan in November 1878, believed that it is up to the “civilized” government of the British to decide what to do in Afghanistan. The Afghan Emir,[18] who “has used cruelly and put to death his own subjects,” cannot comprehend our friendship. “Trust me, or I will betray you; love me, or I will break you in pieces” were his commands to the Afghan Emir prior to the second Anglo-Afghan War.[19]

The contemptuous rhetoric has also served as a tool to vindicate and justify the Occident’s action in the exotic lands of Orientals. What “we” do is necessary to “get the job done.” The British alliance with Emir Abdur Rahman, who was notorious for his atrocities and massacres of minorities, particularly Hazaras in 1890s, was defended by many British sources. It was a required action on the British side to be friend with an iron Emir, who ruled over the barbaric tribes, and wild nations.[20] Lord Curzun wrote that his “friend” in Kabul told him that Abdur Rahman killed thousands of his own subjects. But Curzun still called him a “great man” and a “good friend” of the British, who had to rule on a “treacherous” and “murderous race.”[21] In another example, more than a century later, when President Obama took office in the White House there was a debate among ‘senior policy makers’ over the US support of the warlords in Afghanistan. Bob Woodward reported in his book, Obama’s Wars, that the question was “should we be in bed with [these] guys? The CIA argument was standard … It was necessary to employ some thugs if the Unite States was going to have a role in a land of thugs.”[22]

The dehumanization of the subjects is a central colonial feature. However, incorporation of the subjects into the colonial structure, which does not mean humanization of them, depends on colonial subjects’ loyalty to the colonizers. In other words, it requires their positive contribution to the colonial power structure. In colonial discourse, the designation of the supposed enemy with derogatory terms such as uncivilized and backward is related to the condition, which has been constructed by the colonizers to differentiate between the colonizers and colonized. Any attempts on the colonized side to change the condition in favor of the colonizers reduce the degree of contempt in the colonial rhetoric. It should be stated that this change is not permanent, and can be reversed at any time by the will of the colonizers. The dichotomy in the rhetoric about Afghan rulers in the colonial sources demonstrates a good example in this regard. It is solely based on Afghan rulers association with the British government. When Emir Dost Muhammad intended to go to war against the British to recapture the city of Peshawar in 1837, he was called a “drug-addict, ignorant, and filthy man.”[23] However, when he surrendered to the British with no fights, prior to the first Anglo-Afghan war in 1840, he was portrayed as a “Great Emir” who “possessed some of the genius of a born administrator.”[24] With the same rationale, when Emir Abdur Rahman placed the foreign affairs of Afghanistan under British control and Afghanistan became a semi- protectorate of the British, he was called a “great ruler” and Afghanistan became a “modern,” “civilized” country. Dr. Walter S., who was a member of the Royal Asiatic Society, at a conference in London in 1913, said that Afghanistan is not an eastern country anymore. Abdur Rahman worked hard to lay the foundation of a developed, civilized country, and now his son, Habibullah is taking a step further by implementing and adopting the real European civilization in Afghanistan.[25]

This paradoxical dichotomy has continued through the modern history of Afghanistan. The pragmatic propaganda of colonial rationale constantly echoed itself and created new faces, notions, and concepts. The triumphant and patriotic environment after World War II and during the Cold War which dominated the US political and social scene, led to a strong association of knowledge with power. Lionel Trilling stated in 1951 that “intellect has associated itself with power as perhaps never before in history.”[26] American Orientalism, more than the traditional sort that has existed in Europe, developed as a direct relation of military and political power of a new emerging empire with the Oriental world. As Said observed, it “derive[d] from such things as the army language schools established during and after the war, sudden government and corporate interests in the non-Western world during the postwar period, cold war competition with the Soviet Union, and a residual missionary attitude towards Orientals who are considered ripe for reform and reeducation.”[27] Research projects about the Orient were mostly carried by the Defense Department or its affiliated private institutes such as the RAND Corporation. An army of CIA agents, economic and political advisors, and USAID officers spread around the so-called “developing world” mainly Oriental lands. The US strategic interests in Afghanistan incorporated the British colonial discourse and colonial rhetoric, though it became more subtle and nuance. The discourse has been maintained and strategically employed. In the first couple decades of the post World War II era, new developments in the Near East and partition of the Indian subcontinent into India and Pakistan temporarily pushed Afghanistan into the second plan. The so-called Middle East experts in the new empire were busy with concerns about India-Pakistan and Arab–Israeli issues, and Afghanistan was an “exotic land beyond Northwest frontiers”[29]

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