That's the description we hear for Afghanistan these days especially with the rising casualties of NATO forces at the hands of the insurgents.
This label is useful in a lot of ways. For one it sells books, news stories and documentaries. That's true for just about every type of slogan or claim that sells.
But just how true is this title beyond the media slogan? Let's take a look at history. Firstly, every empire rises and falls. No matter how strong an imprint it leaves behind weather cultural, religious, linguistic or racial, every empire has met it's downfall.
Then there are empires that conquer with success and others that fail.
In reality, Afghanistan has been colonized various times going back thousands of years from the Mauryan Empire to the Punjabi Sikh Empire. The Greeks also colonized modern Afghanistan and Pakistan before blending into the native populations.
Likewise, many empires colonized various countries and regions. Good examples are the Achaemenian Empire that ruled Pakistan. The Ottoman Empire in Europe and the Middle East, the Roman Empire also in Europe.
The Mongol Empire is an unforgettable one with their vast conquest of many parts of Eurasia- including parts of modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But in the end all these empires fell. The Ottomans retreated from Europe eventually as did the Arabs before them and so on. Despite all this, no media or historian to my knowledge called Europe, "the 'graveyard' of empires."
Despite that even after about five centuries of Ottoman Islamic rule, the Europeans drove them out.
The Romans and the Crusaders that came before them suffered a similar fate in their conquest of the Middle East.
So why haven't these places been granted the grand award of "the graveyard of empires?"
The best comparable example is the Soviet Union's war with Finland under Stalin. Finland was a country of only about three and a half million. The thousands of Soviet soldiers killed in one night of fighting and the clever tactics of the Finns had devastating affects on the Soviet military.
Afghanistan killing only about 15,000 Soviet soldiers in a period of about ten years is incomparable. Even before the Soviet-Finnish wars, Finland freed itself from Swedish and Czarist occupations many times despite being a colony for centuries. If any country should be recognized as the "graveyard of empires" it must be Finland. But why is it not seen as such?
Because Finland is a small, quiet country that doesn't sell many dramatic profitable news stories besides a few school shootings.
The sad truth also lies in the fact that both news publications and history are often manipulated to fit the tastes of those who are reporting them.
In the case of Afghanistan, they selectively pick all the empires that failed to conquer and establish a presence or a governing system while deliberately leaving out all the Punjabi, Persian, Arab and Turkic empires that occupied it with success.
Yet the defeat of the Soviet Empire and presently the rising casualties of NATO seems to have many political pseudoscientists, pseuodo-historians and the Afghan Mellat bellowing the drum "graveyard of empires" while ignoring the ground realities on purpose.
The reality is that the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan could probably never have happened had it not been for American military aid, Saudi money, various foreign jihaddists, Pakistani training and intelligence sharing.
What else could a small, unsophisticated country use against a giant military superpower?
How else could the Afghan mujahideen shoot down Soviet jets if not for American anti-aircraft stinger missiles? What else to strike hard against Soviet ground forces if not for anti-tank missiles and other sophisticated weaponry?
Any person who thinks the mujahideen could have succeeded without outside assistance lacks common sense and critical thinking.
Then there's the casualties that many also ignore. The casualties of the muhajideen- which consisted of many foreign nationals in addition to local Afghans- was far greater than that of the Soviets which was about only fifteen thousand.
On the subject of casualties, a fact to note is that if the USSR or NATO did not care for civilian lives, the insurgency would have been stamped out within a short period of time. Both NATO now and the Soviet Union then had the technology to blow up every town, city and village in Afghanistan.
But because that would be deemed as an immoral act and generate worldwide fear, it could trigger a third world war against that invading country/entity for no country today would commit such an atrocity to avoid isolating itself.
One doesn't have to look for contradicting statements or messages to refute a claim or a widely believed myth.
All one has to do is look for common sense or research further to come up with their own conclusion which does not have to agree with the collective belief of the majority, but at the same time carry with it this evidence to prove itself correct.
Post update: This article confirms what I've been expressing all along.
This label is useful in a lot of ways. For one it sells books, news stories and documentaries. That's true for just about every type of slogan or claim that sells.
But just how true is this title beyond the media slogan? Let's take a look at history. Firstly, every empire rises and falls. No matter how strong an imprint it leaves behind weather cultural, religious, linguistic or racial, every empire has met it's downfall.
Then there are empires that conquer with success and others that fail.
In reality, Afghanistan has been colonized various times going back thousands of years from the Mauryan Empire to the Punjabi Sikh Empire. The Greeks also colonized modern Afghanistan and Pakistan before blending into the native populations.
Likewise, many empires colonized various countries and regions. Good examples are the Achaemenian Empire that ruled Pakistan. The Ottoman Empire in Europe and the Middle East, the Roman Empire also in Europe.
The Mongol Empire is an unforgettable one with their vast conquest of many parts of Eurasia- including parts of modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan.
But in the end all these empires fell. The Ottomans retreated from Europe eventually as did the Arabs before them and so on. Despite all this, no media or historian to my knowledge called Europe, "the 'graveyard' of empires."
Despite that even after about five centuries of Ottoman Islamic rule, the Europeans drove them out.
The Romans and the Crusaders that came before them suffered a similar fate in their conquest of the Middle East.
So why haven't these places been granted the grand award of "the graveyard of empires?"
The best comparable example is the Soviet Union's war with Finland under Stalin. Finland was a country of only about three and a half million. The thousands of Soviet soldiers killed in one night of fighting and the clever tactics of the Finns had devastating affects on the Soviet military.
Afghanistan killing only about 15,000 Soviet soldiers in a period of about ten years is incomparable. Even before the Soviet-Finnish wars, Finland freed itself from Swedish and Czarist occupations many times despite being a colony for centuries. If any country should be recognized as the "graveyard of empires" it must be Finland. But why is it not seen as such?
Because Finland is a small, quiet country that doesn't sell many dramatic profitable news stories besides a few school shootings.
The sad truth also lies in the fact that both news publications and history are often manipulated to fit the tastes of those who are reporting them.
In the case of Afghanistan, they selectively pick all the empires that failed to conquer and establish a presence or a governing system while deliberately leaving out all the Punjabi, Persian, Arab and Turkic empires that occupied it with success.
Yet the defeat of the Soviet Empire and presently the rising casualties of NATO seems to have many political pseudoscientists, pseuodo-historians and the Afghan Mellat bellowing the drum "graveyard of empires" while ignoring the ground realities on purpose.
The reality is that the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan could probably never have happened had it not been for American military aid, Saudi money, various foreign jihaddists, Pakistani training and intelligence sharing.
What else could a small, unsophisticated country use against a giant military superpower?
How else could the Afghan mujahideen shoot down Soviet jets if not for American anti-aircraft stinger missiles? What else to strike hard against Soviet ground forces if not for anti-tank missiles and other sophisticated weaponry?
Any person who thinks the mujahideen could have succeeded without outside assistance lacks common sense and critical thinking.
Then there's the casualties that many also ignore. The casualties of the muhajideen- which consisted of many foreign nationals in addition to local Afghans- was far greater than that of the Soviets which was about only fifteen thousand.
On the subject of casualties, a fact to note is that if the USSR or NATO did not care for civilian lives, the insurgency would have been stamped out within a short period of time. Both NATO now and the Soviet Union then had the technology to blow up every town, city and village in Afghanistan.
But because that would be deemed as an immoral act and generate worldwide fear, it could trigger a third world war against that invading country/entity for no country today would commit such an atrocity to avoid isolating itself.
One doesn't have to look for contradicting statements or messages to refute a claim or a widely believed myth.
All one has to do is look for common sense or research further to come up with their own conclusion which does not have to agree with the collective belief of the majority, but at the same time carry with it this evidence to prove itself correct.
Post update: This article confirms what I've been expressing all along.
