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Originally Posted by Itse
Closer to 200 years actually. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game) Although mostly the foreign forces have lost.
It would alkso propably be more accurate to say "armed to the teeth by foreign forces". The US especially.
And the tribalism comment about "that part of the world" is not really fair. Most of it was a part of ancient Persia for crying out loud, one of the first multicultural superpowers of the world. The Afgans had armies to beat both Russians and English in open warfare during the Great Game. They even had a relatively stable era of steady (but slowish) modernization before they unwillingly became a pawn in the Cold War.
There are longstanding ethnic conflicts in the area true, but outside of some very remote mountain areas "tribalism" is just not a descriptive word of what is or has been going on there.
I've been doing some studying on Afganistan lately. Maybe I'll try to post a quick summary later. |
Have you read Eric Margolis (sp?) book "war on top of the World", its almost a must read.
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