The value lies not in building a “lessons of history” checklist but in grasping how tentacles of the decade spent weaponizing Islam in order to kill Soviets in a gray-zone war entangle us today. involvement in Afghanistan during the final phase of the Cold War. However, there is also purpose in looking backward to the origins and consequences of U.S. The Afghanistan archive of this publication is rich with forward-looking recommendations for accidental counter-insurgents, nation-builders, and would-be peacemakers. 11, 2001, our mujahedeen companion politely chided, “Ah, we have been at war for over 30 years and now you are back.” When one of us said something about how long it was since Operation Enduring Freedom began after Sept. to guard the southern arm of the Silk Road against Persian marauders. Less than a quarter-mile away, a high mound rose from the desert floor, eroded walls of mud brick visible through binoculars - one of “Iskandar’s Towers,” erected by Alexander the Great in the 3rd century B.C. Just beyond lay the site of the Battle of Maiwand, where on July 27, 1880, tribesmen and the Afghan army had routed two over-confident brigades of British and Indian troops during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. But the view proffered history with a much larger sweep: A Soviet BMP, destroyed in a forgotten ambush during the 1980s, poked at an impossible angle from the edge of a wadi. The American flag flew from the forward operating base on the other side of the improvised explosive device-scarred highway, and Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s old mosque sat not far away. We had heard that boast many times, the Afghan way of war tinged with the evanescent promise of Western riches. “Give me 100 guns and I’ll clean them out for you,” he said. President Barack Obama’s time-bound surge had put enough troops on the ground to take back most of the Taliban heartland, and the grizzled former mujahedeen commander with us was pointing out their remaining pockets. On a blistering summer day in 2011, I stood with members of 10th Mountain Division’s Task Force Spartan on the ramparts of the caravansari in Maiwand, long-abandoned alongside the Ring Road west of Kandahar.
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