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Afghanistan
Sep. 12th, 2017 06:56 pmMy Christmas present was a limited subscription to the UWA library. I used the time to download as much as possible.
The most interesting article I read yesterday was by an American folklorist who visited Afghanistan in the 1960s and tooled around gathering traditional stories about the Anglo-Afghan wars (of the late 1830-40s, 1870s-80s, 1919). He followed the route that the fleeing army took in the 1840s (16,500 people of which about 1,600 were soldiers, of which 1 survived) and asked the local villagers for stories about it. Naturally what he got back was telescoped with the events of the different wars conflated and the story tellers prioritised the doings of the ancestors in the different villages.
I guess what amazes me is that 1, I always forget that for a while in the 60s and 70s Afghanistan was an open society.
And 2, what the heck is the obsession with invading Afghanistan every generation. Look:
1840s, 1880s, 1919, not during the 1940s but they did partition India and Pakistan which impacted on Afghanistan, 1980s (on this occasion from the north not the south), 2000s.
The most interesting article I read yesterday was by an American folklorist who visited Afghanistan in the 1960s and tooled around gathering traditional stories about the Anglo-Afghan wars (of the late 1830-40s, 1870s-80s, 1919). He followed the route that the fleeing army took in the 1840s (16,500 people of which about 1,600 were soldiers, of which 1 survived) and asked the local villagers for stories about it. Naturally what he got back was telescoped with the events of the different wars conflated and the story tellers prioritised the doings of the ancestors in the different villages.
I guess what amazes me is that 1, I always forget that for a while in the 60s and 70s Afghanistan was an open society.
And 2, what the heck is the obsession with invading Afghanistan every generation. Look:
1840s, 1880s, 1919, not during the 1940s but they did partition India and Pakistan which impacted on Afghanistan, 1980s (on this occasion from the north not the south), 2000s.
