Jochen Becker
1979 and following
Between Kabul and Tehran

President Heinrich Lübke on his statevisit in Afghanistan, march 1967

Paschtunistan- Place, 1967 with Khyber-Restaurant in Kabul

Attack on an soviet convoi, photographed by Mujahedin

Portrait of the murdered Mujahed Ahmad Schah Massud in the yaer 2001. Kabul 2004 (Photo: Sandra Schäfer)

The radical changes of the year 1979 (1) mark the starting point of the contributions in this volume which examines the epochal transformation in the region between Iraq, China and Pakistan, the Muslim Soviet Republics, Europeanizing Turkey, and the globally positioned United Arab Emirates. As opposed to their neighbours, Iran and Afghanistan were never colonized - an extremely rare phenomenon in the Near and Middle East. The location of the Afghan capital, Kabul, marks one of the most crucial geographical and ethnic dividing lines in the country - and comparable with the position of Brussels in divided Belgium. Paradoxically, one of the greatest achievements of the authoritarian Taliban regime consisted in a successful "nation building". In Iran, on the other hand, the nation-state had been established and internalized in the collective consciousness for a longer period of time through the historical reference to the Persian Empire and the modernization fuelled by the oil boom. Both countries are connected by a common language. But drug trafficking also establishes links: Afghanistan is the world's number one producer of raw opiates; its neighbour, Iran, is situated along the trade route to Europe and purportedly has the highest drug consumption rate in the world.

The events of 1979 and the following years paved the way for the end of the Cold War. Khomeini's entry into Tehran in February 1979, celebrated by the majority of Iranians, heralded the regional pushing through of political Islam. The invasion of Kabul by Soviet troops on Christmas Eve 1979 to support the government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan ended just a few years later in a fiasco. (2) Afghanistan became the "Vietnam of the Soviet Union", while previously - both superpowers were present in the region for decades - huge sums were spent on the infrastructure and modernization of the country. Regular visits to Kabul were on the agenda of the American presidents Nixon and Eisenhower as well as the Soviet leaders Khrushchev and Bulganin. Afghanistan turned into a decisive terrain for the military conflict between the two Cold War opponents that led to a severe regional crisis in which Afghanistan and its people played merely a minor role. When Gorbachev assumed power in 1983 and introduced the era of glasnost and perestroika, the permanent presence of the Soviet troops in Afghanistan became not only a military and economic problem but increasingly a domestic one as well. Shortly after the defeated Soviet troops were forced to retreat from Afghanistan in February 1989, the Muscovite Empire imploded - even before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The United States thus lost its most important political enemy.

Ever since the American bombardments and military operations in Afghanistan commenced within the frame of the "worldwide battle against terror" in October 2001, the Cold War has been replaced by the "long war" (3), in which the Federal Republic of Germany is also involved. Germany's interests are now being defended at the Hindu Kush, as the Minister of Defence, Peter Struck, told members of the Federal Armed Forces before they embarked on their mission to Afghanistan. Two years later, he defined as a "possible area of operation of the Federal Armed Forces (...) the entire world" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Jan. 14, 2004). As early as the 1920s, close ties were established between Afghanistan and Germany. The erstwhile German Reich became the most important trade partner and played a dominant role in equipping the local industry. Hydroelectric power stations, dams and bridges were mainly constructed by German companies during that period, and today Siemens is again extremely present in Kabul. In 1924 the German-influenced Nejat secondary school, which still exists today, opened its gates primarily for pupils stemming from the Afghan elites. Since 1921 Afghans have been coming to Germany to study as well. When the relations to the Federal Republic deteriorated in the wake of the Soviet invasion, young students were also sent to the GDR. In 1937 there was already a Lufthansa air connection between Berlin and Kabul. At the end of the 1950s, the Federal Republic began training Afghan policemen, a task Germany is again in overall charge of today. (4)

"Kabulistan"
The limited sphere of control of the current Afghan government led by Hamed Karzai is jokingly called "Kabulistan". Up until the national shaping of Afghanistan in the second half of the 19th century - beforehand, Afghanistan only designated the land of the Pashtuns - the region was called the "Kingdom of Kabul" and functioned as a buffer zone between the world powers of Russia, British India and Persia, until the national borders, which are for the most part still valid today, were drawn up starting in 1880. The "Great Game" (5) of the big powers resulted in a number of international political conflicts and wars that were waged in Afghanistan, but decided in the capitals of the world powers. However, the country never was a colony and it inflicted massive military losses to the respective occupation troops.

"The Drama of Afghanistan" is how the German writer Theodore Fontane titled his poem from 1898 about one of the worst defeats of the British in their imperial history - which severely shook Europe at the time. The British occupation of the "amusement park Kabul" (Malzahn 2005: 134) in spring of 1839 was initially tolerated by the Afghan population who offered very little resistance. But when the transfer payments to the local rulers were cut in the winter of 1841/42, the mob dragged the corpse of the beheaded director of the British expedition through the Kabul bazaar. The British soldiers, fleeing in panic, were massacred during their retreat or froze to death crossing the icy Khyber Pass. (6) "Those who should hear, they'll hear nevermore / Destroyed is the proud host of yore / With thirteen thousand their trail began / Only one man returned from Afghanistan". A British revenge campaign two years later turned Kabul into a field of ruins. Only in 1919 did the British withdraw from Afghanistan once and for all, but not before drawing up the so-called Durand Line which arbitrarily separated Afghanistan from present-day Pakistan and until today is crossed by trading nomads, smugglers, mercenaries and refugees.

Enclosed, surrounded and traversed by high mountain regions and deserts, and without direct access to the ocean, Afghanistan was and is hardly self-sufficient. For this reason it was dependent on foreign support already at that time - especially from neighbouring Pakistan. In the 20th century the United States and the Soviet Union replaced Great Britain as the foreign powers of influence, and in the 21st century it is the "international community of states". Prior to the invasion by the Soviet army, close to half of the state income came from abroad. By now, the portion of foreign aid will have increased, because apart from opium and stolen Afghan cultural possessions there is little that can be exported.

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