There are no bigger victims to the clichés surrounding Afghanistan than the Afghans themselves. Tragically, the country is infested by glib non-truisms bandied around by foreigners, many of which help perpetuate the conflict rather than untangle it. That Afghanistan is the “graveyard of empires” is the biggest lie of them all.
Until 1840 Afghanistan, repeatedly and easily overrun by invaders, was known more plausibly as the “highway of conquest”. Rather than being a graveyard of empires it is in fact the graveyard of the thousands of Afghans killed by empires, or by the interference of the country's more powerful neighbours. Steve Coll was in a prime position to address the issue of regional interference in his latest book, Directorate S. The author rightly won a Pulitzer prize for Ghost Wars, which charted the CIA's covert programmes in Afghanistan from the invasion of the Soviets in 1979 to the rise of Osama Bin Laden.
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