Altaf Hussain/ReutersAuthor William Dalrymple.The Scottish historian and travel writer William Dalrymple's new book “Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan 1839-1842†is an eloquent, animated account of the first Anglo-Afghan war, long regarded as Britain's most disastrous imperial adventure. He spoke with India Ink about writing narrative history; the parallels between the first Anglo-Afghan war and the war on terror; and what the West could learn from his book.
Your last book was “Nine Lives,†a travelogue that explored religion in modern India. Was it easy to reorient yourself to writing about history?
I always find history books much easier to write than travel books. If you choose a subject like this, which has a very clear narrative structure â€" the basic story here is that 18,000 troops march in and one man comes out - it gives writing a clarity and ease. Then, you have a central spine even before you work on day one.
A travel book is much more like a novel â€" you have to construct it and create it, and it's much more amorphous, and you can feel it running away from you when it's not working. You can't often work out why it's not working. I've quite a logical mind. My family is traditionally one of lawyers, and so I've inherited a legal brain and history writing seems to suit it. I find it much easier to write.
A striking aspect of your book is that behind all the theatrical display of pomp and gaiety, a sophisticated and complex diplomatic process was goi ng on. Would you say that diplomacy vis-Ã -vis Afghanistan is as sophisticated now as it was back then?
While there are many parallels between then and now, diplomacy is not one of the stronger ones. The brute, gut-wrenching, astonishing parallel which drew me to this story in the first place is the fact that 170 years later, we, the West, have installed back on the throne in Kabul a man from the same tiny sub-tribe. Shah Shuja [the ruler of Afghanistan between 1839 and 1842] and [President Hamid] Karzai are both Popalzai, while the tribe which brought down Shah Shuja was the Ghilzais, who now make up the foot soldiers of the Taliban. So you have this extraordinary feeling of history just repeating itself in every way. The political geography remains the same, and as you travel around the country you feel the parallels grow rather than diminish.
You write about how Ahmad Shah Durrani vanished from the scene before modern Afghanistan was created. It reminded me of Ahmad Shah Masood, who fought against the Taliban regime but was killed before it was ousted. Would you agree with that parallel?
Only up to a point. What's interesting is that Ahmad Shah Durrani came from a family which had a long tradition of service to the Mughals, and they were from Multan [now in Pakistan], so technically [they were] Punjabis. And this is a very moot point in Afghanistan today, because the Pashtuns like to claim them as the epitome of Pashtun nationalism.
Certainly Timur Shah and Shah Shuja were Persian-speaking Timurids in their cultural choices. They spoke Persian, they wrote in Persian and followed the norms of high Persian culture. Ahmad Shah Masood was a king-of-the-mountains sort of guy, whereas the Durranis were much more urbane and cultured; not something you'd associate with Masood. That said, Alexander Burnes [a British officer] chased Dost Mohamma d Khan [an Afghan ruler] through the Panjshir Valley that Masood so famously defended.
One of the sources you quote extensively in your book is Mirza 'Ata Mohammad, a writer from Shah Shuja's reign, who wrote very vivid accounts of what he saw. Is there anyone like him in Afghanistan today?
There's a wonderful, very witty Afghan writer who writes in French called Atiq Rahimi. But the thing I'm most proud of with this book is the discovery of these nine Dari sources that are very diverse. Mirza 'Ata is this extremely urbane and witty observer. Then you have these two poems that are clarion calls to arms, the wonders of the jihad and mountain soldiers sweeping down from the mountains. There are the Jangnama and the Akbarnama, which give totally opposing visions of the same events. And then there's Shah Shuja's own autobiography that's an account of a man writing couplets on the edge of lakes, wandering from am bush to ambush.
When I read about how the British treated Shah Shuja, I was reminded of how the Western powers treated the Islamist anti-soviet fighters in the 80s, who became the Taliban. They were allies first and later, they were abandoned.
Shah Shuja is a kind of hate figure in modern Afghanistan. They have inherited a tradition where the Barakzais are the great heroes, which is not clearly the case at all. Shah Shuja is seen as this weakling, hopeless, indecisive character, which isn't the case at all. To me, he's a very admirable character who's very lucky, who persevered against all the odds and then, having succeeded in re-establishing his rule after the British left, is assassinated by his own godson over a petty feud. But for that twist of fate, he would've ruled Afghanistan for 300 years and be regarded as the new father of Afghanistan.
What lessons do you think G eorge W. Bush and Tony Blair can learn from your book?
That you don't meddle in Afghanistan and you leave other people's countries alone! This was apparently folk wisdom in British politics. When Harold Macmillan was handing over the prime ministership to Alec Douglas-Home, he is supposed to have said, ‘My dear boy, you'll be fine as long as you don't invade Afghanistan.' †It's a classic case of people who are ignorant of history being forced to repeat it.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
Aayush Soni is a New Delhi-based freelance journalist and a recent graduate of the Columbia Journalism School. Follow him on Twitter at @aayushsoni.
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