"Is Afghanistan really a 'graveyard of empires'?". Nonetheless, the narrative allowed for argument from analogy and the claims of " history repeating itself," which proved popular amongst authors and pundits. Furthermore, there is reason to believe that the Soviet Union would have collapsed regardless of the campaign.
While the Soviet–Afghan War was a major factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the opposition in Afghanistan was only possible with foreign aid, primarily from the United States. The British Empire was not destroyed after the Third Anglo-Afghan War, and the collapse of the British Empire was more commonly attributed to World War II. The New York Times foreign correspondent Rod Nordland has stated that "in truth, no great empires perished solely because of Afghanistan." Joint Services Command and Staff College lecturer Patrick Porter called the attribution "a false extrapolation from something that is true - that there is tactical and strategic difficulty." US President Joe Biden referred to the sobriquet while he delivered a public statement after the 2021 fall of Kabul as evidence that no further commitment of American military presence would consolidate the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan against the Taliban. In October 2001, during the United States invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban founder and leader Mohammed Omar Mujahid threatened the United States with the same fate as the British Empire and the Soviet Union.
The anthropologist Thomas Barfield has noted that the narrative of Afghanistan as an unconquerable nation has been used by Afghanistan itself to deter invaders. The difficulty in invading Afghanistan was attributed to the prevalence of fortress-like qalats, the deserts, the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan, its severe winter and its "impregnable clan loyalties", various empires fighting each other while attempting to conquer Afghanistan, and outside neighboring countries support such as Pakistan, where foreign invaders were unable or not permitted to cross into such nations to destroy their enemy sanctuaries. Some have attributed ancient and medieval empires to the narrative, including the Persians, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, and Mongols. Modern examples included the British Empire during the First, Second, and Third Anglo-Afghan Wars (1839–1842, 1878–1880, 1919) the Soviet Union in the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) and the United States in the War in Afghanistan (2001–2021). Further information: Invasions of Afghanistan, The Great Game, and 2021 Taliban offensiveĭuring the history of Afghanistan, several great powers have attempted to invade Afghanistan without maintaining a stable, permanent rule.
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