Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires
![handle is hein.journals/fora80 and id is 973 raw text is: Afghanistan,
Graveyard of Empires
Milton Bearden
THE GREAT GAME
MICHNI POINT, Pakistan's last outpost at the western end of the
barren, winding Khyber Pass, stands sentinel over Torkham Gate,
the deceptively orderly border crossing into Afghanistan. Frontier Scouts
in gray shalwar kameezes (traditional tunics and loose pants) and
black berets patrol the lonely station commanded by a major of
the legendary Khyber Rifles, the militia force that has been guarding the
border with Afghanistan since the nineteenth century, first for British
India and then for Pakistan. This spot, perhaps more than any other,
has witnessed the traverse of the world's great armies on campaigns
of conquest to and from South and Central Asia. All eventually ran
into trouble in their encounters with the unruly Afghan tribals.
Alexander the Great sent his supply trains through the Khyber,
then skirted northward with his army to the Konar Valley on his
campaign in 327 BC. There he ran into fierce resistance and, struck by
an Afghan archer's arrow, barely made it to the Indus River with his
life. Genghis Khan and the great Mughal emperors began passing
through the Khyber a millennium later and ultimately established the
greatest of empires-but only after reaching painful accommodations
with the Afghans. From Michni Point, a trained eye can still see the
ruins of the Mughal signal towers used to relay complex torch-light
messages 1,5oo miles from Calcutta to Bukhara in less than an hour.
MILTON BEARDEN served as CIA station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to
1989, where he was responsible for that agency's covert action program
in support of the Afghan resistance to the Soviet-supported government.
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Afghanistan, Graveyard of Empires
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