Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould have been involved in the Afghan story for over 30 years and they’ve come to see it in a very different light than most analysts. They go beyond geopolitics to discuss the mystical component of the War in Afghanistan.
Mystical Imperialism rationalizes the expansion of a nation’s authority by conquest over other nations by infusing a sense of the Divine into the raw politics of empire-building.
Charles Dunbar, the interim head of the US Embassy during the Soviet occupation, noted that the failure in Afghanistan’s experiment in Democracy during 1963-1973 was not the result of any backward tendencies of the people, as some would like to believe, but from the people’s un-met desire for rapid modernization, which the economy could not support.
He wrote, “During the 7 years of the experiment, Afghans have become acutely conscious and indeed, jealous of the personal freedoms guaranteed them by the 1964 constitution. Many educated Afghans carry the constitution in their pockets and quote from it, extensively and it is clear that however much they criticize the experiment, they have developed some faith in the document as a guardian of their rights.”
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