Afghanistan: a Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban

Military Review,  Jan-Feb, 2005  by Lester W. Grau

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AFGHANISTAN: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban, Stephen Tanner, Da Capo Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002, 351 pages, $17.95.

There have been several excellent military histories written about Afghanistan, including A.E. Snesarev's Afghanistan: A Military History from Alexander the Great to the Fall of the Taliban, published in Russian in 1921; Percy Sykes' two-volume A History of Afghanistan, published in English in 1940; Ali Ahmad Jalali's three-volume Military History of Afghanistan, published in Dari in 1976; and Yu V. Gankovskiy's A History of the Armed Forces of Afghanistan, published in Russian in 1985. Unfortunately, all are difficult to find today and only one is published in English. Stephen Tanner has done well producing a quick English-language history about an obscure area of the world that suddenly is vitally important.

Afghanistan sits at the crossroads of empires and has long been a battleground. The Greeks, Indians, Persians, Mongolians, British, and Russians have tried to hold Afghanistan. Internal strife has been constant, and Afghan forces have always been better prepared to fight an internal threat than an external invasion. Afghanistan's warring mountain tribes have always proven the invaders' ultimate test. Today, as the United States and other coalition forces are sitting in Afghan cities and airfields, there is a pressing need for a book that provides the history and background of this land-locked mountainous country.

Tanner has produced a history of a remote and little-understood region in record time. Unfortunately, as with any rapid effort, there are a few problems. Tanner perpetuates mistaken information the West put out early in the Soviet-Afghan War: misidentification of the divisions used in the invasion, inflation of the number of tanks involved, and misidentification of weapons systems. He also perpetuates the myth of the poor quality of the Central Asian reservists and the myth that the Stinger knocked hundreds of aircraft from the sky. (The Soviets changed their aviation tactics quickly to avoid this very scenario.) From a historian's perspective, the book's biggest problem is a lack of footnotes or endnotes, making it almost impossible to substantiate Tanner's claims.

Is this book useful to the professional soldier or statesman inbound for Afghanistan? Yes. The book provides a rapid introduction to a historically complex region in an easy-to-read style. This book will not be the textbook on Afghanistan's military history 100 years from now, but who cares? It fills an immediate need and provides background information for the professional to consider while maneuvering through Afghan politics and an incipient guerrilla war.

LTC Lester W. Grau, USA, Retired,

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas

COPYRIGHT 2005 U.S. Army CGSC
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning