The meeting place of empires

Afghanistan, for its impenetrability and for the failed attempts at its conquest by many foreign powers, has long been known as the ‘graveyard of empires’. In relatively recent history alone, the losses of the British and Russian empires in Afghanistan, as well as the more contemporary, drawn out and hefty occupation by the United States, all reinforce its image as an unconquerable land. But our persistence in seeing Afghanistan predominantly through the lens of war – irrespective of whether we are in awe of its resistance or affronted by its otherness and hostility – limits our vision to a blinkered slither of uncontextualised history.