Fourteenth in a series

Ideas – like the prophets, artists and scholars who propound them – depend for success on timing. Some idea people, like the Prophet Mohammed, get it just right and are honored in their own country and century. Many, like Jesus, seem (at least in retrospect) ahead of their times. Peter Schweizer of Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institute think tank has the opposite problem. Schweizer has a sensible but belated solution for Afghanistan – a good idea 200 years too late. According to this erstwhile Cold Warrior and Pulitzer Prize nominee, Afghanistan should be split in two – North and South – along the Hindu Kush.

“Conservatives,” in the American sense, tend to like the past. Listening to Schweizer on CNN International earlier this month, I too wished that the clock could be turned back to, say, 1747. That year, at least mythically, marks the founding of the Afghan nation, the idea from which modern Afghanistan – with all its contentiousness – springs.

In 1747 a young Pashtun warlord named Ahmad declared himself independent of what had been Persian domination. For the next quarter century he ruled an empire that grew and shrank with the fortunes of war but was always based in Kandahar, hometown of today’s Taliban. En route toward the riches of India, he invaded what now is Pakistan a total of 10 times. Seek no further for the most visceral source of Pakistan’s paranoia toward Afghanistan … and thus its endless efforts to control the Afghan future.

(Ahmad also had an eye for cut glass. He stole the Koh-i-Noor diamond from a Persian who had stolen it from a Moghul. Stolen later by the Sikhs, this 106.5-carat goose egg was “appropriated” in 1849 by the British and has been worn by three queens of England, most recently the Queen Mother.)

There was no “Afghanistan” in 1747, nor was Ahmad ever crowned “king.” Even so, an idea was born and has been elaborated ever since: the notion of a Pashtun-ruled dominion over not only Pashtuns but others as well. And, ever since, Ahmad has been remembered (by Pashtuns) as “Baba” – grandfather – the same fond honorific that is proposed or former King Zahir today.

“Afghan” back in 1747 was synonymous with “Pashtun.” The subsequent concept of an “Afghanistan” crossing the Hindu Kush and including other ethnic groups (Hazaras, Uzbeks, Tajiks, etc.) has been, in this sense, pure Pashtun imperialism.

It’s what the Taliban intended to consolidate. It’s what Peter Schweizer proposes to reverse.

(Schweizer’s scenario is also what the Soviet Union should have pursued in their 10-year Afghan war [1979-1989]. Had they been less greedy and less impressed by lines on maps, the Soviets could have concentrated on the North, controlled it, even annexed it due to easy border access and mostly flat terrain. Left to itself, the Pashtun South of Afghanistan would likely have made common cause with Pakistani Pashtuns and thus destabilized Pakistan. Moscow could have had Indian oceanfront property today. Instead the USSR went for all of Afghanistan, and for that reason [among others] no longer exists.)

Back now to the belatedness of Schweizer’s good idea. It was during the 19th century – especially in its last two decades and financed by British subsidies – that Pashtun emirs (still not styling themselves “kings”) extended and consolidated their rule north of the Hindu Kush. Britain wanted a buffer between its Indian “Jewel of the Crown” and imperial Czarist Russia. That buffer had to be weak itself but nominally united. Pashtuns were to call the tune. Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and others were to pay the piper. Hence the conflicted ethnic dance ever since.

“Ever since” includes formal recognition of Afghanistan’s independence shortly after World War I and membership in the United Nations, when that body was one year old. In other words, it’s a done deal. This hodgepodge buffer split by a mountain range and lacking viable borders is now ratified – as much as the United States, France or Spain – by international covenant. Here’s what Schweizer wants to undo.

It is, repeat, a good idea – or, rather, might be good if there were only the inhabitants of Afghanistan to consider. Let’s say that Afghanistan, as currently configured topographically and ethnically, were an island off by itself in the midst of some vast sea. Then, yes, it would make sense to divide it down the crest of the Hindu Kush. The Pashtuns would object at losing their (tenuous) hold on the North. The more ambitious (and wildly unrealistic) northern alliance Tajiks and Uzbeks would have to be dragged from Kabul. The final result, however, might be better for everybody – if by “everybody” we mean only Afghans, and if Afghanistan were an isolated island.

(Of course, it’s equally possible that, once separated from the North, the southern Pashtun tribes would cheerfully begin attacking each other. And that the even more distinct Northern ethnic groups would do the same among themselves. Never underestimate the testosterone level of Central Asian males.)

In any case, the Schweizer plan ignores external realities. Far from existing in isolation, Afghanistan is the linchpin which links (as well as divides) Central Asia and the Indian sub-continent. Each of its six neighbors (Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and even China) has vital stakes in Afghanistan – ethnically, militarily and economically. Put the other way round, a partition of Afghanistan would lead to a grab bag scramble which would set the six neighbors not only against the Afghan people but very likely against each other.

Think it’s a mess now? How do you fancy a six-sided war which includes enormous China, three former Soviet republics where Russia still has crucial interests, an Iran currently torn between Islamism and modernization, and our old/new “friend” nuclear-weaponed Pakistan?

Such considerations exemplify why our State Department is so reluctant to countenance redrawing of borders anywhere in the world – with the selective de facto exception of Israel (another story). Here’s the main reason why Bush One did not finish Saddam Hussein: Iraq would likely have fragmented into its three natural segments … with volatile repercussions all over the oil-rich Middle East. Here’s why Bush Two can’t afford to take Peter Schweizer’s well-intended counsel. It comes two centuries too late. Too many other factors and nation-states have been established in the meantime. Afghanistan has to stay Afghanistan. Good luck to the Afghans and to us all.

Both Presidents Bush, please take note. There is one border revision proposal on the table that possibly, just possibly, is worth the risk, at least worth a wacky second look. Both Bushes know well – and are mostly supported by – the cantankerous conservative columnist William Safire. His Nov. 5 op-ed in The New York Times conjures an imaginary conversation with the shade of Richard Nixon, arguably America’s most knowledgeable (and most Machiavellian) foreign policy president ever.

Nixon’s advice from Purgatory: Seize the moment and transfer the northern third of Iraq (the Kurdish third) to Turkey. Three purposes would be accomplished. First, Saddam (like bin Laden, a terrorist but with a state at his disposal) would be further weakened. Second, Turkey – which ghostly Nixon calls “Your generation’s card … the secular Muslim nation with the strongest army” – would be strengthened. Third, the Kurds could be provided with a viable autonomous homeland. One way or another, the 21st century will hear much more about the Kurds. And much more from them. They number – a very conservative estimate – at least 25 million. The Kurds are, by far, the world’s largest nation without their own state. That “state” of affairs won’t keep still.

Of course (as the sometimes sepulchral State Department would reply to an entombed Nixon) there are risks to Safire’s brainstorm. But risks and brainstorms are what columnists – even this completely novice columnist – are supposed to explore. Stay tuned for further such adventures.

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world.