Re: [HeroQuest-RPG] Re: Afghans and Orlanthi

From: Peter Metcalfe <metcalph_at_aLrLxY7dhw4QhX83zdoMtayamPjBCp02rktNZKsEsouqT5ejjBJ5-GmLkVmTePUTTES>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 13:18:12 +1300


At 04:45 PM 1/16/2006 +0000, you wrote:

[transferred from HeroQuest-RPG due to very little glorantha content]

>Working from a very dubious memory, late at night, and not checking
>any references...
>- In the 1970s, Kabul was probably the most liberal city in South
>Asia.

Shift it to the 60s and you would be more accurate. It had a Mark and Spencers there.

> Until, of course, the local communists/socialsts invited in the
>big neighbour to the north to resolve a domestic dispute (probably
>unhappy that they were trounced in an election or something like
>that).

Incorrect. The King was ousted in 1973 in a palace coup by his brother-in-law who declared a republic and then screwed up the country. He was then murdered in 1978 in bloody coup and a Democratic Republic declared. The Soviets invaded in 1979 because the then-rulers only managed to make things worse.

> And most of the best fighters against the Russians were the
>radical conservatives - i.e. those that invented a fundamentalist
>past that never really previously existed, a.k.a. the Taleban and the
>foreigners that joined them.

The Taleban never fought against the Russians for the simple reason that the movement was invented after the Russians left. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was a religious conservative but he was effective only because he received large amounts of funding from the CIA primarily on the advice of the Pakistani who were ruled then by the Islamicising General Zia.

Masoud was an equally effective opponent of the Russians and not 'radically conservative'. He obtained his supplies through attacking Russian supply lines. Of the two thousand stinger missiles the Americans sent to Afghanistan, he received only eight and that was in the last year of the fight against the russians.

The CIA did attempt to channel funds to Masoud once in return for an attack on Russian Positions. They paid his cousin $500,000 only to find out that Masoud hardly moved his forces. They subsequently wrote him off as unreliable and it was only some years later they found Masoud didn't know anything about the $500,000 and only received a request to attack.

The only other big Afghan name that I can recall is General Dostrum who fought for the Communists and whose late conversion was the fatal blow for Najibullah's government in 1992.

As for the effectiveness of the Arab Afghans, my source (Ghost Wars) doesn't mention much. Osama Bin Laden is nothing more than a name to the CIA throughout much of the 80s and his rise in stature comes through his terrorism activities which occurs _after_ the fall of Kabul in 1992. Hence I get the impression of OBL as a rich kid playing soldiers rather than an effective fighter.

>Any other Heortling parallels ringing a
>bell yet?

The Heortling parallel would have to require massive funding from the Holy Country. Which isn't happening AFAIK.

>- At Tentacles several years ago, Greg mentioned that Kallyr was one
>of the Argraths (not for the first time) and went on to mention that
>the key factor leading to her failure was the conservative upcountry
>Heortlings (men _and_ women) that could not accept/support a female
>Heortling High King. So what they got in the end was a male but not
>necessarily (completely) a Heortling. More uncomfortable parallels?
>(Think Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian, the de facto defence minister
> on an ever upward trajectory in Afganistan, until he annoyed the big
>power to the West).

There's a big difference bewteen Afghans and Arabs insofar as Osama had no hope whatsoever of becoming Emir of Afghanistan. Argrath, the last time, I looked was a Heortling.

--Peter Metcalfe            

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