History shows us that the one country who will fight you for generations without growing tired is Afghanistan. Pakistan may have a larger army on paper but time may tell
Some cultures are extremely good at a certain thing. The Swiss are renowned for cuckoo clocks and banking secrets. The only place to get really good sushi and authentic sumo wrestling is Japan. Everyone knows that depressing literature is the bread and butter of Russian authors. With these in mind you must take a look at history and declare the Afghans the world’s most willing fighters. Shah Muhammad II conquered what is now Afghanistan and introduced Islam. In the 13th Century Genghis Khan occupied the region with his Mongol hordes and they found a guerilla campaign that his descendant Timur Lane was still fighting two hundred years later. When the Mongols were thrown out the Persians came in and were themselves tossed out in 1838.
The British, eager to scoop up Afghani real estate north of their Indian colony (now Pakistan) invaded and fought the Afghans in three different wars (1838-1842 where the British army was destroyed, 1878-1880 where the British declared that they won and then got out as fast as they could, and in 1919 where airpower proved its worth). The Afghans took a payment from the Kaiser’s Germany to fight the British in World War One but never actually invaded India. The country saw a civil war in 1929. This led to a series of assassinations, minor uprisings and military coups that lasted until Soviet intervention in 1978 and the full fledged war that followed.
When the Soviets pulled out bruised and broken in 1989 they left behind 13,833 Soviet military personnel killed and took 53,753 maimed wounded with them. In the four years that followed the Soviet withdrawal a violent Afghan on Afghan civil war was fought that left t he Taliban government in control of most of the country by 1992. The reason I say most of the country is that a number of Mujahideen warlords continued to run their own areas and fight the government until the American backed invasion in 2001 chased the Taliban to the hills where they stay fighting today.
Not happy with their choice of wars, it appears that Afghanistan could soon be at war with Pakistan along its mutual 1600 mile border. There never really has been a clearly defined border between these two countries and this situation has been brought to a head by American insistence that the porous zone be strictly defined and controlled to cut off retreating Taliban fighters and its Al Qaeda allies. Each side is contesting every meter and willing to fight for it.
From a Times article by Anthony Lloyd, a local Afghani tribesman was quoted as saying “We were carrying rifles, axes and swords,” said Nawruz, one of the tribesmen who participated. “I took 15 men with me from my village. We got into a trench and started firing back at the Pakistani militia. One of my friends died beside me, killed by a Pakistani mortar round.”
And the song remains the same………..
