An American in Afghanistan
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A lovelorn Quaker from Pennsylvania would seem an improbable player in the treacherous game of Afghan politics. Yet for more than a decade, beginning in 1826, Josiah Harlan would figure large in the intrigue swirling in and about that remote country. As he has done in several previous biographies, Macintyre has retrieved an all-but-forgotten character from the past, placing his biography in its fascinating historical context
If Harlan's decision to seek his fortune in Asia was prompted in part by his American fiancee's decision to marry another, his obsession with Alexander the Great's record of conquest was the positive impulse. As he traveled the Asian landscape, Harlan was continuously reminded of the Macedonian ruler's impact upon civilization there. Indeed, Macintyre contends that he imagined his role to be that of a latter day Alexander.
At the same time, Harlan remained a product of his American Quaker upbring. As the author puts it: "Harlan had always had two sides to his thinking: the Jeffersonian republican and the would-be monarch, the crusader for Western civilization who yet admired and adopted the native ways." (257) This explains why he was often at odds with the British colonialists of India, who constantly sought to extend their influence and control into Afghanistan by harsh means. At the same time, he himself was a stern taskmaster, eager to impose his own brand of Western practices.
His greatest achievement was, after several periods of service under native rulers, to persuade a northern Afghan chieftain, Mohammed Reffee Beg, to cede the powers of government to him in perpetuity, in return for which Harlan was to guarantee the recruitment and maintenance of the kingdom's military. A remarkable testament to his demonstrated organizational skills, his new status never translated into actual rule. Within a year the British would install their own choice on the throne in Kabul, and Harlan strongly encouraged to quit the country as a possible threat to their plans.
It is remarkable that in the maelstrom of duplicity and regicide that passed for politics in Afghanistan, this young American outside was able to gain the temporary confidence of so many. His manner could be dangerously imperious in situations where obsequiousness was the norm yet Harlan succeeded as did few other foreigners. Macintyre does not offer any direct explanation for that success but it seems clear that Harlan's ability to assimilate and his language fluency were important attributes of his character.
In an epilogue dated Kabul, September 2002, Macintyre visits the capital and describes the ruins of the palace where Harlan had resided for two years. He admits that "kings and would-be kings, foreign and home-produced, had never lasted long." (287) The dismal record of Afghan rule might appear at an end with the defeat of the Taliban. Yet despite that ray of optimism, the body of this biography, describing the capricious rule by local warlords which has long plagued Afghanistan, would seem to suggest otherwise.
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Another Afghan Disappointment
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Yet another book about the "Great Game" that isn't great, and has no game. No sense of person, place, or time can wriggle past the stifling ooze -- consisting of equal parts journalistic drone, hoary cliche, and predictable modifiers -- that lies, awaiting unsuspecting readers, between the covers of this tome. MacIntyre deserves to be applauded for his research; he should have hired someone else to do the writing. Here again we have a fascinating subject rendered lifeless by low-level prose. You want to know about this stuff? Read Kipling. He, at least, was not guilty of adverb abuse.
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Entertaining and Instructive
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Macintyre's telling of Josiah Harlan's adventures in Pakistan and Afganistan makes for a wonderful read. Harlan's exotic and quixotic life are facinating and by relying on the subject's own colorful descriptions of his journey's (the only real record available) and by providing only necessary commentary, the reader gets a much better sense of what Harlan was like. Harlan is not a particularly honorable character - he switched allegiences as suited his personal ambitions - but, he had a real sense of morality as regards the treatment of women, slavery etc. Harlan did not have a "white man's burden" view of the Afgan people; he respected their culture and many of their individual leaders as great intellects and rulers. His great ambition to establish himself as a ruler in Afganistan led to fantastic adventures that have no modern equivalent. A combination of guile, energy, and bravado helped him raise armies, engage with kings and princes, and affect the political landscape of part of the world previously untrammelled by Western Nations. The history of the British intrusion into the area as well as the long standing local regional, tribal and family factions should not be forgotten by modern leaders looking to affect politics there. Harlan excortiates the British for trying to impose their will on Afganistan instead of building a form of government that includes the many competing factions. The British lost their hold on Kabul in a tragically bloody manner because they did not bother to understand the political and cultural dynamics of the region. Mcintyre thankfully limits his views on the lessons of history in a reasonable and brief postscript to the biography. The story of Harlan is instructive without senseless commentary, and through restraint, the messages become clear.
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A Different Point of View
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Having read the book and then having read all the other favorable reader's comments, I'm wondering "Did we all read the same book?" Clearly this is a fascinating true history of a very unusual man who lived in the early 19th century in what we now know to be modern Afghanistan. But the tale in NOT told that well. This author could have served the reader well by writing more and quoting less. Paragraph after paragraph, page after page are just riddled with wholesale blocks of text taken "boilerplate" from the 'First American's' own awkward writings ( mispellings, convoluted sentences and all). No doubt the story of Josiah Harlan is a piece of history that should be told. This book, fails to present it well. And do note many of the other reader comments that favorably mention this work...they seem to infer this book offers great lessons about present day Afghanistan and how things work there. Nothing could be further from the truth. This book does not even pretend to do so. If you are interested in current events in that part of the world, go read Newsweek or Time. Not this book.
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America's First Afghanistan Episode
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Whatever else we must blame them for, Al Queda and the Taliban can be thanked for bringing back to our memories a forgotten American, the first American who was ever in Afghanistan. Josiah Harlan, born in 1799, was barely remembered as a footnote from the First Afghan War, and understandably was snubbed by the British historians of that conflict. Reporter Ben Macintyre, researching the history of the area in order to cover its current events, found references to Harlan and became intrigued. He hunted for Harlan clues in Afghanistan itself, and was led to a tiny local museum in Chester County, Pennsylvania. He came upon what other biographers can only dream of getting: a previously unknown autobiography handwritten by the subject. There was also an ancient proclamation making Harlan absolute ruler of a principality in Afghanistan. Indeed, Harlan inspired a Kipling story, which in turn brought the wonderful John Huston film, and which has now given Macintyre's book its title: _The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan_ (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux). His life is as surprising and exciting as the fictions it inspired. Harlan first sailed to Calcutta and Canton in a commercial venture in 1820. On a subsequent voyage, while he was in Calcutta, he learned that his fiancée back home in Philadelphia had married another. Emotionally adrift, hearing that the British were about to go to war against Burma, he signed on as a surgeon to the East India Company. Macintyre writes, "That he had never actually studied medicine was not, at least in his own mind, an impediment." His service over, he signed on with an exiled king to lead an army to reclaim Afghanistan, but he had plenty of intrigues and shifts of alliances before that could happen. Eventually he would meet up with the Hazara tribe, which in turn wanted him to create their own invincible military. Of course, he had a price; the prince "transferred his principality to me in feudal service, binding himself and his tribe to pay tribute forever." Harlan had indeed become a king. He also imagined himself a sort of reincarnated Alexander the Conqueror, following Alexander's trails. He even took on his conquests an elephant, the symbol and mascot of the Macedonian conqueror, but it could eventually take no more of the mountain cold. Harlan took comfort in that having to send back the elephant, he was once again emulating Alexander, who had had to leave his own elephant troops behind for the same reason. Harlan's enterprising assumption of command and kingdom was only put to an end by the Great Game between Britain and Russia in their struggle over the area. He tried to play along, with the plots and shifting alliances that he used for all his fifteen years in the region, but eventually the British booted him out, or in his version, he was disgusted by how the British treated the Afghan natives and sent himself home. He remained active, and was on hand to advise the American government in 1854 about the feasibility of the introduction of camels into the west. Harlan admired the beasts, and it is safe to say that no American knew more about them, but he did not take into account that American horses, not raised with camels, would be unmanageable around them and that cattle would stampede when they saw them. He also tried to become the government advisor on the introduction of Afghan grapes into America; he adored the produce of the region, but any plans of return to the area for agricultural efforts were cut short by the Civil War. Always horrified by slavery, he raised a Union regiment, but he was used to dealing with military underlings in the way an oriental prince would. This led to a messy court-martial, but the aging Harlan ended his service due to medical problems. He wound up in San Francisco, working as a doctor, dying of tuberculosis in 1871. He was essentially forgotten. His rediscovery, in this fast-moving and entertaining biography, is now especially welcome as a timely illumination into the beginnings of dealings between the mysterious Afghanistan and the U.S.
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