ABSTRACT
Afghanistan presents a number of paradoxes. Unlike the majority of its neighbours, it has never been colonised, but it has suffered repeatedly at the hands of imperialist powers. Its governments have been weak, susceptible to foreign pressure and dependent on foreign support, but its society has been autarchic and resilient. Its population is highly disparate, but has been able to combine to beat off both internal and external challenges. In the wars that have been described in the foregoing chapters, these are common threads, which intertwine with a number of others: a harsh and difficult climate and terrain; a people whose way of life is hard, but simple and self-sufficient; a society that is exceptionally close-knit at grassroots levels; a martial, if undisciplined, ethos; and the unifying factor of the Islamic faith. The consequence has been that a desperately poor and primitive country has been able repeatedly, through resort to asymmetric warfare, to make any prolonged invasion or occupation too costly to be sustained.
