The Byzantine art of war and diplomacy would prove useful in today’s Afghanistan

Even by the shortest reckoning, the Byzantine empire survived for eight centuries (from the fourth to the twelfth)—longer than any other in history. Although the Byzantines were supremely tenacious in combat, their strategy—invented in response to the unprecedented threat of Attila’s Huns in the 5th century—relied on diplomacy, evolving into a body of rules and techniques that is still relevant today.

Unlike the Romans, the Byzantines wrote official guidebooks on statecraft, foreign relations and espionage: writings I find especially fascinating, as I once helped compose the main field manual of the US army. These ancient techniques centred on a single, paradoxical principle: do everything possible to raise, equip and train the best possible army and navy; then do everything possible to use them as little as possible.

With Afghanistan, the west faces a simple strategic calculus: too costly to stay in, too risky to leave. A Byzantine response would be, first to withdraw the west’s scarce, expensive troops, and arm local proxies instead. This was the standard remedy for turbulent, worthless lands where no taxes could be collected, but which were to be denied to enemies: an improvement over the Romans’ fondness for battles of attrition and annihilation.

In Afghanistan, a banal case of divide and rule is impossible. There is no unitary nation to divide. This is well suited to a Byzantine strategy, which would aim not to rule Afghanistan, but to stop the Taliban from doing so. Little persuasion would be needed to co-opt allies. The Shia Hazara distrust the Taliban, who view them as heretics deserving death, while the country’s Tajiks and Uzbeks, who can be as extreme in religion as the Taliban, would not want to be ruled by them either.

The Byzantines would use diplomacy to deal with Afghanistan’s diverse neighbours. They once even persuaded a rival empire to split the cost of guarding strategic border passes, so both could keep invaders out. Today Uzbekistan, which is just across the river from Afghanistan, and its patron Russia, which is just beyond, have every reason to keep the Taliban at bay, given their internal struggles against armed Islamists. Accordingly, the Byzantines would demand from Russia and Uzbekistan the weapons and ammunition that were needed to arm the Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbeks in Afghanistan.

Most Pakistanis, too, have had their fill of Islamists—during the…

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