The Significance of Taking Kabul

Nov. 13 -- Embraced by the magnificent Hindu Kush mountain range, blessed by a river and gurgling streams, the capital of Afghanistan has been known to turn conquerors into poets and beasts — and shades in between.

Administering his vast kingdom from the hot, dusty plains of what is now India, the founder of the Mughal dynasty, Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur, wrote songs of praise to Kabul, even as ambition drove him further south.

Brave British soldiers met their gruesome ends on the ramparts of the Bala Hissar fortress in northern Kabul and corpses of communist apparatchiks have hung from public posts in grisly warnings of what the city has in store for traitors.

With a glorious, ancient legacy that lives to this day, it's little wonder that Kabul, for most Afghans and for the rest of the world, is the heart of Afghanistan and taking Kabul is symbolically, if not geo-politically, tantamount to taking Afghanistan.

"Kabul is the most important place in Afghanistan," said Thomas Goutierre, dean of International Studies and Programs at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a former resident of Kabul. "Without Kabul, Afghans are like orphans."

Now that the Northern Alliance has captured the heart of Afghanistan in a surprisingly uncontested operation, experts are in some disagreement over what the taking of Kabul really means for the future of the country, but they all agree that the psychological implications of its capture are enormous.

"Controlling Kabul does not necessarily mean controlling the rest of Afghanistan, but it is a symbol of the legitimacy of the claim to rule Afghanistan," said Barnett Rubin, director of the Center on International Cooperation at New York University.

Melting Pot of Afghanistan

Dating back to approximately 2000 B.C. as an oasis settlement on the Kabul River for caravan routes, Kabul crops up in the writings of ancient scholars and globetrotters such as Marco Polo and is widely believed to have hosted the armies of Alexander the Great of Macedonia, the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan and Muslim warrior kings such as Mohammed Ghazni and Emperor Babur.