The Cautionary Tale of Georgian Military Experience in Afghanistan

At the meeting of the NATO foreign ministers on Friday, December 4, and the so-called force generation conference held at the NATO headquarters in Mons, Belgium, on Monday, December 7, the Obama administration finally received the pledge of 7,000 additional troops from the NATO and non-NATO states to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for the stabilization of Afghanistan. This was almost immediately trumpeted by the Obama administration as a major achievement even though Canada and Netherlands are considering withdrawal of close to 5,000 of their combined troops from Afghanistan within the next two years while Germany and France both refused to provide additional troops at this point. Paris and Berlin may consider taking such steps only after the international conference scheduled for January 28 in London, which is supposed to review the progress of stabilization and state-building efforts in Afghanistan. In some sense, the Franco-German intransigence can be interpreted as a direct response to the prolonged deliberation by President Obama with regard to the formulation of the new strategy on Afghanistan. Be that as it may, it is worth noting that almost one seventh of the 7,000 pledge, or, to be more precise, 920 soldiers will be dispatched to Afghanistan by Georgia. The heavy battalion and two light companies of Georgian armed forces will serve under the U.S. Marine command in the most dangerous area of Afghanistan - the Helmand Province. As the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton observed, this is the highest per capita contribution to the NATO out-of-area operations in Afghanistan. It is intended to demonstrate that Georgia is a net security provider and can therefore one day become a valuable member of the alliance. However, as Georgia prepares to send its forces to Afghanistan to serve under the U.S. command, it would be instructive to recall the Georgian military experience in that country some three hundred years earlier, when the Georgian expeditionary force commanded by the King of Kartli Giorgi XI (see photo on the right courtesy of Wikipedia) was in the employ of the declining Safavid Empire. The following story is loosely based on the radio feature created by the Georgian writer and historian Mikha Gegeshidze and broadcast by the Georgian Service of the Voice of America. It is as timely as ever considering the current developments in Afghanistan.

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Once upon a time, a long time ago, where now the U.S. military have set up headquarters and the anti-terrorist campaign is under way, in the faraway city of Qandahar in Afghanistan, the King of Kartli, Giorgi XI held a court and governed local affairs. In the beginning of the XVIII century the weakened Iran was no longer able to deal with the continuous revolts by the rebellious Afghan tribes in the eastern provinces of the empire. Meanwhile in the separated by thousands of kilometers from Afghanistan Georgia, the kings of Kartli and Kakheti were engaged in the unequal struggle for independence from the same Persians. Because of this circumstance, the Shah’s Court in Isfahan hatched a treacherous plan to send Giorgi XI, who was known at the Court as Gurgin Khan or Gorgin Khan, from Georgia to Afghanistan to quell the unruly Pathan and Baluchi rebels. By dispatching the Georgian king and his troops renowned for their courage and martial valor, the increasingly corrupt and decadent administration of the Safavid ruler of Iran, Shah Soltan Hussein (alternative spelling: Soltan Hosayn), wanted to simultaneously diminish the threats of national liberation in Georgia and Afghanistan. With regard to this circumstance, the most loyal member of Giorgi XI retinue and the chronicler of his deeds, Sekhnia Chkheidze wrote:

“Thus, the Shah Soltan Hussein decreed to appoint King Giorgi to be spasalar [governor] of Kartli, Iran and Qandahar. What was to be derived from such a difficult task? Alas, with full intention to make the life in Kartli prosperous, we were unfortunately forced to leave for distant Qandahar with heavy hearts.”

In 1703, King Giorgi and his 24,000-strong combined Persian-Georgian troops entered Afghanistan and resolutely defeated the rebellious Pathan tribes. His forces captured the tribal chieftain of the Ghilzai rebels, Mirwais Khan Khottak, who was promptly sent to Isfahan. Giorgi XI sent a letter with the high-value prisoner in which he warned Shah Soltan Hussein that “this captive desires to sow mischief in Afghanistan and you’ll be better off if you never allow him to leave Isfahan, because otherwise he will turn against you again.” Giorgi XI also sent back to Isfahan the 20,000-strong Qizilbash forces and he was thus left with the small expeditionary detachment consisting only of Georgian cavalry. The Georgians were left to carry the heavy weight of the war with the Afghan tribes because the enemies of Giorgi XI in Isfahan convinced Shah Soltan Hussein to send Mirwais back to Afghanistan. Despite the tough weather conditions and the small number of troops, the Georgians confidently and bravely fought the Afghan rebels. Sekhnia Chkheidze, who himself was a skilled fighter, repeatedly notes in his chronicle that even in the midst of hardship Georgians often engaged in merrymaking to lift their morale and fighting spirit. This is what he has to say about Giorgi XI in this regard: “One of his peculiar habits was to become jolly when the matter at hand was often of the utmost importance and gravity. “

One of the Georgian commanders in Afghanistan, King's brother Prince Levan Batonishvili, recited the lines from Shota Rustaveli’s “Knight in the Panther’s Skin” to his troops before the battle. In the heat of the combat with the Baluchi fighters when the enemy bullets were whistling above Batonishvili’s head, Sekhnia Chkheidze pled with him to hide behind the horse to which Levan laughed and said that he was testing the fate. Encouraged by the bravery of their commanders, the Georgian cavalry troops were marching into the battle as if “by Almighty’s Grace, we were going to the wedding,” recalls Sekhnia Chkheidze. The tales of the exceptional martial valor of Georgians soon spread across the entire Afghanistan. This is how the citizens of the city of Kerman, who were long harassed and mistreated by the Pathans, expressed their gratitude to the Georgians: “Blessed be God for raising men like you, who saved us from peril.” Sekhnia Chkheidze describes with remarkable irony how the Georgian night guards applied creative intimidation techniques against their Pathan enemies the night before the battle:

“’God’s wrath is upon you! The Georgian Wali (Prince) Levan arrived with his man-eating Georgian troops!’ shouted the night guards and this caused a great anxiety among the Pathan ranks, but what they did not know was that we hardly had even twenty soldiers.”

The Persian troops, who were fighting together with the Georgians against the Pathan tribes, often exhibited fear and deserted the battlefield without looking back. Because of this circumstance the Georgians absorbed the entire viciousness of combat engagements in Afghanistan and they amply demonstrated feats of courage to their Pathan and Baluchi foes. Here is how Sekhnia Chkheidze describes one such encounter:

“Four Baluchi fighters rode off and the fifteen Persians rode after them. Then the four turned around and made the fifteen run back. When Zurab saw that, he went after the four. He struck one down with the spear and then the other. He struck the third Baluch so hard that, as sun shining above is the witness, the spear went straight through pinning him to the ground and it broke. Zurab then unleashed his sword against the fourth, who managed to get under his horse and tried to cut his stirrups with the dagger. But Zurab maneuvered his horse and when the Baluch’s head became visible he swung the sword and almost severed the head. The fifteen Persians then cut off the heads, congratulated Zurab and presented him with the four severed heads, but he declined to accept them and told them that he was simply assisting them.”

This case illustrates well the culture of knightly honor of the Georgian cavalrymen. The Georgians, noble and peasant alike, together experienced the vicissitudes of the deployment in Afghanistan, where they fought side by side. The cunning and treacherous supporters of Mirwais incurred the wrath of the Georgians, who resorted to the cruel punitive methods to quell the insurgency. Here is how Sekhnia Chkheidze describes some of the punitive methods employed:

“Wherever the signs of insurgency existed, the Georgian troops were dispatched in force and whomsoever they found among the rebels, some they threw into abyss and others were buried alive. Teeth were pulled out of some and hammered into their heads. The people of Qandahar became very afraid and they began to conspire against us.”

But Mirwais, who by then was defeated by Georgians on a number of occasions, in the end still managed to extract victory with his cunning. In 1709, he staged several rebellions in the villages close to Qandahar. Giorgi XI fell into this trap and sent 3,000-strong Georgian forces headed by his nephew Alexander to punish the rebels. Meanwhile Giorgi XI accepted the invitation by Mirwais to attend the lavish dinner in his honor. He went to the banquet with a small retinue of most loyal retainers. Here is what Sekhnia Chkheidze has to say about what happened next:

“The Sultan of Qandahar, Mirwais, betrayed the King Giorgi. At the dawn King Giorgi was suddenly attacked. He unsheathed his sword and managed to deflect most of the arrows that were raining on his tent. He fought like a beast, but was finally brought down by a rifle. And the rest of the Georgians were slaughtered without mercy.”

The enemies cited King Giorgi’s loyalty to Christianity as his biggest crime. As the Catholic missionaries in Iran note, and, according to Vakhushti Batonishvili, “the King was killed on Thursday and Mirwais discovered in King’s possession crosses, icons, and psalm books and presented them to Shah.” Mirwais sent 12,000-strong Pathan army against the remaining Georgian forces. “The Georgians fought them fiercely and they triumphed twelve times. The enemy lost 2,000 soldiers and, with Almighty’s Grace, the Georgians suffered no setbacks,” states the chronicle. After that, the Georgian military campaign in Afghanistan continued for some time and claimed the lives of many Georgian knights.

For their shameful betrayal of the Georgians fighting in Afghanistan, the Persians soon paid a very heavy price with their blood when the successors of Mirwais took over Isfahan and mercilessly exterminated the population of this once powerful imperial city. Among the Afghan warriors this proverb took deep roots - "Compared to Persians, we, Afghans, are lions, while Persians, compared to us, are mere sheep. But we are sheep, compared to Georgians, while Georgians are lions, compared to us."

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NOTA BENE: Not long after the assassination of Giorgi XI, in November of 1709, his nephew and a new King of Kartli Kaikhosro (alternative spellings: Kay Khusrau or Kai Khusraw) organized a punitive expedition to avenge the death of his uncle. He led the 30,000-strong Persian-Georgian army to lay siege to Qandahar, which did not last long as Kaikhosro's forces were constantly harassed by the Baluch fighters, who were trying to aid their besieged allies. In October 1711, Kaikhosro ordered the retreat, which turned into a disaster as the retreating troops were pursued by the Pathan forces. Kaikhosro was killed in battle and his entire army was reduced to 700 survivors.

Mirwais Khan Khottak properly assessed the decadence of the Safavids, but limited his actions to uniting the Pathan tribes and liberating Afghanistan from the foreign domination. His son, Mir Mahmud, who assumed power after the death of his father in 1715, however, turned out to be far more ambitious. The Afghan forces led by the 18-year-old Mahmud marched across Persia and struck into the very heart of the Safavid Empire - the city of Isfahan. Thus, in 1722, Mahmud effectively ended the Safavid rule once and for all. Ironically, Shah Soltan Hussein's failure to heed Giorgi XI's warning about the danger posed by Mirwais proved to be fatal as years later his son Mahmud spelled the demise of the entire Safavid Empire.