Late last year I mentioned Gordon Sinclair's Khyber Caravan (Hurst & Blackett 1936, Pocket Books 1975). Sinclair described a case of child prostitution in what would today be part of Afghanistan, and I made the comparison with a case reported in the press just last week.
I've just finished rereading Khyber Caravan, and recommend it highly for those with a taste for tales of adventure in the benighted backwaters of India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some of the stories -- alledgedly true -- which Sinclair tells make Kipling's tales of the Raj look tame.
Khyber Caravan was written in 1935, published a year later. I doubt if it could be published at all in today's super-sensitive, ultra-PC society. Although he merely records what he saw and makes comparisons with western civilization, Sinclair would today be criticized (and doubtless hauled in front of a human rights tribunal) for being a hopeless racist, sexist, imperialist, whateverist.
Oh yes, and a religious bigot too, for calling attention to the cruel and barbarous practices of both Hinduism and Islam. The truth is that Sinclair, a cynical Scot, didn't have much time for organized religion of any stripe, and was pretty sharp in his criticisms of Christians as well as heathens.
As for being an imperialist, read what Sinclair has to say -- writing in 1935, remember -- about the British presence in Waziristan -- the patch of wasteland where Afghanistan, Pakistan and India today meet and compete.
You look at these people [Pathans, Pushtuns, Waziris, etc.] living in the homeland in which they were born and raised and over which they still hold nominal control and you wonder why, by all that's just and holy, any outside nation should send a mighty army in to torment them and spy on them and burn their homes.
Britain doesn't attempt to administer the tribal belt of Waziristan; doesn't claim to own it. In its hills live courageous, hawk-eyed hillmen.
The hillmen endeavour to hold this homeland from invasion with native-made rifles; loosely-jointed home-packed shells. At the same time they must squeeze out a living from crusted mountain soil w hich sees no rain for seven months at a time.
Opposed to them are 7000 men whose only job is fighting or preparing to fight. Well-fed men, men with every killing device known to science. Men so armed that they can blow up tribal villages of mud and sticks without ever seeing them or rain bombs on scurrying enemies from the air and wipe them from the face of the earth. But why do it?
The emphasis is mine. It's as good a question in 2011 as it was in 1935. The only -- repeat, only -- US politician asking that question today, and pledging to bring all American troops home from the Middle East and other foreign hotspots, is Ron Paul.
You may, if you're lucky, find Khyber Caravan in the 904 section of your local library, if your library uses the Dewey system. The paperback edition, 1975, is on Amazon.
Note to those who are offended by the picture in Walt's post on Swaziland: Khyber Caravan has pictures that today would probably get the publisher slapped into the hoosegow!
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