Into the Land of Bones. Frank L. Holt

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СКАЧАТЬ longer to be a war of conquest and Hellenic retribution against a rival state, but rather an unavoidable struggle to keep the peace and protect all nations of law from organized criminals. Alexander meant to hunt down the outlaw Bessus and all who harbored him, not conduct a conventional war against a foe deserving the title of King Artaxerxes V.²¹

      Alexander had to take some diplomatic gambles in order to strengthen his case against Bessus and his followers. In a precarious balancing act, he simultaneously acted the part of Macedonian king, leader (hegemon) of the Greeks, and ruler of all Persian territories. Rather than sweep away every vestige of Darius’s old regime, Alexander adopted some elements of Persian royal dress and protocol. He also chose a few Persians to hold high office. This put a less imperious face on the occupation of Persia and provided some leverage against the rhetoric of Bessus, but it angered many of the Greeks and Macedonians. Alexander nevertheless rushed into a policy of reconciliation toward men of dubious reliability. Even some of Darius’s murderers were pardoned and put into positions of authority, an expedience that Alexander very soon regretted.²²

      Bessus, of course, was the key exception: he would have to pay an extraordinarily painful and public price for his royal pretensions. Rather than barge straight into Bactria, Alexander circled his prey. He fought a campaign in the area of modern Herat in western Afghanistan because the native governor there, named Satibarzanes, had, after surrendering, suddenly renounced his allegiance to Alexander and massacred the foreigners stationed in his province. Alexander’s policies were already backfiring. This man was clearly acting in conjunction with Bessus, so Alexander moved quickly to isolate the danger. The insurgents were soundly defeated, although Satibarzanes escaped.²³ Alexander’s generals would deal with him later. Meanwhile, Alexander appointed another Persian as governor. The army then swept south into the district of Drangiana. At Phrada (modern Farah), the recent attempts by Alexander to legitimize his power in Persia exposed a serious rift in his entourage. Traditionalist Macedonians resented some of Alexander’s new policies, such as his appointment of former enemies to prestigious posts and his wearing of Persian regalia. An assassination plot formed in response to the king’s apparent betrayal of his own people. The conspiracy failed and the traitors were executed. The most prominent victims were the great Macedonian generals Philotas and his father, Parmenio, who, in spite of their apparent innocence, were purged nonetheless in order to clear the king’s court of naysayers. A fresh coterie of loyalists closed ranks around Alexander; the Afghan wars would swiftly advance the careers of men like Craterus, Hephaestion, Coenus, Perdiccas, and Ptolemy.²⁴

      After escaping this danger, Alexander renamed the place Prophthasia (Anticipation) to commemorate the failure of the plot. His march resumed south and then eastward along the high-duned fringe of the Dasht-i Margo (the Desert of Death). He had hoped to run down Barsaentes, another of Darius’s killers who had abused his pardon and sided with Bessus. The Persian, however, had too great a lead and vanished (like many of the Taliban) into what is now Pakistan.²⁵ The Greek and Macedonian army passed by Kandahar, a site built up by Alexander and still bearing his name (derived from Iskandariya, Alexandria in Arabic).²⁶ The center of so much strife during the invasions by Britain, the USSR, and now the United States, old Kandahar guarded strategic routes leading southeast to the Indus Valley, and northeast to the region of Kabul. Alexander took the same road later traveled by Lord Roberts in 1880; the Greeks and Macedonians thereby arrived at winter quarters in the vicinity of modern Begram, where the king fortified the camp as yet another Alexandria.²⁷

      Since declaring his intention to punish the outlaw regime of Bessus, Alexander had marched fifteen hundred miles over eight months in a wide arc through what is now the southern half of Afghanistan. Parts of the journey had penetrated a miserable purgatory with “plagues of midges, mosquitoes, houseflies, and poisonous snakes and hurricane-force winds.”²⁸ Worse was soon to come in a region habitually short of food. No matter what the climate or circumstances might be, Alexander had to procure every day the equivalent of 255 tons of food and forage, plus 160,000 gallons of water, just to keep his army alive and moving forward.²⁹ On the other (northern) side of the Hindu Kush Mountains, Bessus and his followers were destroying everything that might feed the invaders. The rebels knew that the Greeks and Macedonians would consume all their provisions as they struggled over the high passes of the mountains, arriving in Bactria’s heartland exhausted and hungry. The scorched-earth plan, a good one under the circumstances, recognized that warfare in central Asia depends upon logistics, and that attrition can deal the hardest blows of all.³⁰

      The fabled Hindu Kush Mountains, mistakenly called the Caucasus by Alexander’s men, soar as high as seventeen thousand feet (see Map 3). The lower slopes sustain modest vegetation, mostly scrub and grasses, but barren rock prevails above fourteen thousand feet. In winter, the snow line descends to six thousand feet and blocks the passes; blizzards are common, and snow falls even during summer at the higher elevations. The spring melt usually commences in March or April, gradually freeing the passes and sending torrents of icy water and boulders tumbling down every streambed. As early as possible—too early, in fact—Alexander threaded his army through these mountains. He had three possible routes: the western, through Bamian and the Shibar Pass; the central, via the Salang Pass; and the eastern, by way of the Panshir Valley and the Khawak Pass. The path through Bamian, where the giant Buddhas later towered near a pilgrim’s trail, until blown up by the Taliban, offered the easiest and most obvious choice, so Alexander probably refused it to surprise Bessus. The central course was shortest but by far the steepest, and it was never practical until the 1.6 mile Salang Tunnel, the highest in the world, was cut by the Soviets.³¹ The longer route over the Khawak Pass seems to have suited Alexander’s purpose in the spring of 329 B.C.E.³²

3. Ancient Bactria

      The Greeks and Macedonians struggled for two weeks through deep snow before the passes fully cleared. The food ran out, and starving men naturally resorted to every extreme: they caught and ate raw fish, chewed on local plants, and finally ate their own baggage animals to survive. Like the British in the First Afghan War who ate sheepskins fried in blood, the invaders persevered. Because firewood could not be gathered, they devoured the carcasses uncooked and stumbled on toward Bactra. Either their king had miscalculated his army’s needs, or he had moved of necessity and entered the mountains while the weather was still dangerous.³³ Perhaps complicating Alexander’s operations was an extraordinary anomaly in the climate. Recent analyses of Fennoscandinavian tree-ring data demonstrate that some of the coolest summers of the past seventy-four thousand years (5407 B.C.E.—1997 C.E.) occurred in precisely the years 330–321 B.C.E.³⁴ What so dramatically cooled the north at this time is not certain, but the effects may have contributed to Alexander’s trouble by producing unexpectedly early and longer winters, with heavier snowfalls, in 329–327, as well as a contemporary famine in Greece caused by widespread grain shortages.³⁵ This data need not mean that the central Asian summers were comfortably cool, only that they may have been shorter and somewhat less horrendous while winters were correspondingly more severe.

      Though in much distress, the Macedonian and Greek invaders made it across the mountains and found comfort in the Bactrian towns of Drapsaca (modern Qunduz?) and Aornus (modern Tashkurgan?).³⁶ Bessus and the Bactrian cavalry were nowhere to be seen when Alexander’s troops emerged tired and famished from the icy clutches of the Hindu Kush Mountains. Had the rebels used the guerilla tactics for which the Afghan warlords are now famous, the Greeks and Macedonians might have suffered a major setback. But Bessus employed only half a winning strategy: he cut off Alexander’s supplies, but also should have attacked at opportune moments. As it turned out, Bessus was not in position to strike the invading army; he seems to have denuded the likeliest invasion route while ignoring the others. Alexander’s risky move paid off. He and his troops refreshed themselves and regrouped while Bessus, a few miles west at Bactra, held his hasty council of war.

      Whatever Bessus’s exact words in his arrogant speech to his warrior band, he and the Bactrians СКАЧАТЬ