When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
- Rudyard Kipling, The Young British Soldier
While everyone remembers Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech on May 2, 2003. Very few remember that on May 1, 2003, Rumsfeld gave a speech on an Afghan military base in which he said the U.S. was "moving out of major combat operations and...into reconstruction, stability and humanitarian relief operations."
Three years later British troops are pushing into territory that hasn't been under government control in 30 years. They are also repeating 126-year old history. The same history that still haunts Britain and Afghanistan today.
In my
diary of the 1st Anglo-Afghan War I detailed how the British army easily routed Afghanistan's defenses and occupied Kabul for several years. But once the populace revolted, the 16,000 man British garrison in Kabul attempted a mid-winter retreat and was almost completely wiped out, leaving only a single survivor to tell the tale.
Eventually, because Russian expansion in Central Asia slowly approached Britain's colony of India, Britain restored diplomatic talks with Afghanistan. After a few decades of chilly relations between the two countries, Russia's expansion forced the issue. In July of 1878, Russian envoys
reached Kabul against the wishes of the Afghan amir, Sher Ali Khan. Sher Ali was the third son of Dost Mohammed Khan, the amir of Afghanistan when Britain originally invaded in 1838.
In response Britain demanded that Sher accept a British mission too. Sher Ali refused the British mission and turned it back at the Khyber Pass, thus triggering the Second Anglo-Afghan War.
Like the 1st Anglo-Afghan War (not to mention the Soviet Invasion in 1979, and the U.S. invasion in 2001), the British invasion was easily successful and soon Afghanistan was a conquered nation. Sher Ali fled to northern Afghanistan where he soon died.
With British forces occupying much of the country, Sher Ali's son and successor, Yaqub Khan, signed the Treaty of Gandamak in May 1879 to prevent a British invasion of the rest of the country. According to this agreement and in return for an annual subsidy and vague assurances of assistance in case of foreign aggression, Yaqub relinquished control of Afghan foreign affairs to the British. British representatives were installed in Kabul and other locations, British control was extended to the Khyber and Michni passes, and Afghanistan ceded various frontier areas to Britain.
However, as every single invading army has learned, both before 1878 and afterwards, it is easier to get into Afghanistan than to get out of it.
Like our current occupation of Afghanistan, the resistence never actually ended with the fall of Kabul. However, it was largely manageable with a garrison force and an Afghan army on a British payroll. In order to give the appearence that Yaqub Khan as in charge, the British maintained only a 75-man garrison in Kabul. That relative calm ended on September 3, 1879, when soldiers of the Amir's Herat regiments paraded in the Bala Hissar (a district in Kabul) to collect their back pay. The Amir's representative told them that there was not enough money to pay them all that was due them. The Afghan soldier then marched to the British compound to demand their pay, where the British also refused them with the
comment 'Dogs that bark don't bite.' A scuffle broke out and the British fired a couple shots into the crowd to scare them. Instead the Afghan soldiers armed themselves and attacked the garrison. In an echo of the 1st Anglo-Afghan War, the British garrison at Kabul was once again
completely wiped out. Yaqub Khan, probably remembering what happened to Shah Shuja (the puppet ruler installed by Britain in 1838) when Britain last retreated from Kabul, fled for his life.
A new British army then reconquered Kabul. To
avenge the massacre "hundreds of Afghans were executed on little or no evidence." On hearing the news, a 90-year-old muslim cleric declared a
jihad against the British invaders and 60,000 Afghans rallied to the cause. The british army in Kabul was quickly
besieged yet again. Meanwhile things went from bad to worse in southern Afghanistan.
In July of 1880, the 2,600 British soldiers in Kandahar started marching north toward Kabul to lift the seige. They were accompanied by 6,000 British-armed Afghan troops. However, when they encountered the 15,000 enemy troops at
Maiwand the Afghan troops turned on them. Only a heroic 'last-stand' by the 66th Regiment saved the entire army from annihilation. Barely half the British army survived the 45 mile retreat back to Kandahar.
Now the Kandahar garrison was beseiged. In one of the
most famous marches in British history, 10,000 troops and 6,000 camp followers marched out of Kabul on August 7th to relieve the defenders at Kandahar. By September 1 they were at the gates of the city. There they routed Ayub Khan's army and effectively ended the war.
However, the story doesn't end there. British policians at home realized that defeating the Afghan tribes did not mean controlling them. And while they were in temporary control, there was a fear, even by backers of the "Forward Policy", that this war would end in much the same way as the 1st Anglo-Afghan War.
So some deals were cut. In exchange for leaving Afghanistan just six months later, the British were able to install Abdur Rahman Khan (the grandson of Dost Mahommed) as the new Amir. Abdur Rahman is most remembered for his wiping out most of the Hazara, Nuristani ethnic groups after they revolted. But the most lasting legacy of the 2nd Anglo-Afghan War was the Durand Line. It was a new border imposed by Britain that divided the ethnic tribes of Afghanistan and the moutain areas of Pakistan (now the North-West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan areas of Pakistan). Afghanistan's Loya Jirga declared the Durand Line invalid in 1949. The fact that the Afghan tribes never recognized the border became instrumental in the uprising against the Soviet occupation 1979-1989, the Taleban uprising 1994-96, and the present Taleban revolt against American and British forces 2001-present.
As British and American troops push from Kabul towards Kandahar, years after Afghanistan was supposedly pacified, one can't help but wonder if we are also approaching the end of another Anglo-Afghan War. Will the anglo military forces simply declare victory and go home, like they did in 1881? Or will the world witness another example of why Afghanistan was nicknamed 'the graveyard for foreign invaders'?