Max Hastings: Two Hundred Years of Foreign Engagement in Afghanistan
I told an American diplomat in Kabul last month that the British are unconvinced that US policy in Afghanistan makes sense, or that the present Afghan government is sustainable. “Given the record of British engagement in this region over the past two centuries,” the American responded irritably, “I do not think you people are well positioned to give anybody else lectures about how to do things here.”
Touché. Even at the height of British imperialism, when Victorian proconsuls prided themselves on their ability to impose order upon the most unlikely subjects - dervishes and Zulus notable among them - they failed with the Afghans. When Abdur Rahman took over as amir in 1881, he wrote: “The country is in a deplorable condition. Everything which belonged to the state is ruined and requires renewal. The people are...most turbulent and intractable, and devour all they can.” His picture of Afghanistan remains unchanged in the 21st century.
The British have perversely admired the warrior spirit and fierce independence of these tribespeople since the first British envoy, a 29-year-old political officer named Mountstuart Elphinstone, visited Kabul in 1808. Governments in London and Delhi spent much of the ensuing century arguing about how best to handle what they perceived as a vital buffer zone between the British and Russian empires. Some governors and viceroys urged annexation, or at least an assertive presence - the so-called “forward policy”. Others favoured extreme caution about venturing in strength beyond the passes dividing Afghanistan from what was then India. They bribed tribal chiefs to forswear their raiding habits, and sent punitive expeditions to burn villages and seize hostages when violence erupted - the “butcher and bolt” strategy.
David Loyn is a distinguished foreign correspondent who knows Afghanistan intimately. His book offers an admirable historical summary of the country's experience between 1808 and the present day. Neither its people nor the mistakes made by meddling foreigners have changed much in between. In 1838, when the British first sent an army into the country to impose a ruler of their choice, one Shah Shuja, the expedition was assumed to be the usual agreeable and adventurous “jolly”. One regiment took its own pack of foxhounds. The media warmly applauded the commitment, as a means of frustrating the tsarist bear. “The Russian fiend has been haunting and troubling the human race,” foamed The Times.
What followed became one of the most notorious humiliations to befall the British Empire, with the destruction of the remnants of the retreating army at Gandamack in 1842, and the deaths of most of the senior officers engaged. Thereafter, for several decades the British pursued a policy of diplomacy and bribery to keep the frontier quiescent. Each side thought the other duplicitous, the Afghans because the British often reneged on their financial commitments, the British because the Afghans resumed local warfare whenever it suited them....
Read entire article at Times (UK)
Touché. Even at the height of British imperialism, when Victorian proconsuls prided themselves on their ability to impose order upon the most unlikely subjects - dervishes and Zulus notable among them - they failed with the Afghans. When Abdur Rahman took over as amir in 1881, he wrote: “The country is in a deplorable condition. Everything which belonged to the state is ruined and requires renewal. The people are...most turbulent and intractable, and devour all they can.” His picture of Afghanistan remains unchanged in the 21st century.
The British have perversely admired the warrior spirit and fierce independence of these tribespeople since the first British envoy, a 29-year-old political officer named Mountstuart Elphinstone, visited Kabul in 1808. Governments in London and Delhi spent much of the ensuing century arguing about how best to handle what they perceived as a vital buffer zone between the British and Russian empires. Some governors and viceroys urged annexation, or at least an assertive presence - the so-called “forward policy”. Others favoured extreme caution about venturing in strength beyond the passes dividing Afghanistan from what was then India. They bribed tribal chiefs to forswear their raiding habits, and sent punitive expeditions to burn villages and seize hostages when violence erupted - the “butcher and bolt” strategy.
David Loyn is a distinguished foreign correspondent who knows Afghanistan intimately. His book offers an admirable historical summary of the country's experience between 1808 and the present day. Neither its people nor the mistakes made by meddling foreigners have changed much in between. In 1838, when the British first sent an army into the country to impose a ruler of their choice, one Shah Shuja, the expedition was assumed to be the usual agreeable and adventurous “jolly”. One regiment took its own pack of foxhounds. The media warmly applauded the commitment, as a means of frustrating the tsarist bear. “The Russian fiend has been haunting and troubling the human race,” foamed The Times.
What followed became one of the most notorious humiliations to befall the British Empire, with the destruction of the remnants of the retreating army at Gandamack in 1842, and the deaths of most of the senior officers engaged. Thereafter, for several decades the British pursued a policy of diplomacy and bribery to keep the frontier quiescent. Each side thought the other duplicitous, the Afghans because the British often reneged on their financial commitments, the British because the Afghans resumed local warfare whenever it suited them....