Mir Naseer originally shared: The First Anglo - Afghan War ::
(From the book — Lost Islamic History)
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Few regions in the Muslim world have seen as
much warfare in modern times as Afghanistan.
Foreign interventions and invasions have been an
almost constant threat to the nation since the
early 1800s. The Soviet Union in the 1980s and
the United States in the 2000s experienced what
it means to fight in Afghanistan’s unforgiving
environment, but the first Western power to foray
into the region was Britain. Back in the 1800s,
when Britain was just solidifying its control over
India, it looked to the northwest, to Afghanistan,
to serve as a buffer to the growing Russian
Empire. The result was the First Anglo-Afghan
War, which lasted from 1839 to 1842.
Background
Throughout history, Afghanistan and the
surrounding region has been marked by ethnic
and tribal divisions. Pashtuns dominate the East
and South of the country, the center is mostly
Hazara, and the Turkmen, Uzbeks, and Tajiks can
be found throughout the North. Each group has
historically had their own identity, culture,
language, and loyalties, and thus any kind of
national unity among the numerous ethnic groups
has been hard to come by. Furthermore, since
the rise of the gunpowder empires in the
sixteenth century, Afghanistan has served as a
point of contention between Safavid Persia to
the west and Mughal India to the east.
Despite the ethnic divisions and the almost
constant state of imperial war, the first Afghan
state began to take shape in the late 1700s
under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Durrani (r.
1747-1772), who established a kingdom based in
Kandahar that managed to survive between the
Mughal and Safavid realms. He relied mostly on
the Pashtuns for support, but he also included
the other ethnic groups of the region in his
administration, thus preventing his kingdom from
falling into ethnic civil war.
But the Afghan state founded by Ahmad Shah
soon had to deal with the rise of the British and
Russian Empires in the 1800s. The British East
India Company had managed to use a
combination of patronage, bribery, and outright
warfare to bring large tracts of India under its
control in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. Meanwhile, the Russian
Empire slowly annexed large portions of Central
Asia’s Turkic khanates that bordered Afghanistan
to the north.
To the British, the growth of Russia was a
threat. They worried that if the Russians
continued to expand southward, they could use
Afghanistan as a base from which to attack
British India. With the Himalaya Mountains
providing a secure northern border to India, the
only way for an overland invasion was through
mountain passes high in the Afghan-controlled
Hindu Kush Mountains. Indeed, this had been the
main entry point for numerous invasions into
India throughout history.
The British thus tried to use Afghanistan as a
buffer against Russian expansion in the 1830s.
The emir (equivalent to king) of Afghanistan at
the time was Dost Mohammad Khan, who ruled
from the city of Kabul in the east of Afghanistan,
close to the passes that lead to India. If Dost
Mohammad could keep the Russians from
invading Afghanistan, the British would feel more
secure in India, thus they hoped for peaceful
relations between the Afghans and the Russians
and no warfare.
Dost Mohammad’s diplomatic skills were lacking,
however, and in the late 1830s, the Russians
allied with the Persians against the Afghans
under the pretext of regaining the city of Herat
for Persia. At this point, the British decided that
any hopes of diplomacy holding the Russians
back were fading. Instead, they favored a new
approach which involved a full scale invasion of
Afghanistan, the overthrow of Dost Mohammad
Khan, and the establishment of a new emir, Shah
Shujah Durrani, who would be staunchly pro-
British.
The Invasion
In late 1838, the British mobilized over 20,000
soldiers for the invasion of Afghanistan, most of
them being Indians who served as sepoys in the
British East India Company’s private army. The
British army was a modern, disciplined, and well-
trained force. The Afghans, however, did not
have the latest technology on the battlefield, and
did not conform to European modes of warfare.
Instead of the neat and steady lines of infantry
and musket volleys that European generals
preferred, Afghan warriors operated as an
irregular fighting force. And although Dost
Mohammad had almost 40,000 cavalry at his
disposal and could call up tens of thousands of
Ghilzai warriors from the regions around Kabul,
discipline and loyalty were rare among his
soldiers. Furthermore, rivalries and competing
interests between different tribes that made up
the armed forces prevented the entire army from
operating as a single unit. Despite this, the
Ghilzais in particular had the potential to be a
very effective fighting force based on their
tenacity and ability to ambush. They were not
full time soldiers and were thus very difficult to
track and pursue in battle, since they could
abandon the battle and blend in with the local
population. Their ability in battle would later
prove to be decisive after the initial invasion.
When the British invaded early in 1839, they
came through the Bolan Pass, south of
Afghanistan, instead of the expected invasion
route that ran through the Khyber Pass. By the
time Dost Mohammad realized it, it was too late
for him to defend Kandahar, his southernmost
city, which fell to the British in April of
1839. Dost Mohammad hoped that his
entrenched forces at Ghazni, a fortress on the
road to Kabul, would hold up the British long
enough for him to mobilize his forces, especially
the Ghilzais.
But Ghazni proved to be no obstacle for the
British. Modern artillery coupled with their
disciplined forces managed to rout the fortress.
Between 500 and 1200 Afghans were killed while
the British only lost 17 men in the siege. Dost
Mohammad knew that the British would arrive in
Kabul soon and attempted to make a final stand
on the outskirts of his capital. But news of the
British ability in war spread quick, and the emir
had trouble rallying soldiers to defend the city.
Only 3000 men offered their services. Most of
his army disbanded and diffused into local
villages and rural areas.
Dost Mohammad was thus forced to escape to
Central Asia where he hoped to recruit an army
in exile that would push the British out. The
British, meanwhile, entered Kabul in August,
where they helped Shah Shujah Durrani claim the
throne as emir of Afghanistan. Shah Shujah was
not a popular figure in the capital, and was
widely seen as nothing more than an agent of
the invaders. His administration was weak and
had trouble managing Afghanistan, but the
British achieved their goal of securing the
northern approaches to India from a possible
Russian invasion. It was mission accomplished.
The Insurgency
The eventual expulsion of British troops did not
come from the exiled emir. Dost Mohammad’s
attempt to invade Afghanistan in 1840 ended in
failure as he surrendered and was exiled to
Calcutta, India. Instead, popular opposition to the
British came from the people living under the
foreign occupation.
The British occupation, centered on Kabul,
brought huge changes to the lives of ordinary
Afghans. Based on their experiences in India, the
British believed that in order to make their
occupation of Afghanistan worthwhile, they had
to reform the government and military of the
country to resemble those of European nations.
Thus, the traditional payments doled out by
Kabul to tribal chiefs for their loyalty were cut, in
some cases by 50%. This weakened the already
low level of loyalty to Shah Shujah outside of
Kabul, and hampered the ability of rural tribes to
live in Afghanistan’s harsh environment due to
lack of food and supplies.
Furthermore, inflation caused by the British
occupation made life very difficult in the cities,
particularly Kabul and Kandahar. As the British
and their supporters settled in the cities, they
brought huge amounts of currency with them,
which reduced the value of money overall. The
urban populations thus suffered as they saw their
relative incomes and purchasing power go down,
just as inflation and high demand drove the price
of food up. The religious scholars, the ulema , in
particular suffered, as they relied on fixed
stipends which were now almost worthless.
Furthermore, many of the charitable institutions
they managed were seized by Shah Shujah’s
government to provide more tax revenue, a move
they saw as contrary to Islamic law.
It was in this environment of disaffection and
frustration that the first big protest against the
British occupation occurred in November of
1841. Angry demonstrators, led by tribal elders
and the ulema, spread out throughout the city to
protest signs of British influence in the capital.
In the mayhem, a British official was killed. And
when the British did nothing to avenge the death
in the days after the protest, the Afghans took
the opportunity to continue to build momentum.
Tribal elders and ulema fanned out into the
surrounding countryside, rallying men to come to
Kabul and expel the British. Around 15,000
responded and assembled in Kabul. It’s important
to note that the irregular nature of Afghanistan’s
warriors proved to be an advantage, as civilians
could pick up weapons and fight when needed
and then go back to the villages and disperse
into civilian life when threatened. This fact
prevented the British from being able to stop the
growth of the resistance, which quickly spread
throughout the country.
Since the British were based in numerous cities
and fortresses throughout Afghanistan, groups of
British soldiers could easily be surrounded and
pinned down by Afghan warriors. Even in Kabul,
the center of British control, the foreign troops
were unable to do much outside of their own
bases as Afghan warriors captured British supply
stores. The commander of the British forces in
Kabul, General William Elphinstone, recognized
that his forces were outnumbered and
outmatched, especially when Mohammad Akbar,
the son of Dost Mohammad arrived in Kabul to
command the resistance forces. Elphinstone thus
managed to secure an agreement allowing for a
British retreat to Jalalabad, about 150 kilometers
to the east.
Elphinstone’s army of 4,500 along with around
12,000 camp followers thus left Kabul in January
1842 and began the march out of Afghanistan.
As is bound to happen in a tribal society like
Afghanistan, treaties and agreements made by
the central government meant nothing to the
Ghilzai tribes that lined the road to Jalalabad.
Throughout the march, Elphinstone’s army was
harassed by waves of Ghilzai warriors who would
regularly rush out of the hills to ambush the
British in narrow mountain passes. Adding to
their problems, the winter climate of
mountainous Afghanistan made the march even
slower and more dangerous and hundreds of
British and Indian troops died just from the
environment.
After four days of marching, only about 150
soldiers and 4,000 camp followers were still alive
and marching to Jalalabad. Within two more
days, after continued Ghilzai attacks and harsh
weather, about 20 were left. By the time
Jalalabad was reached, there was just one lone
survivor, Dr. William Brydon, an assistant
surgeon. From a force of almost 20,000, only one
man managed to avoid being killed or captured
during the retreat from Afghanistan’s capital.
Just as quickly as the British had invaded and
captured Kabul, they had been defeated and
forced out of Afghanistan’s heartland.
Aftermath
The complete destruction of Elphinstone’s army
was a major victory for the Afghans. Despite
tribal and ethnic disunity, they had managed to
unite long enough to decisively defeat the
world’s greatest superpower. The British puppet
government in Kabul quickly collapsed and Shah
Shujah was assassinated in April of 1842. Dost
Mohammad Khan was released from captivity by
the British and returned to Afghanistan to retake
the position of emir later that year.
The defeat of the British helped foster a sense
of national unity in Afghanistan, although tribal
affiliations still generally meant more to the
average Afghan. Throughout the country, an
acute sense of xenophobia developed in
response to the punishing British occupation.
This would continue as Afghanistan was invaded
by Britain again in the 1870s and 1910s and by
the Soviets and Americans over 100 years later.
From the British perspective, the defeat meant
the absolute end of any possible friendly
relations between the two nations. The Afghans
were caricatured as barbaric, uncouth, and
treacherous, and any attempt to engaged
Afghanistan afterwards was colored by this
mindset. More importantly, however, the defeat
meant the loss of respect among Indians living
under British rule in the subcontinent, which
would play a role in the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857
in India.
The First Angl0-Afghan War helped Afghanistan
gain a reputation as the “graveyard of empires”.
A mystique developed around the country that it
was unconquerable and persists until today. And
while these characterizations of Afghanistan may
not be entirely true, they continue to play a
major role in the national consciousness of
Afghanistan, and the way it is viewed by
outsiders. 
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