The three Anglo-Afghan wars, 1839–1919

Why the British came

The British in India had worried about Kabul since long before the wars. Norris traces the idea back to Akbar, the Mughal emperor, who understood that whoever held India could not afford to let Kabul fall to a hostile power, and says the British inherited that defensive strategy. [2] By the 1830s Russia's advance across Central Asia had made the concern urgent. The British sent envoys, among them Alexander Burnes, to Lahore, Kabul and Bokhara in 1830–32, and began to see friendship with the Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh and influence in Kabul as complementary aims. [1] [2]

These aims collided. Dost Mohammad Khan, who had made himself ruler of Kabul by 1826, was at odds with Ranjit Singh over the Sikh occupation of Peshawar, and the British could not befriend both. [2] [5] When Dost Mohammad received an agent of the Russian minister in Tehran, the British turned to a rival claimant, Shah Shuja, a former ruler of the Sadozai dynasty who lived in India on a British pension. [2]

The First Anglo-Afghan War, 1838–1842

In October 1838 the governor general, Lord Auckland, signed the Simla Manifesto, in effect a declaration of war on the Barakzai rulers of Kabul and Kandahar and a statement of intent to restore Shah Shuja. [1] The Army of the Indus entered Afghanistan in spring 1839 and marched through Kandahar and Ghazni to Kabul, reaching Kandahar in late April. [1] [4] Shah Shuja was restored but was not warmly welcomed. [1] Dost Mohammad was ousted from Kabul with British help in 1839. He had abandoned his throne and sought refuge in Bokhara, and after he surrendered, in 1840, he was deported to Calcutta. [5] [6]

The occupation became increasingly fragile. In November 1841 an uprising broke out in Kabul, and Burnes was killed among others. Dost Mohammad's son Akbar Khan refused to let the British negotiate their way out or stay, and Sir William Macnaghten, the envoy, was killed. Only a handful of the Kabul garrison survived the agreed evacuation march to Jalalabad; those who were not killed froze in the snow on the way. Balland puts the army that was almost totally destroyed at about 16,000 soldiers and camp followers. [1] [6] According to the Iranica entry on the Ghilzai, it was the Jabar Khel, a branch of the Eastern Ghilzai, who inflicted the heaviest casualties on the retreating army between Kabul and Jalalabad in the winter of 1842. [7] Shah Shuja stayed for a while in the Bala Hisar in Kabul and was killed on 5 April 1842. [1] [6]

A new governor general in India and a new government in London sent an "army of retribution" in 1842. It avenged the humiliation in large part, the Iranica entry notes, though sepoys never forgot it. General Pollock marched on Kabul in September 1842 and was joined by 6,000 men from Kandahar under General Nott; in retaliation the famous covered bazaar of Kabul was destroyed on 9 October, and the British withdrew three days later, taking Akbar's hostages with them. [6] Lord Ellenborough's proclamation at Simla on 1 October 1842 left the Afghans, in his words, to create a government of their own. [1] The British occupation of Kandahar had lasted until August 1842. [4] Dost Mohammad returned to Kabul as amir. [1] [5]

Between the wars

In his second reign, from 1842 to 1863, Dost Mohammad brought the territory of present-day Afghanistan under a single central government for the first time, though control was at times tenuous, and Peshawar and Kashmir stayed separate. [5] Relations with the British improved from the mid-1850s. Their Treaty of Peshawar of 26 January 1857 was so successful, Norris writes, that Dost Mohammad stayed out of the Indian Mutiny, and the British accepted his conquest of Herat in 1863. [2] After his death in 1863 his sons quarrelled, until Sher Ali became amir. [2]

The Second Anglo-Afghan War, 1878–1880

The second war was triggered by competing missions. A Russian delegation reached Kabul in July 1878 without the amir's explicit invitation, and the British insisted that Sher Ali receive a British mission too. The mission was turned back at the Afghan post at Ali Masjid in the Khyber Pass on 21 September 1878. [3] A British ultimatum went unanswered in time, and war was declared on 21 November 1878. [1] [3] Sher Ali left Kabul in December and died in February 1879 near Balkh. His son Yaqub Khan signed the Treaty of Gandomak on 26 May 1879. [3]

The treaty gave Britain control of Afghan foreign relations, a permanent British mission in Kabul, and jurisdiction over the Kurram and Pishin valleys, the Sibi district, and the Khyber and Michni passes, in exchange for an annual subsidy. Sources differ on the amount: one Iranica entry gives 60,000 rupees and another 600,000. [1] [3] One historian quoted in Hanifi's entry called it the most humiliating treaty ever signed by an Afghan ruler. [3] On 3 September 1879 the British envoy Sir Louis Cavagnari and his entire staff and escort were killed in Kabul, when a regiment from Herat stormed the mission compound. [2] [3] The British invaded again, occupied Kabul and deposed Yaqub. [1] [3]

Abdur Rahman, a grandson of Dost Mohammad who had lived in exile in Samarkand, returned in January 1880, and the British formally recognised him as ruler in July. [1] That same month, on 27 July 1880, an Afghan force under Ayub Khan, a son of Sher Ali, inflicted a heavy defeat on a British column at Maiwand, near Kandahar. [1] [4] Frederick Roberts then made his march from Kabul to Kandahar, 8–31 August, over more than 300 miles, and defeated Ayub Khan. [1] [4] The British occupied Kandahar from January 1879 until April 1881. [4] Abdur Rahman accepted British supervision of his foreign relations and a British presence in the passes, in return for a subsidy and a promise of help against unprovoked aggression. [1]

The Durand Line and the road to independence

On 12 November 1893 the Indian foreign secretary Sir Mortimer Durand and Abdur Rahman agreed the "frontier of Afghanistan on the side of India". The Durand Line is now an international boundary, but Afghans are inclined to describe it as the product of unequal treaties. [2] In 1905 Abdur Rahman's successor, Habibullah, turned his father's personal arrangements into a treaty that described him as an independent monarch while leaving foreign relations in British hands. [2] Afghanistan stayed neutral during the First World War and expected recognition of full independence, but got only a promise of money. [1] [2]

The Third Anglo-Afghan War, 1919

Habibullah was assassinated in February 1919 and his son Amanullah, who took the throne on 25 February, at once proclaimed Afghanistan's independence. [1] The war that followed was undeclared and lasted from 4 May to 3 June 1919. It began when Afghan troops cut the water supply to Landi Kotal on the Indian side of the border and the British closed the Khyber Pass. [1] Mohammad Nader, later King Nader Shah, opened a new front in the southeast and attacked the British base at Thal. A ceasefire was agreed on 3 June. [1]

Neither side could claim a clear military victory, but Afghanistan won a diplomatic success. After talks at Rawalpindi in August 1919 and later at Mussoorie and Kabul, the peace cancelled all earlier treaties and ended British control of Afghanistan's foreign affairs. A Treaty of Friendship signed on 22 November 1921 allowed each country to open a legation in the other's capital. [1] [2] The Iranica entry notes that historians used to accept the British explanation, that Amanullah went to war to rally the country behind him, and that recent research argues he did so to safeguard independence that had been unofficially secured at the end of the First World War. [1]

How to read these wars

Many of the standard accounts listed in the Iranica bibliographies were written by British officers and officials. An Afghan history of the second war was published for its centenary in 1979, with a partial English translation. [1] The Iranica entries used here are written by modern historians who draw on both sides and treat the wars as part of a longer struggle over a buffer state between two empires. [1] [2]