Concerned about Russia’s involvement in Afghanistan and the potential threat to India, the British sent an invading army in 1839 to overthrow Afghan leader Dost Mohammad and install Shah Shuja in his place. Shah Shuja was a Pashtun leader from the Popalzai tribe, to which Afghanistan’s current president, Hamid Karzai, also belongs. Contrary to some historical accounts that portray Shah Shuja as an unpopular British stooge, recently unearthed Afghan accounts suggest he was more highly thought of. As Dalrymple contends, “It is clear from the Afghan sources that many of the participants [in the revolt against the British] saw themselves as rescuing the Shah from the gilded cage into which it was believed the British had locked him for their own ends.” The British were initially successful in installing Shah Shuja and stabilizing the region. But, as Dalrymple describes, they made several fatal mistakes. The first was being grossly naive about the local attitude toward them. One of the first indications of resistance occurred in May 1840, when a British column marching from Kandahar to Ghazni was attacked by 2,000 Ghilzai horsemen. Durrani and Ghilzai Pashtuns soon began to rise up against the British in Helmand and Qalat. In August 1841, a few months before the British retreat, British envoy William Hay Macnaghten brushed aside intelligence reports that the security situation was rapidly deteriorating. Second, the British misjudged the war’s cost. By February 1841, the head of the British accounts department in Calcutta wrote to Lord Auckland, the governor general of India, that “ere six months elapse, the treasures of India will be completely exhausted.” London gave Auckland strict instructions to train an Afghan national army that would allow the British to withdraw their troops to India. This financial pressure led to a third critical mistake. Macnaghten diverted resources away from tribal leaders and toward building a professional standing army, thus removing Shah Shuja’s principal means of patronage. Slashing the payments was catastrophic, Dalrymple argues, because they were “the glue that cemented the local and regional tribal leaders’ loyalty to the regime at the center.” By the fall of 1841, Afghan religious leaders began calling for jihad, or holy war, against the British. The situation in Kabul notably worsened in November, when British official Alexander Burnes allegedly had an affair with an Afghan slave girl. Her owner peremptorily demanded her back from Burnes’s residence, only to be beaten and thrown out of the house. “Overnight,” Dalrymple writes, “every village turned hostile.” A broad-based revolt against the British quickly consumed Kabul, pinning down British forces and civilians in several cantonments. Perceiving the gravity of the situation, Macnaghten cut a deal with the rebels and agreed to leave. The timing couldn’t have been worse. It was January, and Kabul was suffering from sub-zero temperatures. On Jan. 6, 1842, the British commenced their retreat. The force, which numbered more than 8,000 soldiers and included a large contingent of Indian sepoys and camp followers, was excoriated as it battled through biting cold, knee-deep snow and apoplectic tribesmen. Some died from the extreme cold. But most died at the hands of Afghan sharpshooters, who picked apart the force by firing at it from behind rocks, on horseback, and through daring ambushes and raids.
Posted on: Mon, 01 Jul 2013 23:26:09 +0000
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