Part 1
Farid Afghan
Studying history isn’t just about looking through windows into the past, or reading what’s carved on the graves of former kings. It’s really an attempt to understand the unchanging and universal principles that govern the rise and fall of human societies. Nations appear on the map of the world, rise to the heights of glory, and then vanish in time’s merciless waves as if they had never existed at all.
But there’s a region at the heart of Asia that has watched the changing colors of the ages, endured the storms of the world’s conquerors, and never once given up its own identity or its love of freedom. The world knows this region as Afghanistan.
To understand Afghanistan’s history, studying its wars isn’t enough. You also need to understand its harsh mountains, its difficult valleys and the psychology of the people who live here. This is a geography where nature itself has built walls of defense that even the world’s most advanced military machines have so far failed to break through.
But history also shows us something else: strong geography and individual courage alone can never give a country permanent protection from the world’s schemes. Until a nation has a strong economic system, advanced military technology and, most importantly, firm internal unity, it will remain nothing more than a piece on the world’s chessboard. The end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th were exactly such a difficult period for Afghanistan.
On one side, it was facing its own internal divisions, and on the other, two of the world’s great colonial powers had pitched their tents along its borders. This was the period that changed the direction of Afghan history for a long time and laid the foundations of the map we know today.
The Great Game: A Land Caught Between Two Millstones
In the middle years of the 19th century, the world witnessed a cold and heated diplomatic struggle that historians came to call the Great Game. This game wasn’t played on a single battlefield. It played out across the vast map of Asia, and its two main players were the Tsarist Russian Empire and the British Raj.
Russia, at that time, was advancing south at remarkable speed. Tashkent, Samarkand, Khiva and the Emirate of Bukhara, historic and powerful centers, fell one after another under the control of the Russian Empire. This rising Russian tide had become a nightmare for the British rulers.
For Britain, India wasn’t just a colony. It was the crown of the British Empire, the engine of its economy and its most valuable possession. The British viceroys and generals sitting in London and Calcutta feared that if Russia continued advancing at this pace, it would cross the Hindu Kush and could at any moment gain control over the fertile lands of India.
In all of this, Afghanistan stood like a gateway. Whoever held its key could become the master of the whole region. To prevent this threat, the government of British India developed an aggressive policy known as the Forward Policy. Its basic aim was either to make Afghanistan part of the British Empire or to establish a puppet government here that would move completely at London’s command.
Russia, on the other hand, did not want to rule Afghanistan directly. But it wanted to increase its diplomatic influence in Kabul to such an extent that, when necessary, it could keep Britain occupied along the Indian frontier and secure decisions from Britain that suited its own interests in other political disputes taking place in Europe.
In this way, without having any say in the matter, the Afghan nation became a buffer zone between the world’s two great colonial powers, like a grain caught between two millstones.
The Arrival of the Russian Delegation and Amir Sher Ali Khan’s Dilemma
The most dramatic stage of this Great Game came when, in July 1878, a large and influential Russian diplomatic delegation led by General Stoletov suddenly arrived in Kabul. What is interesting is that Afghanistan’s Amir at the time, Sher Ali Khan, had given the Russian delegation no official invitation to come to Kabul.
He was a wise ruler and understood that in a struggle between wolves such as Russia and Britain, his country would be left in ruins. He firmly tried to turn the Russian delegation back from the other side of the Amu River, the Jeyhun. But the Russian general found his way to Kabul through military pressure along the Afghan frontier and diplomatic threats. When the Russian delegation reached the gates of Kabul, Amir Sher Ali Khan had no real choice but to welcome them according to the traditional Afghan custom of hospitality, because angering Russia would have meant inviting another war along the northern borders.
When this news reached Lord Lytton, the Viceroy of British India, it caused as an earthquake inside the British palaces. The English simply could not stomach the idea of a Russian envoy sitting in Kabul’s royal court, drinking tea and making agreements with the forefathers of Amanullah Khan.
So Lord Lytton immediately sent Amir Sher Ali Khan a harsh, insulting and threatening letter, demanding that Afghanistan immediately allow a British delegation led by Sir Neville Chamberlain to come to Kabul and take up permanent residence there. For Amir Sher Ali Khan, this was a major test. He understood that allowing a permanent British envoy to sit in Kabul would gradually mean the loss of Afghanistan’s internal independence, exactly as the British had enslaved the whole of India by placing their Residents in the courts of its Nawabs and Rajas.
The Khyber Pass Incident and the Bell That Rang In War
In those days, Amir Sher Ali Khan was also facing deep grief. His young son and heir, Prince Abdullah Jan, had suddenly died, and all of Kabul was in mourning. The Amir sent a reply to the British Viceroy asking for some time because of the mourning and to assess the situation in the country. But British arrogance had reached such a level that, without waiting for the Afghan Amir’s permission, the British delegation was sent toward Kabul by force.
When the British delegation reached the Khyber Pass area in September 1878, near the historic fort of Ali Masjid, the Afghan commander stationed there, Faiz Muhammad Khan, stopped them.
With great courtesy, but firm determination, the Afghan commander told the British general:
“Until an official written order arrives from Amir Sher Ali Khan, we cannot allow any foreign delegation to enter Afghan territory.”
The stopping of the British delegation was regarded by the British government as a serious blow to its international standing. How could the British Empire, which was said to be an empire on which the sun never set, tolerate being stopped by an ordinary commander of a mountainous kingdom?
Lord Lytton had therefore found the excuse for war with Kabul that he had been looking for for a long time. In November 1878, Britain officially declared war on Afghanistan, and the Second Anglo-Afghan War began. The British army invaded Afghanistan at the same time through the Khyber Pass, the Kurram Valley and the Bolan Pass.
