The First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842) – History Archives

Throughout contemporaneity, there have been many countries that have earned the adjective impregnable, due to their resistance to enemy occupation forces. This is the case of Spain, Vietnam or Ethiopia, among others. The case that concerns us in this article is that of the first Anglo-Afghan war. Before entering the conflict, let’s take a little tour of Afghanistan, an exciting but sadly unstable country.

The resistance capacity of present-day Afghanistan surpasses all ages. Already during the Hellenistic period, with the arrival of Alexander the Great, one of the most brilliant generals in the history of mankind, a series of characteristics can be observed that have made the territory hell for the occupying armies.

The first of these is the layout of the land itself. Bearing in mind that Afghanistan is crossed by the Hindu Kush, the access and maneuverability of large armies are cut off by enormous unevenness and the impossibility of saving them. This favors a war conditioned by the use of small groups that can move quickly to attack and easily fall back, favoring asymmetric warfare. It is something that can be perfectly observed in the Macedonian campaigns, where the “hammer and anvil” tactic did not work. because directly there were no pitched battles. Thus, the Hellenic armies found themselves with a war system that they did not understand and were constantly massacred. Unable to capitalize on victories, when a Bactrian hydra’s head was lopped off, two took its place. Still, they were able to bring the country to heel and even create a flourishing Greek kingdom that lasted more than two centuries.

The same thing happened in the 21st century. When the War on Terror began in 2001, the US military seized control of the country with astonishing ease. Almost as easily as the British in 1839. However, the war has dragged on endlessly for more than a decade and the Asian country has never been subdued, situation identical to that experienced by the Soviets shortly before the collapse of the communist model of the Warsaw Pact. The paradigm of this can be seen in the Korengal valley, known among US troops as the “valley of death”, since its geography has made the work of the Taliban much easier and they present a fierce resistance against the forces in this place. Of occupation.

It is curious that no one, except perhaps Alexander the Great, has really been able to read how its inhabitants thought. It has always come with an imperialist ambition and very clear objectives, but without any intention of approaching the mentality of some inhabitants who have never been willing to give up their sovereignty. We are talking about a country that lives in a perpetual war, first against them, and then against anyone who tries to enter the country.

Afghanistan is a country with harsh conditions. These conditions, over the centuries, have shaped the sociology of its residents. The tonic at the social level is the existence of a very rigid morality based on Islam, to which are added a series of moral, tribal and ethnic codes. In this way, Afghan society creates a labyrinthine network that is very difficult for foreigners to enter, with which they are only connected by a commercial interest on the part of the elites. For those who are not part of these elites, the context has been harshly shaping their ways of life, since they live with quite limited resources.

To Western eyes it can be really difficult to understand the sociology of the inhabitants of this territory. They are reluctant to allow anyone to alter their way of life, which is manifested in a high belligerence. Generally, they are willing to put up a fight to the final consequences.

With all this the Great Army of the Indus found itself when it crossed the mountain passes that separated Afghanistan from its territories. Thus, in three years they conquered the country, settled in it, and were annihilated. But first, we have to do a little review of the international politics of a world that was entering too quickly into a period of globalization that we have not been able to fully understand.

The Great Game and international politics during the 1839 invasion of Afghanistan

The “Great Game” is what is known as the most important diplomatic confrontation of the 19th century in Central Asia, between the British Empire and the Russian Empire. This conflict broke out because of the fear generated by an increasingly refined espionage system whose reports were feeding back the terror of the other to see their most valuable possessions threatened economically speaking. On the British side there were fears for the protection of India, and on the Russian side, for the British ability to destroy their trading nodes in Central Asia.

These fears were generally unfounded. However, the different reports that the men in the service of both crowns were producing generated a system of paranoid international politics in which decisions were made as if Central Asia were a huge chessboard. In it, they unfolded endless plays that tried to anticipate the opponent’s.

However, this was a “Cold War”, since despite the constant possibility of war breaking out between the two Empires, it never happened. Except in the case of the Crimean War. It was a very localized war at a specific point and with very marked objectives. The term was popularized by the novel kim by the famous author Rudyard Kipling and gained great importance again during the Afghanistan War that began in 1978. Originally, all those difficult companies that could achieve fairly large economic returns were considered a “big game”. The term used in Russia is “shadow tournament”.

It is considered that the outbreak of this web of covert operations and diplomatic crises began in 1830, when a new trade route was carried out with the Emirate of Bukhara to gain economic control over Afghanistan and turn it into a protectorate. In this way, it was intended to generate a series of buffer states between the territories of the British Crown and the Russian Empire. Bukhara will continue to be a point of tension between the two empires since later the Tsar will decide to carry out the conquest of the territory during the 60s and 70s.

The greatest obsession of the British was to defend the subcontinent of India, known as “the Jewel in the Crown”. This fear of losing one of the richest places in raw materials of its Empire is due to the fact that already at the beginning of the 19th century there were plans to invade it by Napoleon in collusion with Russia. However, Paul I, who saw the plan with good eyes, died and his successor, Alexander I was not in the business of invading India. The idea was also to conquer all the khanates of Central Asia up to the British possessions. A plan as big as it was really unfeasible, so Napoleon began to negotiate a possible agreement with Persia that did not finish forging either.

It is to be expected that with this background, a certain fear of losing this territory would be generated. That fear continued to be projected well into the 20th century. For the British economy, losing these possessions would have had catastrophic effects. However, the conquest of India was never in Russia’s plans, they judged it unfeasible. Not even with Nicholas I, czar who had a policy openly contrary to that of the British crown. However, he thought that Asia’s spheres of influence could be distributed without there being any real problem in this regard. It can be said, then, that the “Big Game” has a bit of paranoid by the high officials of the East India Company.

The confrontation between Russia and Great Britain, as we shall see, was marked by the enormous failure of the latter in Afghanistan. The “Great Game” could no longer be won by Great Britain, who could never get her interests to prevail in Central Asia. Even so, historians consider that the end of the Great Game occurred on September 10, 1895 when Afghanistan defined its border by a treaty with the Russian Empire. Although, for Hopkirk, what he calls end game (game over) will occur with the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). For others there were neither winners nor losers, but rather both colluded so that the real loser was another: Afghanistan.

For the most Anglophile authors, the Great Game is a legend in the minds of the novelists of the time. According to Malcolm Yapp, there is no documentation of espionage operations in India, so any debate about the Great Game in historiography is totally barren. This has been proven false thanks to the deep investigations of William Dalrymple in which it openly shows that it not only existed, but also governed the international policy of the British.

The tournament of shadows: the conflict seen from Russia

Russia did not have a well-founded interest in conquering India, but it would end up entering the game because its interests in Central Asia were increasingly being threatened. If Russia’s support for Dost Mohammad is not taken into account, the country’s area of ​​interest was in Turkestan.

The relationship between these territories and the tsars goes back long before the English presence in Central Asia. With the expansion in the 16th century of Ivan IV the Terrible through Siberia they came into direct contact with the border areas of Turkestan. Constant incursions of Kazakhs against the Russian borders were carried out, so the Cossack forces moved along the border creating semi-autonomous settlements. With the advent of the 18th century, a series of forts were created along the border with Kazakhstan known as the “Siberian line”. Russian troops steadily pushed deeper into Central Asia. The war waged with Persia during the eighteenth century must also be taken into account.

However, it will not be until 1839 when an invasion of the territory is attempted to take control of what is now Uzbekistan. However, this would be a real failure in what will be Afghanistan during the 19th century. In addition, the dates coincide perfectly and the errors are the same: initial overconfidence, punishment of the troops for guerrilla warfare and excessive baggage train. To this must be added an exceptionally cold climate that year.

They will learn from this failure, of course. They began their expansion through Turkestan throughout the 19th century, with the conquest of the emirate of Bukhara being very relevant, with the fall of Samarkand in 1868. They will not, however, succeed in conquering Khiva until the year 1873.

All these data reveal where Russian interests were in the area. If it wanted, the British Crown could have agreed on distribution areas of…