FROM KABUL TO JALALABAD IN 1842

Central Asia is a very large stage from which originated the legendary Mongolian armies, the Turks that seized the ancient Byzantine empire and many fabled cities that had rarely been visited by Westerners even in the 1800s. In Washington DC and other modern world capitals, officials wring their hands and discuss Afghanistan’s reputation for breaking formidable occupation forces like the British and Russians. President Obama campaigned with promises to finish the job in Afghanistan. A good promise that may be EXHIBIT “A” in the case we can call “CHARACTER COUNTS VS. INDECISION AND VACILLATION.

In 1840, Sir William Macnaghten, preparing to leave his duties in Afghanistan and begin a new job in Bombay, stated that Afghanistan was quiet from “Dan to Beersheeba”. In Kabul, British officers and their wives and children played cricket, held concerts and enjoyed steeplechases and skating far from the heat of India from where most of them had come. Macnaghten was an experienced political officer but he and the other political were unaware that the combination of coercion and subsidies the British lavished on many tribes could not offset womanizing, drinking and other British pastimes that greatly offended the Islamic mullahs and not a few Afghani husbands. Warnings went out that “their mullahs are preaching against us from one end of the country to the other” but Macnaghten chalked the warnings up to alarmism with potential to needlessly hinder his career.Continue reading “British Benghazi in Afghanistan 1842”