Dalrymple : Return of a King

Elizabeth Butler, "Remnants of an Army", 1879

"History repeats itself"

But not as often as this historian, who repeats that sad refrain  continuously throughout his book, first page to last.

The disastrous 1841 British retreat from Kabul is attributable almost entirely to the incompetence of Lord Elphinstone who was too ill to lead and too stubborn to step down.  When his 5,000 soldiers could have made a difference, he kept them in  barracks.  When they were hopelessly vulnerable, he led them out to  slaughter.  As General Robert Sale proved at the Battle of Jalalabad, a small but well-led force could produce the opposite result.


The intractable problem is not winning battles, it's establishing authority over disparate clans with a delicate balance of negotiation, threat,  bribery, and moral credibility --- a task for which only native, Muslim rulers have been proven competent.

It was interesting that the puppet king, the one who returned in the book's title, was more successful at  doing that after his British supporters had been driven out.  But in native eyes, his loyalty to the non-Muslim foreigners was his un-forgivable fault - eventually leading to his murder.

Evidently, British military leaders learned from this mistake - decisively winning the next two Anglo-Afghan wars,  wisely avoiding any future military occupations, and holding onto their South Asian empire until ready to divest it more than a hundred years later.  They also achieved the original objective of the war, which was to keep Russia out of the country - maintaining  control over Afghan foreign policy thereafter.


Meanwhile, the Afghan ruling class seems to have improved their subsequent performance as well.  After the British left, Dost Mohammed returned to establish the borders of the modern Afghanistan -which would avoid tribal anarchy until the 1973 coup d'état.

So everything turned out well -- except for those who did not survive: the lost British army - and however many Afghans were slaughtered by the British "Army of Retribution"

Though, quite possibly, the results would have been no different if a British army had never invaded.


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Regarding the parallels between then and now -- it does seem that three  similar forces are involved: tribalism, Islam, and capitalism.

Then, and now, it took a Jihad to unite the tribes against the infidel.

Then, and now, it was capitalism that got the infidel to cross the Khyber pass - though it was much more explicit in 1841 when the army was funded by the British East India Company to protect its profitable tea and opium trade in India.  The British would eventually leave Kabul not because they were driven out militarily  - but because it was too expensive to stay. 

160 years later, American involvement was more the consequence of the broader cultural clash between fundamentalist Islam and the capitalist West - the American invasion being in response to the Islamic attack on the capitol of capitalism: the World Trade Center.  Had there been no 9/11 --- there would not have been an American invasion to replace the regime that  openly sheltered the perpetrators.

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Regarding that cultural clash,  it's pretty clear where I stand: I live, breathe, and prosper in a capitalist state  which promotes no moral values  higher than toleration and personal freedom.  The capitalist West tolerates the mono-culture, autocracy,  and Sharia of Saudi Arabia because we like doing business with them, and we do not suffer from whatever strictures they place on themselves.

Whether that kind of social order can or should take control of more diverse areas like Afghanistan or Iraq is another question.