There is an old saying that often times, history repeats itself and never has that been more true of the area in the world where Afghanistan is located. In many ways, Afghanistan is a crossroads nation where trade routes converge carrying goods to and from India and even into China on one side, the now Middle East on to Africa and Europe on the other.

Where the British come in is that Afghanistan was seen as a buffer area between their most important possession of India and the growing expansionism of Imperial Russia. As such, it was imperative that Afghanistan be kept out of the Russian sphere of influence so various Afghan leaders who were friendly to the British were placed in power.

This is something that had worked well in other areas of the world and the British thought there would be no problem this time. However, this was not everywhere else. Just like it is today, Afghanistan is splintered into various ethnic and cultural factions, each wanting to retain their local power and each less than eager to join into a national coalition. Essentially, the British had to bribe these people to keep their loyalty, and it was a loyalty that generally was tenuous at best. Even in their choice of leadership for the nation wasn't that firmly entrenched that an overthrow couldn't happen.

Based on some major bumbling that came across due to the lack of British understanding on how these tribal people would react to certain situations, the British had to fight three wars.

There were fought in 1839-42 and again in 1878-81 in an effort to keep the Russians from interfering in Afghan politics. Of course, the irony of it was that the Russians were never involved in the fighting during these two wars. The third was in 1919 when a holy war was declared against the British which broght well over 100,000 Afghans in direct conflict with a weakened post-WWI British army.

In this book, author Fremont-Barnes covers each of these events as well as what lead up to them and the aftermath. The book is well illustrated with drawings and sketches from the earlier conflicts and photographs from the later ones.

It makes for an interesting look into this region of the world where basically the same sorts of problems exist for NATO forces. A book that I know you will enjoy reading.

March 2010

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