The American Spectator

Another Perspective

The Myth of Afghanistan

By Hal G.P. Colebatch on 3.2.07 @ 12:08AM

The myth of a series of Western defeats in Afghanistan in repeated invasion attempts has become pervasive. British journalist Robert Fisk wrote with what seems like glee in the Independent several days ago:

Hands up any soldiers who know that another of Britain's great military defeats took place in the very sands in which your colleagues are now fighting the Taliban. Yes, the Battle of Maiwand -- on 27 July, 1880 -- destroyed an entire British brigade, overrun by thousands of armed Afghan tribesmen, some of whom the official enquiry into the disaster would later describe as "Talibs." The Brits had been trying to secure Helmand province. Sound familiar?

Australian journalist Geoffrey Barker (it is notable that both Mr. Fisk and Mr. Barker lean decidedly to the left) has written recently under the title "The Long Shadow of the Past," of "the devastating defeats suffered by British forces in the 19th Century" -- "defeats," plural, note. And of course "devastating." The very word "Afghanistan" has come to mean something like "graveyard of invading armies." Type "British Defeat Afghanistan" into Google and you will come up with about 3,360,000 entries.

It is a myth the British themselves largely created. It is ironic that it seems to owe much to Rudyard Kipling, the great poet of the British Empire, and the distinguished military artist Lady Elizabeth Butler, otherwise famous for her depictions of heroic British cavalry charges.

The British have always tended to revel in their disasters rather than their victories (when history was taught in British schools, all knew about the hopeless charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava; hardly any knew of the astoundingly successful charge of the Heavy Brigade the same day, both the subject of poems by Tennyson). Lately, of course, the adversary culture has seized avidly on any mythology that tends to discredit and demoralize the West and Western civilization.

However, the facts are somewhat different. The relatively few British adventures in Afghanistan, apart from one-off punitive expeditions, were, like the allied campaign today, basically attempts to support or set up friendly governments and then get out, not to conquer and annex or occupy the country. They had limited objectives and were for the most part successful.

They were unlike the Soviet invasion of 1979-88, which was an attempt to make Afghanistan either a communist country or a Soviet province and impose a permanent and irreversible communist and therefore atheist ideology. This largely united the Afghans against them, and the Afghans had modern American weapons as well.

WITH ONE EXCEPTION, THE BRITISH experiences show Afghanistan's reputation as a graveyard of foreign armies to be at least overstated. The exception, the disastrous retreat from Kabul in the winter of 1842, was not really a campaign at all. It was the massacre of a small, badly-equipped garrison force -- barely an army in more than name -- that was trying to get out of the place and had no aggressive intent. Further, the British were handicapped by a commander of unusual incompetence in Major-General William Elphinstone.

The British garrison at Kabul had been intended to support a friendly and reputedly anti-Russian ruler, Shah Shuja, and protect the British diplomatic mission there. In December, 1841, Sir William MacNaughten, the British political chief, was murdered, leaving the British Army with no political direction or source of orders.

Elphinstone had fought well at Waterloo in 1815 but by 1842 he was 60 years old, sick, and mentally worn out. His folly and constant indecisiveness suggests he may have been suffering from premature senility. The army he commanded was far weaker than its nominal strength of about 17,000 suggests. About 12,500 of these were civilian camp-followers and bearers.

The few soldiers were nearly all Indian Sepoys from the East India Company, acclimatized and equipped for campaigning on the hot Indian plains, not for an Afghan winter in the mountains. There was only one British infantry formation, a battalion of the 44th Regiment -- less than 700 men. The presence of British officers' wives and children must have been a further handicap. The most sophisticated transport was horses and bullock-drawn carts and carriages.

In January, 1842, in the depths of winter, Elphinstone, instead of holing up in the strong Kabul fortifications for a few weeks and waiting for spring, ordered a retreat across the blizzard-swept Afghan passes. By his general indecisiveness and passivity after the murder of MacNaughten and other political officers earlier he had demonstrated weakness to the Afghan tribal and religious leaders who wanted to oust Shah Shuja.

The British left Kabul peacefully after an agreement with the Afghans, but as soon as they were strung out in column they began coming under attack. Apart from the Afghan leaders (who may not have been fully in control of events) probably playing a complicated double game, Russian agents probably encouraged and bribed Islamic fanatics to rouse the tribesman.

Both sides were armed with muskets, swords, and lances. The British cannon had to be abandoned. The wretched East India Company Sepoys and camp-followers were soon cut to pieces and the baggage and transport animals carried off. The handful of British troops struggled in several feet of snow through more than 40 miles of treacherous gorges and passes -- perfectly positioned as ambush sites and killing-grounds -- under constant attack.

When on 12 January the last 65 British troops made a stand at Gandamack, refusing to surrender, they had only about a dozen working muskets. They were more than 100 years too early for helicopters to lift them out. The force was wiped out with the exception of Dr. William Brydon and possibly a few other stragglers. Some others, including some wives and children, survived, having been made prisoners earlier. (The bones of the men of the 44th were found among the desolate rocks of Gandamack in 1979.).

A dramatic painting executed in 1879 by Lady Butler, of Brydon reaching the British lines at Jalalabad -- this sole exhausted man and foundering horse being captioned with stark eloquence "The Remnants of an Army" -- became a famous icon of Imperial heroism and tragedy. A painting of the last stand at Gandamack also became famous and has been displayed recently in the National Army Museum in London. Such works helped create the impression that Afghanistan was the place where invading armies perished. Perhaps it was also thought that such images would give the Russians a message too, and therefore had some official encouragement. In recent times George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman novels brought the horror of the 1842 retreat vividly home to new generations of readers.

THE ENDURING POTENCY OF THE MYTH is demonstrated by a story which appeared in the British press just a few days ago:

I was sent an e-mail yesterday from an old military friend depicting the famous picture by Lady Butler -- painter of Victorian military heroics par excellence -- of the lone nag carrying the exhausted frame of Dr William Bryden into Jalalabad, the sole survivor of the retreating column of 16,000 [sic] British and local troops....The picture, is the "Awful Warning" poster of British involvement in Afghanistan, which has involved no fewer than three [sic] full-blown wars, punitive expeditions, and bombing by the early RAF...

Robert Fisk's version is as follows:

One of the greatest defeats of British forces anywhere in the world had occurred more than four decades before Maiwand, on the Kabul Gorge in 1842, when an entire British army was wiped out by Afghan fighters in the snow.

His description of the small shambolic force with its 600-odd British troops as "an entire British army," speaks for itself as a guide to the inner workings of Mr. Fisk. In fact the affair did not prove much militarily. It was a one-off, and it was a failure not of fighting ability but basically of a single leader who should never have had such a command. The British counter-attacked with a large and well-led army and reached Kabul without great difficulty, destroyed the citadel and city centre in retaliation for the previous treachery, rescued British prisoners, and wiped out resistance. It then returned to India because Shah Shuja had been assassinated and the British East India Company thought it unprofitable and pointless to continue to occupy the barren country.

Letter to the Editor

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Foreign Policy, Islam, Law, Military, Russia