By Robert Harneis
2 - 8 September 2010
Issue No. 1014
Courtesy Of "Al-Ahram Weekly"
It is constantly repeated that Afghanistan has always been the graveyard of empires. There then follows a reminder of the annihilation of a British "army" in 1842 in the first Afghan war and of the defeat at Maiwand in 1880 in the second war. It follows that the British failed.
A closer look reveals a very different picture. First of all, for the first hundred years or so of their involvement in India the British had no noticeable Afghan policy. The two powers were too far apart to bother with one another. It was only in the early 19th century and the consolidation of the Indian empire that active relations began, simply because the British had extended their empire northwards and they became concerned about the Afghan habit of raiding south across the border into what had become British India.
So were the British colonial master's imperialist politics successful in South Asia? It was not, and there are lessons to be learnt today from attitudes of yore and the way the British handled their unruly "neighbours", the Afghans.
The British also worried about the expansion of the Russian empire southwards and eastwards through Persia towards Afghanistan. If the Russians ruled in Kabul, went the reasoning, then with the Afghans they could move south through India with their overwhelming numbers to the Indian Ocean.
In reality the two notorious defeats were isolated if striking events amidst a series of British successes. Despite constantly having to keep an eye on the Afghan border, the two Afghan wars were the only two major armed clashes between the two countries in the entire British period in India. Russia never did take over the country, and the Afghans did not invade India until 1919 when they were quickly repulsed. The British in India got what they wanted -- peace on the frontier with a minimum of conflict. It is worth noting that for much of the time they achieved this on more or less equal military terms. Until the end of the 19th century the Afghans were armed as well as their British enemies.
True the Afghans were bribed with subsidies to stay quiet, more than that they feared and respected their British neighbours. They had no illusions that if they made trouble on the British side of the frontier there would be a violent reaction. If on the other hand they stayed quiet and did not invite in Britain's enemy the Russians, they would be left alone to get on with their lives. Significant indications of British success were that the Afghans did not invade during the India Mutiny when the British had their backs to the wall for several months. Neither did they do so during the 1914-18 World War when the British stripped India of much of its army to fight elsewhere, despite being urged to do so by their co-religionists the Turks.
The British respected the Afghans as tough enemies occupying a difficult and inhospitable country. After both Afghan wars in 1842 and 1882 they secured a solid frontier but once they had got Afghan cooperation they immediately withdrew and did not make the mistake of leaving provocative occupying garrisons in the country. They subsidised the rulers and otherwise left them alone.
It is interesting to note the comments in the language of the day of Lord Frederick Roberts, the most successful British general in fighting and dealing with the Afghans and the inhabitants of India in general. What was required he said were "honourable men who sympathise with the Natives, respect their prejudices, and do not interfere unnecessarily with their habits and customs". This sentence should be pinned up in every United States and NATO army post in Afghanistan.
Roberts incidentally believed that if the British had been a bit more helpful in their dealings with the then emir, the second Afghan war need not have occurred at all. Even then, in all the years Britain was Afghanistan's neighbour they were at war for only a total of six years. Readers will not need to be reminded that the US has already been there for a decade.
Compare Roberts' remarks on how his soldiers treated the Afghans with what goes on today. "Notwithstanding the provocation caused by the cruel murder of any stragglers who fell into the hands of the Afghans, not one act infringing the rules of civilised warfare was committed by my troops. The persons and property of the Natives were respected, and full compensation for supplies was everywhere given. In short, the inhabitants of the district through which we passed could not have been treated with greater consideration nor with a lighter hand, had they proved themselves friendly allies, and the conduct of the troops will ever be to me as pleasing a memory as are the results which they achieved." Even America's best friends would not attempt to make such a statement for the US-led occupiers of Afghanistan today without blushing.
One hundred years before, the young Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, was a very successful British general in India. It is interesting to note that he too attached great importance to the way Indians were treated and the conduct of British soldiers.
The West today would do well to heed what Wellesley wrote in 1802: "If we lose our character for true and good faith, we shall have but little to stand upon in this country." These were not the mere platitudes that we hear today about human rights and winning hearts and minds. The young general meant what he said. To stop indiscipline by his own troops in one captured town he hung one of his soldiers and left the body hanging by the city gates to remind the rest to behave.
Wellesley enforced discipline against his own British officers. If they were given soft sentences by court martials he did not hesitate to demand that the sentences be reconsidered. An officer who beat an Indian goldsmith, who subsequently died, was first court martialled and then having been dismissed from the army was tried for murder. Wellesley saw no reason why his soldiers and officers should not behave just as well as if they were back in Britain. As he wrote "In this country, as in England, no man has the right to take the law into his own hands, or to punish another."
It is the important phrase "as in England" that puts the Western occupiers of Afghanistan to shame. The steady stream of civilian casualties including many women and children in Afghanistan today would not have been acceptable to Arthur Wellesley 200 years ago. The idea that you can behave in Afghanistan in a way that would cause a firestorm of criticism if it happened at home would have disgusted him as a man and baffled him as an efficient soldier.
The British and their empire of yore were far from perfect, and the world has changed, but the type of imperialism they practised could teach the US and modern-day Britain a thing or two about handling "the Natives" in Afghanistan.
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