Originally posted by Chico
During the early 19th centaury, Britain had enormous interests in terms of trade on the Indian subcontinent.
It was essential, from the point of view of the British, that a friendly government be place in Kabul to control the various tribes of Afghanistan and prevent opposition to the British rule in India.
The previous puppet government, led by Shah Shuja, in Afghanistan had collapsed and so British and Indian forces marched on Kabul in 1840 in to restore their power.
Despite initial military successes, by 1842 a popular revolt forced the occupying forces to retreat from the country. A massacre then followed as 20,000 British and Indian troops were attacked relentlessly on the long march back to India.
It is said that there was only 1 survivor of the retreat from Afghanistan, one Dr. W. Brydon. A second British incursion into Afghanistan came in 1878 when military planners decided upon the need to counter a perceived threat from Russian imperialist interests by establishing the borders of the empire north of India.
Although better prepared for the campaign than in 1840, Anglo-Indian forces once again failed to realise that the fractured Afghan tribes would unite to cast the British out.
This took a long time to happen, after major British victories at the Khyber Pass and Kandahar they reached Kabul and began to take petty vengeance on the Afghan people. By 1880 the British once again prepared for a military withdrawal as it had become clear that they were fighting the kind of attritional battle that they could never win. Constant attacks from the various fractured tribes were wearing the men down.
The tribes finally united under one banner when the British were decisively defeated outside Kandahar in 1880. The rest of the army, given changing political conditions in Britain, had no choice but to withdraw to India. Afghanistan finally did recognise its ties to Russia after the brief war of 1919 when Afghan forces attacked the British in India.
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