British Lion vs. Snow Leopard or Epilogue of the Anglo-Afghan War
Yakub Khan leaves the game
After the death of Major P. Cavagnari – see about this: The Second Anglo-Afghan War: The Treaty of Gandamak or On the Old Rake – Instead of organizing resistance to the inevitable new British invasion, Yakub Khan hastened to send them a message expressing regret about what had happened, hoping to resolve the incident through diplomatic means, which in those conditions was hardly possible.
The murder of an officer of a leading world power, knighted by the Queen, and also in the status of a diplomat, could not, from London's point of view, go unpunished. The Viceroy of India, E. Lytton, insisted on retribution first and foremost, considering the defeat of the mission as a violation of the Gandamak Treaty, which overnight became a meaningless piece of paper.
But it was not only a matter of retribution. The British identified the loss of control over Afghanistan with its inclusion in Russia's sphere of influence, especially after the mission of Lieutenant General N. G. Stoletov, which caused a stir in Calcutta.
In mid-September 1878, the division of Major General F. Roberts, one of the best British commanders who had experience in suppressing the sepoy rebellion, began to advance on Kabul. In addition, Cavagnari was a friend of the general, which gave the latter an additional reason not to delay the action.
The British reoccupied Jalalabad and Kandahar – in the previous article we talked about the recklessness of the decision, from a strategic point of view, to return them to the emir.
The Defence of Kandahar by the British 92nd Regiment. 1880. Painting by Richard Caton Woodville, Jr.
When Yakub Khan asked him not to occupy the capital, Roberts responded with a bit of sarcasm:
"After the recent occurrence, the great British nation will not be satisfied unless the British army enters Kabul and there assists Your Majesty in inflicting such punishments as such a terrible and cowardly action deserves. Therefore the advance will be continued as ordered by the Viceroy to ensure Your Majesty's personal safety and to assist Your Majesty in restoring peace and order in the capital."
Soon the emir himself came to Roberts, which, on the one hand, made the latter’s task easier from a political point of view, since from now on, in the eyes of his compatriots who were skeptical about the war, his actions could be regarded not as punitive, but as aimed at restoring the power of the legitimate ruler and punishing the rebels.
Already in early October, the British approached Kabul. An attempt by Afghan units that did not obey Yakub Khan to organize resistance on the approaches to the capital, at Chor-Asiab, ended in defeat: Roberts used the tactics of a combined attack from the front and flanks.
At the same time, the Afghans, thanks to the units reformed according to the European model by Sher Ali Khan, showed greater resilience than at the beginning of the campaign. And if we were to draw analogies, I would compare Chor-Asiab with Narva, where the guards regiments created by Peter I showed themselves well.
It is no coincidence that the figure of this emperor aroused interest in Sher Ali Khan, which we discussed in one of our previous articles. But the reasons for the defeat were similar to those in Narva: different levels of training of the troops, because militias fought against the English along with regular units.
Roberts occupied Kabul. Yakub Khan finally turned into an English puppet hated by his compatriots and chose to abdicate. The colonialists did not bother with his political future, allowing him to leave for India, where the former emir lived quietly for almost half a century on a generous English pension and witnessed the decline of the British Empire that began after the First World War.
The British Lion's Strategic Mistake
Roberts, as expected, staged public executions in Kabul, sending about a hundred people to the gallows. However, the abdication of Yakub Khan and the occupation of the capital was a tactical success, but without positive strategic consequences for the British, since their calculations were based on turning the emirate into an outpost against Russia and was a step towards more active penetration into Iran, which began at the beginning of the 19th century, as a result of which relations between Tehran and London became friendly. They grew stronger in the second half of the century.
Lieutenant General F. Roberts was one of the best British military leaders, but he did not avoid serious miscalculations during the campaign.
And by including Afghanistan in the orbit of their influence, the British would strengthen them, including through preferences; in particular, London considered the idea of transferring Herat to the Shah.
However, it quickly became clear to Roberts that the Afghans were not going to give up. weaponIn principle, they had a chance of strategic success and the expulsion of the invaders, using the same tactics as the Russian troops after Napoleon occupied Moscow in the autumn of 1812: actions against individual enemy units, depriving them of food supplies and forage, as well as operations on communications, especially on the vital artery of Kabul-Peshawar passing through the Khyber Pass.
Eventually, the British supply difficulties and high sanitary losses would force Calcutta to compromise.
Mullahs call for ghazawat
However, those who led the motley mass of Afghan militia held a different point of view, mistakenly choosing offensive tactics. And here it was not without the mullahs, repeatedly mentioned in the previous material, who convinced the illiterate, if not literate, warriors that they were ghazis and should not be afraid of the infidels. Particularly active in this field was the ninety-year-old mullah Mushk-i-Alim, who acted in tandem with the capable Afghan military leader and good artilleryman Muhammad Jan-khan.
A little aside: the role of the mullahs in organizing the resistance and the degree of their influence on the masses was underestimated not only by the British, but also by us in the last century, and by the Americans in the current one.
The British Lion in the Shadow of the Double-Headed Eagle
Roberts' next move was dictated not only by military considerations, but also by a mixture of geopolitics and psychology.
Regarding the latter: the British already at the beginning of the century under consideration fell victim to the phantom of a threat to their Indian possessions from Russia. No, there were conversations on this topic in St. Petersburg, but there was only one strategic plan approved by the Tsar, known to all of us from school and born in the head of Paul I.
Another component of the phantom was the work of General R. Wilson, who, strangely enough, sympathized with the Russians and was attached to Kutuzov's army in 1812 and had many friends among its officers. Wilson earned their respect, as well as that of Alexander I, by his personal bravery on the battlefield.
I will not now touch upon his most interesting notes, because they deserve a separate discussion, as does the non-trivial personality of their author. I will only say that Wilson to a significant extent reformatted the pro-Russian sentiments of his compatriots after the victory over Napoleon, convincing them that the Tsar was dreaming of taking India away from Great Britain.
The impressions left by Pavlova's idea of a campaign beyond the distant lands and Wilson's works ultimately gave rise to the aforementioned phantom, which influenced the decisions made by the English ruling circles that determined both the geopolitics of the United Kingdom and the strategy, at least in the Middle East and Central Asia, and in the Far East as well, which manifested itself during the Crimean War and was expressed in the fear of mythical Russian privateers.
In the shadow of the aforementioned phantom, the logic of Roberts's decision to move the army around the Sherpur citadel north of Kabul becomes clear, with the aim of depriving the enemy of the opportunity to retreat in the direction of Russian Turkestan, from where he could hypothetically receive assistance in the form of weapons, ammunition and military advisers. It is also noteworthy in this regard that rumors circulated among the Afghans about a Russian army coming to their aid. Here the mullahs were probably ready to moderate their fanaticism and show a certain amount of pragmatism, using some infidels to fight others.
Sherpur Citadel during the siege by Afghan troops
However, the Afghans evacuated their troops from Sherpur, which was in turn occupied by the British. Roberts, promoted to lieutenant general and having concentrated command over the troops operating in Afghanistan, spent the winter of 1878-1879 in the citadel.
A significant problem for him was the lack of operational communication with the troops of Lieutenant General D. Stewart concentrated in Kandahar. Attempts to establish it ended in failure: the Afghans managed to intercept the Ghazni-Kabul communication line. The only way out was to strike Stewart's column in the direction of the capital in order to defeat the enemy operating on the aforementioned line.
As expected, the Afghans did not try to stop Stuart by means of a general battle, although individual clashes were fierce and exhausted the British troops, already burdened with a large number of non-combatants. At the same time, the Afghans tried to turn their withdrawal from Kandahar into their own success, blockading the city, without which control over the southeast of the emirate is impossible.
The Afghans, having lost control over the Kandahar-Kabul communication line, by blockading the former cut off one of the two arteries supplying British troops, which was carried out not only through the aforementioned Peshawar, but also through Quetta.
Another strategic failure of the British, locked in Sherpur, was expressed in the quickly becoming obvious impossibility of striking in the direction of Herat, the occupation of which would have given them the keys to Eastern Iran and the opportunity to coordinate their actions with the Shah, who was friendly towards London.
Finally, Roberts failed to isolate northern Afghanistan from Russian Turkestan – the forces were clearly insufficient for this; plus, the general underestimated the enemy, who suddenly went on the offensive and tried to take the citadel by storm.
In this regard, it seems to me that the Afghans’ earlier decision to leave Sherpur was incorrect, since their defense of the citadel could well have been successful in the event of active operations on the Kabul-Jalalabad-Peshawar communication line, which would have forced the colonialists to strike with splayed fingers in different directions.
But the British also made a number of significant miscalculations in planning the campaign, allocating insufficient forces for it, failing to ensure control over communication lines and conducting poor reconnaissance, since the same Roberts did not anticipate the growth of enemy resistance and the level of combat readiness, at least of some of its units.
It is interesting that the Russian General Staff officers who analyzed the war also noted the insufficient development of the campaign at the planning level. In particular, Lieutenant General E. N. Snesarev emphasized that the war
"clearly revealed the organic shortcomings of the British military system: poor preparation of operational plans, inability to provide for its communications, burdening detachments with a mass of non-combatants and the complete subordination of military operations to political considerations."
However, in fact, they did not have artillery The Afghans, having suffered significant losses, retreated from the citadel. In their rear appeared a detachment of the decisive English Major General C. Gough, who broke through to Sherpur from the direction of Jalalabad. As a result, Roberts reoccupied Kabul, but victory was far off, which was also understood in London.
Above I mentioned the effectiveness of Kutuzov's strategy in relation to Afghanistan. It bore fruit: cutting one of the two communication lines - from Quetta to Kandahar, the actual blockade of the main forces of the colonialists in Sherpur, their inability to interrupt the Afghans' connection with Russian Turkestan and to bring the western part of the emirate under control.
But the Afghans themselves made a significant miscalculation, wasting their forces in fruitless attacks on Sherpur and, in fact, depriving themselves of the opportunity to achieve strategic success, since the blockade could have forced Roberts, like Napoleon in Moscow, to begin a retreat.
At the same time, the international situation was favorable to the Afghans: in addition to the stalling in the emirate, the British got involved in a war with the Zulus, also underestimating the enemy, for which they paid in January 1878 with the defeat at Isandlwana, which in the advent of the telegraph quickly became known to the public outside the United Kingdom.
As a result, the Conservatives lost the election to the Liberals, and W. Gladstone returned to power. By that time, the war was devouring the English budget, Lytton was replaced by the Marquis of D. Ripon.
Abdur-Rahman as a factor of compromise
Salvation for the British came from Samarkand in the person of Sher Ali Khan's nephew, Abdur Rahman, who lived there. He had unwittingly become the object of a new Russian-English game, since he was considered by Petersburg - and even more so by Tashkent - as a candidate for the Afghan throne.
London, in turn, at one time planned to completely break up the emirate, using the traditionally conflictual relations within the Afghan elites, but this idea, if one thinks from the point of view of political cynicism, is to some extent reasonable, but it also had its downsides: warlike and uncontrolled tribes could pose a threat to Punjab and prevent the establishment of closer contacts between the British and Iran through Herat.
At the same time, the Governor-General of Turkestan, Engineer-General K. P. Kaufman, initially spoke out against the return of Abdur-Rahman to Afghanistan, counting on a military victory for the Afghans.
But, as in the case of the mission of Lieutenant General N. G. Stoletov – in one of the previous articles we talked about the negotiations of the English envoy O. Loftus with A. M. Gorchakov in St. Petersburg – the British acted through the Russian ambassador in London, Count P. A. Shuvalov.
As a result, Kaufman received instructions to let Abdur-Rahman go home. At the same time, Russia presented the departure of the future emir from Samarkand as an escape, so as not to aggravate relations with England. The latter, having abandoned the idea of breaking up the emirate, in turn also sought to legitimize Abdur-Rahman's power, wishing to avoid the increasingly looming prospect of a sluggish, expensive war with vague prospects for victory.
In this situation, Abdur Rahman became a compromise figure for everyone. After negotiations in June 1880, the British recognized him as emir, but on their own terms, which became their partial diplomatic victory: the Khyber Pass remained in British hands.
However, this was met with resistance from Yaqub Khan's brother, Ayub Khan, who ruled Herat and also claimed the throne. He managed to defeat the colonialists at Maywand, not far from Kandahar.
The resounding victory, although not as much as at Isandlwana, did not develop into a strategic success: General Roberts' troops, who had left Kabul as part of the agreement reached with Abdur Rahman, were quickly deployed against Ayub Khan, enjoying the logistical support of the emir. The latter, with the help of British guns, hoped to neutralize the emerging prospect of civil war.
Roberts defeated Ayub Khan at Kandahar, effectively ending the Second Anglo-Afghan War. British prestige was restored in both Central Asia and Africa, where the Zulus were ultimately defeated at the Battle of Ulundi in July 1879.
However, the offensive policy declared by Disraeli came to naught, the British Empire, approaching the 20th century, was approaching its decline, and the Russian Empire, without knowing it, was on the brink of destruction.
As for Abdur Rahman, he managed to strengthen the emirate and overcome internal turmoil. The emir died in 1901, and eight years later Muhammad Daud was born, who could have become the second Ataturk. But that is another story, which will be discussed later.
Использованная литература:
Khalfin N.A. The Failure of British Aggression in Afghanistan (1959th Century - Early XNUMXth Century). Moscow: Publishing House of Social and Economic Literature, XNUMX.
Hopkirk P. The Great Game Against Russia. Asian Syndrome. Moscow, AST, 2023.
Steinberg E. L. History of British aggression in the Middle East. - M., Voenizdat, 1951.
Fetisov V. Organizers of Turkestan. Turkestan Governors-General. Moscow, 2021.
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