This thread begins with a quintessential imperialist regime change operation. In 1839. Yes, the same year Britain was committing the atrocities of the Opium War in China, it also invaded Afghanistan.
(Opium War history is covered in the podcast here: )
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OK a massive thread with some stuff about Afghanistan and imperialism that you may not have heard despite all that you have heard. It's going to be long, I'll just say that in advance.
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The regime change operation in Afghanistan in 1839 was written up nicely in the Afghan patriot Farukh Husain's book, Afghanistan in the Age of Empires.
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Basically it went like this: the British brought their own candidate, Shah Shuja, to take over the throne in Kabul. They invaded from India and used mostly Indian troops (who were given lower rations and treated according to strict racist hierarchy).
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In the process of imposing Shuja they committed rapes, looting, massacres. They kidnapped women including from families of their allies. They blew Afghans out of cannons (a move they made more famous in 1857 India).
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One British agent believed they purposely destroyed the economy of some cities to better exert control: “I heard both the men and the women saying that the English enriched the grain and grass sellers...while they reduced the Chiefs to poverty, and killed the poor by starvation.”
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The British started surveying the country for mineral wealth in this 1839-1843 occupation.
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When the British occupied Kabul, they raised taxes on the locals – unleashing an army of collectors on Afghans, who had to borrow the money to pay the taxes, and then lost their houses and other assets. Standard colonial move.
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But the British lost control of Kabul and were driven into retreat. On the retreat they committed even worse atrocities, including against their Indian troops, and massacre their own camp followers. They do a long march to Jalalabad where many of them die.
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The king they put on the throne, Shah Shuja, was assassinated in 1842.
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Imperialists squeezed a lot of self-victimization propaganda out of this retreat, then and since. It is from this war, in which the British committed horrific atrocities invading and occupying Afghanistan, that the British coined this "Graveyard of Empires" crap.
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And it is crap. The idea, repeated over and over, is to portray those being invaded, occupied, massacred, raped, and stolen from as uniquely savage, frightening, implacable, and deadly. So it's not about the crimes the British committed, but about how scary the victims were.
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Anyway, the British regrouped and created an "Army of Revenge" to get "revenge" against the Afghans for driving them out (even though they were the massacring, raping, looting invaders).
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The British destroy Ghazni. One writer says: “The British army left Ghazni as a heap of ruins as the sun set on the city of the Shah of Shahs, Ghazni was lost in the darkness of the night to be forgotten by history.”
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British destroy: "Our way of destroying the country is very simple, merely cutting a ring through the bark of every tree. This ruins the country completely as the trees die directly and the inhabitants live principally on dried fruit and flour made from the dried mulberry.”
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The destruction is the point: “‘every house was destroyed, every tree barked or cut down; after which the detachment having collected a considerable spoil of bullocks, sheep, and goats, marched back to camp’”
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Neville Chamberlain reports of a village where all males over puberty were bayoneted, the women were raped and their goods plundered: “This is one of the most beautiful valleys in Affghanistan, but we left it a scene of desolation”
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Reverend Allen: “One woman was the only live thing in the fort. She was sitting, the picture of despair, with her father, brother, husband and children lying dead around her.”
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The British debate whether to destroy Kabul or not, and also whether or not to kidnap the king’s child and bring him up as a Christian in London (which they did to Prince Duleep Singh after the Anglo-Sikh wars).
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They take Kabul and commit another mass atrocity, rape, murder, indiscriminate killing, enslaving and trading of women, burning of wounded people alive. “Many a hiding mother hen and newborn infant died. But such things like these you know must be at every famous victorie.”
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More on Kabul: “All day the sack went on, and great booty did the captors get, rich dresses, shawls, carpets, silks, horse trappings, arms, emblazoned Korans, etc”
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They leave Jalalabad “a smoking mass of ruins”.
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When the British leave Afghanistan, one officer writes in 1843: “The work of retribution was now deemed accomplished, and, indeed, it was severe...nor will years repair the damage and evils inflicted”.
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Roebuck: “Ghuznee, Cabul, Istalif and Jalalabad have shared a common doom; havoc and desolation have marked the path of our conquered armies, and as fell a revenge has been inflicted on our foes as the warmest advocate of retaliation could desire”
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The British then install a 12-year old on the throne in Kabul.
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One British MP says: “We might relinquish all hope of advantages from opening the Indus to our trade; we had destroyed every town which could afford us a market, and centuries would elapse before Affghanistan recovered from the misery and desolation in which it had been plunged.”
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But to others who were concerned about the money it cost to destroy Afghanistan in 1843, they were assured - with the opium war won, the increased demand for opium after the Opium War in China would pay for the Afghan war!
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(we cover all this in Civilizations episode 36a - which uses Farukh Husain's book)
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What was the 1839 British war on Afghanistan about? Basically the British Empire, whose primary goal was squeezing what would eventually be $45 trillion out of India, destroyed Afghanistan to make it a “buffer zone” against any kind of incursion.
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They said they were worried about Russia but that’s nonsense – they were more worried about Iran and other Asian powers allying with those they were still working on completely dispossessing on the subcontinent itself.
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Dispossessing the whole of India was a job they completed in 1857, at the cost of 10 million lives in India (covered in episodes 20a and 20b of Civilizations).
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Once they decided that Afghanistan was a “buffer zone”, they then had to ensure its compliance through more wars. The Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1878-9, another round of atrocities, and Britain imposed a humiliating treaty of Gandamak on Afghanistan.
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