Episode 1 Afghanistan: The Great Game - A Personal View by Rory Stewart


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Afghanistan - one of the most isolated,

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barren landscapes on Earth.

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It's difficult to believe that any empire would want to invade it,

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and yet it's become the unlikely target,

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and obsession of some of the world's greatest empires and superpowers.

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In 1839, up these city walls above Kabul,

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marched red-coated veterans of Waterloo.

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In 1879, Highlanders charged to the sound of the bagpipes.

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In 1979, Russian special forces

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swooped over these hills in their helicopters.

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And in 2001, an American-led coalition invaded Afghanistan.

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Each of these invasions has ended in tragedy and humiliation,

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and each has sparked a fierce Afghan resistance.

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We have never, ever liked to be conquered.

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It's really easy to get into Afghanistan.

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It's just the getting-out part that is very difficult.

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Don't go into Afghanistan and get, whatever you do,

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involved in a tribal war.

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HE CHANTS

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Starting with the British invasions of the 19th century,

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how has this history forged the Afghanistan of today?

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And what is it about this place

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and the paranoia and aggression of empires

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that has created repeated tragedy?

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In these two films, I want to explore what dragged

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these great nations into Afghanistan,

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and why they found it so difficult to leave.

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To sense some of the complexity of the Afghanistan that Victorian Britain chose to invade,

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you don't even need to leave contemporary London.

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I've come to Ealing for an evening of Afghan food, music and traditional costume

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with a group of Afghans now resident here in west London.

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HE GREETS THEM IN THEIR LANGUAGE

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'In this room, a dizzying array of ethnic groups,

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'Pashtun, Tajik, Hazara,

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'Turkmen, Nuristani, all Afghans,

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'and all holding different religious and political views.'

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The divisions and consequences of war have led to more than

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five million Afghans fleeing their country since the 1980s.

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Do you think, for example, Britain should remain in Helmand?

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Until they will have the infrastructure in the proper way,

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I think they should remain.

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-You don't think the British should remain in Helmand?

-Absolutely not.

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The microcosm of Afghanistan is there in that room,

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and some of these people are now sitting down together round a table,

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and in those histories and the suspicions of who joined the jihad,

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who came from which ethnic group,

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are many of the fissures that continue to haunt Afghanistan today.

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And all this complexity and Afghan history, both ancient and modern,

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so difficult to understand,

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so often overlooked, still matters deeply for all of us today.

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And it continues to preoccupy commentators,

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such as Akbar Ahmed, who I've come to meet here in Washington DC.

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Professor Ahmed, a Pakistani who once worked as an administrator

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on the North-West Frontier with Afghanistan,

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arrived in the States where he now teaches,

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a day before the World Trade Center attack.

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But his direct appeal to the White House for caution fell on deaf ears.

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I think on 9/11 the US administration had no idea about Afghanistan,

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its tribes, its history,

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but it was so motivated, so intensely motivated

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by a sense of anger, a sense of revenge, a sense of honour,

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that, at all costs, it had to rush into Afghanistan.

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I said many, many superpowers have gone charging into Afghanistan.

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Be very careful.

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And that is the big problem, that when you combine arrogance

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with a lack of knowledge of that part of the world,

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you are almost guaranteed to run into trouble.

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I sensed this tension myself when I walked across Afghanistan shortly after 9/11.

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I found a hospitable and attractive country

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but still deeply conservative,

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isolated and difficult for a foreigner to understand.

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It made me reflect on the superpowers who have

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so often invaded the mountains of Afghanistan,

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how often they get caught up in their own strategic games,

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how easily they become out of touch,

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failing to grasp the complexity and resistance of Afghanistan.

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And I felt the same was true for the British in the 19th century.

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When they came, they were focused not on Afghanistan itself, but its neighbours.

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If I were a British Redcoat standing on this wall in 1839,

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I would have been told that the reason I was here was that

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British India lay to the east and Russia lay to the north,

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and Afghanistan was trapped between two expanding empires.

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Afghanistan, a largely barren country, but with a rich Islamic civilisation,

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had long fought and traded with its Muslim and Asian neighbours,

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but it had never encountered

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a non-Muslim power as alien as Britain.

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And yet, in the 1830s,

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Afghanistan was perceived, as it is believed to be today,

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to be an immediate threat to British national security,

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a place for the politicians and generals of empire to fret about.

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For hundreds of years,

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all the conflicts had happened here in Europe

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and suddenly it exploded east.

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Russia raced towards Japan, Britain came into India,

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and as these great empires expanded,

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there was this zone in between,

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almost a blank space on the map with very, very few towns,

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a place of deserts and mountains.

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And although these two empires were still 4,000 miles apart,

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they were certain that they were about to meet.

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They were going meet here, in Afghanistan.

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As Britain and Russia stretched and flexed, Afghanistan,

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one of the most remote and impoverished kingdoms in the world,

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found itself sandwiched between two empires who both claimed,

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at least, to be its friend.

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Britain feared Russia might creep south towards British-ruled India,

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the jewel in the crown of the Empire, and the second centre of British political power.

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But suspicions worked both ways.

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The Russians were equally nervous

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about Britain moving north from its base in India.

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Sensing that these two empires would collide in Afghanistan,

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the British government was hungry for intelligence on this blank space.

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A spy was despatched.

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Alexander Burnes, a man I believe to be one of our greatest ever political officers.

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This is not a man actually in fancy dress.

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He's in disguise.

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One of dozens of British officers who made their reputations

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doing journeys which were almost suicidal.

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Burnes was one of the very first to study Afghanistan for British intelligence.

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His spying mission was both extraordinary and brave.

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In 1831, travelling undercover in disguise,

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he surveyed the route all the way from India through Kabul to Bukhara,

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and produced the first detailed accounts of Afghan politics.

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He set off with no protection into one of the most dangerous

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and unknown parts of Asia,

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a place where his predecessors had been killed,

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where he was having to run the gauntlet of slave traders,

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where he was a Christian moving through some regions which were fanatically Muslim

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and which were famous for killing infidels.

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Trying to rely all the way not on his sword but, as he says in a letter to his mother -

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on his languages, on his charm, on his politeness.

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Along with the suicidal danger of what Burnes did

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was the incredible reward because, when he returned back to London having completed this journey,

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this nearly 12-month journey through largely unknown country,

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he was a massive celebrity.

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He returned 28 years old, had an audience with the king,

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was made a member of the Athenian Club,

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got a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society.

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And the book Burnes wrote, Travels To Bukhara,

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became an overnight bestseller.

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But, although it gave Britain a unique insight into this largely unknown land,

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according to historian William Dalrymple, his visit also terrified the Russians

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and had an unanticipated, counterproductive effect.

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There are British agents in Central Asia long before the Russians

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had taken any interest in cities like Bukhara and Khiva.

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And it's only when Burnes' travel book Journeys Into Bukhara

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is translated into French and becomes widely read in Moscow,

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that the Russians think they should send an agent in

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to make sure the British are not manoeuvring

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and making plots in their backyard.

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Shortly after Burnes was sent back to Kabul in 1836,

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he spotted this Russian agent, Jan Vitkevich,

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and the Russian's arrival terrified the British.

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They became, in turn, very suspicious

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of Russia's ambitions in the country.

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And this mutual paranoia led to more and more

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foreign intelligence operations around Afghanistan,

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with rival officers like Vitkevich and Burnes sending back

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countless reports on each other's activities.

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The Russians called it The Tournament of Shadows.

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The British now remember it, thanks to Rudyard Kipling's later writing,

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as The Great Game.

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One of my favourite books is Kipling's Kim,

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which describes The Great Game through the eyes of this young English boy,

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who's working on the North-West Frontier as a spy.

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It's incredibly dangerous work, his intrigues with the Russians.

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He's a secret agent, he's deniable,

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he's at arm's length from the British government.

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But, of course, this was a game that had two teams and on the other side,

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the Russians, men like Vitkevich, travelling into Kabul,

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developing relationships with the Afghan king,

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returning with his own documents and maps,

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the beginning of a whole tradition,

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whereby whenever the British saw a Russian painter turn up in the city,

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a Russian hunter turn up on the frontier,

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they would immediately assume that this was a double game of espionage.

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It was all these fears and suspicions of empire

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that were to turn Afghanistan into a battleground,

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according to Britain's former ambassador to Moscow,

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historian Sir Rodric Braithwaite.

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They thought that the Russians are getting their agents into Kabul and we must forestall them.

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We've got to do something here, with these Russians allegedly coming over the frontiers.

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The Russians had a mirror image view of us.

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They saw our agents penetrating northern Afghanistan

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into areas of central Asia, which they thought were their interest.

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They believed that these guys would come with propaganda,

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Islamic propaganda, weapons, money, and stir up these places against the Russians,

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so they were as terrified as we were.

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By 1839, the British government was increasingly obsessed with the Russian threat.

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Key advisers, men who'd never set foot in Afghanistan,

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began to claim that Russia might use Afghanistan

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as a stepping stone for the invasion of British India.

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Britain's man on the ground in Afghanistan, Alexander Burnes,

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thought that Afghanistan should be left well alone,

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but a small group of policy-makers in the government of India had very different ideas.

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They ignored Burnes completely.

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In their minds Afghanistan was an empty failed state into which Russia would move.

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The hawks decided the answer was regime change,

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to topple the sitting king of Afghanistan, Dost Mohammad,

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and replace him with their own man.

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British intelligence felt they had the perfect candidate,

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Shah Shuja, a man who'd been living in British India for 30 years,

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urbane and beautifully dressed,

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a man who could be relied upon to do Britain's bidding.

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To justify themselves, they published a document

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claiming that Dost Mohammad, who was trying to keep his distance

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from both Russia and Britain, was in fact disloyal to the British

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and represented an imminent and urgent threat to the British Empire.

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The motives are always very mixed.

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It's both the aggressive, expansive imperial instinct,

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plus the terror that it's going come up against a brick wall or

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somebody's going to come and take it all away from you.

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And the trouble with intervention is that you may

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or may not have identified the right target

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but you then tend to use the wrong means for dealing with it.

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So were the hawks right to fear Russia?

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Here in Moscow, I've come to meet an eminent Russian historian of the period,

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Professor Tatiana Zagarodnikova.

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I wanted to ask her if Russia was really preparing to invade

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Afghanistan as a bridgehead for an attack on India.

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That was a time of colonisation of smaller, weaker states and that was a process all over the world,

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not only in Great Britain and in Russia.

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The same in France,

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the same in other great powers.

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Great Britain at that time considered every step of Russia,

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either in Europe or in Asia,

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and maybe even in Africa, as a Russian step towards India.

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Everything was considered as the Russians' march to India.

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Were the British paranoid?

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Well it was just, to my mind, it was a game,

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kind of making face,

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towards audience, towards public opinion.

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Another thing is that that was a wonderful pretext

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in the parliament to demand more money for military purposes,

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for keeping big armies in India, and so on.

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The hawks were obsessed with putting their man on the throne,

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but their belief in a Russian threat was more faith than reality.

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The dossier was torn to pieces in the British press.

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Everyone from the Duke of Wellington attacked the idea as madness,

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but rather than calling off the mission, these men pushed on

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and, within a few weeks, the Army of the Indus was marching into Afghanistan.

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As we know in our own time, if you create a phantasm,

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a horror figure of your own imaginings,

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that figure can actually come into being.

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You can imagine a threat into life.

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Just like the neo-cons had wanted to topple Saddam Hussein long before 9/11,

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and 9/11 gave the neo-cons the excuse they were looking for.

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In the same way the hawks, the Russophobes,

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in the British establishment in Simla and in Calcutta,

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had been wanting to pre-empt the Russians in central Asia.

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MILITARY DRUM AND PIPE MUSIC PLAYS

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As they wound their way through the narrow passes towards Kabul,

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the British Army were supremely confident.

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They'd never been defeated in central Asia,

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and many in the army were treating it as a game.

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A lot of the young officers were behaving as though they were going on a grand picnic.

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Their generals were enraged.

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These 22-year-olds were travelling with camel trains,

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piled with mess silver, with eau de cologne, with exotic wines.

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The 16th Lancers even managed to bring their own pack of foxhounds towards Afghanistan.

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The Army of the Indus arrived in Kabul in April 1839,

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and as they swaggered into the city

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they had little idea of the horrors ahead.

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The British entered Kabul in squadrons,

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the Royal Horse Artillery in gold,

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the Lancers in scarlet,

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the Dragoons in blue,

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the ostrich feathers on the hats of the envoys,

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with all the glory of a parade, a victory parade.

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But around them in the crowded bazaar - blank faces, hostility, suspicion.

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Britain had taken a decisive step

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and placed an army of occupation in this distant and unlikely land.

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But as the soldiers settled into life in Kabul,

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their need for security made them live in protected compounds,

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separate from the Afghan people,

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and this only encouraged suspicions on both sides.

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The English knew so little about the real life of Kabul.

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If they came down to the city at all,

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they travelled in armed groups,

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seeing hostile Afghan faces, glimpses of tiny windows,

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blank mud walls and they had very, very little idea

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about the rich civilisation behind those doors.

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Largely hidden from and totally misunderstood by most British troops,

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was a culture of extraordinary richness,

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a culture of calligraphy,

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miniature painting and poetry,

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with sophisticated Afghan forms of law, government and patronage.

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The occupation dragged on

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and the British only became more and more entrenched

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and the Afghans began to get anxious.

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The thing that really worried the Afghans was when

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the women began to arrive and European babies were born,

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that the British were here to stay.

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The British, in the towers of their fort,

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and the Afghans gazing back at them from their family compounds,

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began to look at each other with deepening mistrust and incomprehension.

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I've come to a rain-soaked Boston

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to meet a world authority on Afghan anthropology and history,

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Professor Tom Barfield.

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Appropriately, I met him here in the Helmand Restaurant.

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And I wanted ask him about some of the many differences between these cultures.

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If you go to an Afghan feast, people are very religious,

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but they're religious at the end of the meal.

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You thank God for having eaten a wonderful meal.

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As one of my Afghan friends said to me,

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"Why do you Americans pray before the meal?

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"You haven't eaten it. You have no idea whether God deserves

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"the praise or not, or the host."

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But the lesson that I took from him

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is that we foreigners are too keen to praise the fact that

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the feast is here and the Afghans say, "There's one more step.

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"Let's eat the feast and decide whether it deserves it."

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So the Afghans tend to look more at the outcome, than at the intentions.

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'And that logic appears to apply

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'to how Afghans choose the perfect leader.'

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The ideal ruler says to the Afghans that,

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"Without me, these foreigners would invade and occupy our country.

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"Without me and my skill,

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"Afghanistan would not be independent.

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"I am defending a Muslim nation."

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At the same time, he turns to the foreigners and says,

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"Only I can keep control of the Afghans and I can only do that if you send me money and weapons."

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By 1841, Britain's choice of ruler had proved a disaster.

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Once Shah Shuja was on the throne, Afghans quickly saw him as weak,

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as corrupt and, worst of all,

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as a puppet of a foreign non-Muslim government.

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In a courtyard in Kabul, I asked Afghan academic Omar Sharifi

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about how Afghans perceived Shah Shuja.

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If you were an Afghan seeing a red-coated British soldier in the street,

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what would your reaction be?

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Nobody really knew what was happening in Afghanistan.

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Optimistic British officers felt that with a bit more time,

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and a bit more money, they were going to be able to win.

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And, suddenly, when rumours began to spread

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through the tea houses and the bazaars

0:23:260:23:28

that British officers were interfering with Afghan women,

0:23:280:23:31

a match had been lit, which would spark an insurgency.

0:23:310:23:35

Suddenly, up and down the country,

0:23:350:23:37

Afghans began to feel that their culture had been insulted,

0:23:370:23:41

that their king was only a puppet,

0:23:410:23:42

and that they needed to fight for Afghanistan

0:23:420:23:45

and for Islam against a foreign military occupation.

0:23:450:23:49

Dost Mohammad, the emir the British had deposed

0:24:000:24:03

to make way for Shah Shuja, was in exile.

0:24:030:24:06

But he and his family used the presence of non-Muslim occupiers

0:24:060:24:11

to mobilise Afghans by calling for a jihad.

0:24:110:24:15

And for many Afghans, this action was

0:24:150:24:18

the birth of the modern state of Afghanistan,

0:24:180:24:22

the moment around which they united as a nation.

0:24:220:24:25

By November 1841,

0:24:250:24:27

Muslims in Kabul were ready to join this jihad.

0:24:270:24:31

But the British were taken completely by surprise.

0:24:310:24:35

Even Alexander Burnes, our envoy so prized for his local knowledge,

0:24:350:24:39

completely underestimated how dangerous the situation had become.

0:24:390:24:44

Alexander Burnes loved Kabul and Afghan culture.

0:24:450:24:48

He was used to walking through the streets as though he was at home in Scotland.

0:24:480:24:52

If you'd asked him, he would have said he could have trusted Afghans with his life.

0:24:520:24:57

But on that night in November 1841,

0:24:570:25:01

he walked home to a city that had changed.

0:25:010:25:04

He looked into eyes that no longer greeted him

0:25:040:25:08

and, as he made his way back through the narrow streets towards his house,

0:25:080:25:13

he was seeing a hostility that he hadn't sensed before.

0:25:130:25:16

By dusk, an armed mob had surrounded his house.

0:25:180:25:23

In one last attempt, he walked out onto the balcony of his house

0:25:240:25:28

and in his most confident manner, in beautiful Persian,

0:25:280:25:31

appealed to their sense of hospitality, of generosity,

0:25:310:25:35

their treatment of a guest.

0:25:350:25:37

But he got nothing back and, in the end,

0:25:390:25:42

he had to send a desperate message to the British garrison asking for help,

0:25:420:25:48

and, for the first time, retreated back into his house knowing that

0:25:480:25:52

the only thing that stood between him and death were the gates of his house.

0:25:520:25:56

Burnes' home, his paradise where he'd entertained for so long,

0:26:070:26:11

the Kabul that he loved, had become a death trap.

0:26:110:26:15

Burnes' last glimpse of a city that he loved

0:26:200:26:22

and thought the most beautiful in the world was not of gardens,

0:26:220:26:26

not of poetry, but a last desperate sprint across his neighbours' roofs

0:26:260:26:30

hoping that he could find a way out, but the crowd was everywhere.

0:26:300:26:34

He wrapped a turban around his head, dropped down,

0:26:340:26:37

praying he wouldn't be recognised and for a moment he wasn't.

0:26:370:26:40

But then the cry went up - "Sikander Burnes". He was hacked down.

0:26:400:26:44

And the next morning his head was on a pole in the bazaar.

0:26:460:26:50

The day before Burnes' death, the British had been congratulating

0:27:010:27:04

themselves on the peace and tranquillity in Afghanistan.

0:27:040:27:07

The day after, everything had collapsed.

0:27:070:27:10

A British trooper came staggering into the fort

0:27:100:27:14

with five musket wounds in his body, cuts to his head and shoulders,

0:27:140:27:17

stark naked, having just escaped from the Afghan insurgents.

0:27:170:27:21

The food was lost, the ammunition was running down,

0:27:210:27:24

and within three days of Burnes' death,

0:27:240:27:27

the British generals were talking about a treaty of surrender

0:27:270:27:32

and a retreat from Kabul.

0:27:320:27:34

The British Commander, General Elphinstone,

0:27:340:27:37

tried to negotiate with the Afghans.

0:27:370:27:39

The Afghans offered him safe passage,

0:27:390:27:42

provided the British handed over their heavy weapons

0:27:420:27:45

and retreated immediately to India.

0:27:450:27:47

It must have felt like an impossible decision.

0:27:470:27:50

If the garrison tried to stay, they could starve and be wiped out.

0:27:500:27:55

But if they were to retreat,

0:27:550:27:57

could they really trust the assurances of their enemy?

0:27:570:28:01

I faced a similar dilemma on a smaller scale

0:28:010:28:05

when I was a Deputy Governor in the south of Iraq

0:28:050:28:08

after the invasion in 2004.

0:28:080:28:10

Our compound was under siege.

0:28:100:28:12

We were being attacked by Sadarist militia,

0:28:120:28:14

and their commander came to us and said that if we agreed

0:28:140:28:18

to leave our weapons and hand ourselves over to him,

0:28:180:28:21

he would take us safely out of the fort and back.

0:28:210:28:24

At the time I thought it was a trick, a trick to massacre us,

0:28:240:28:28

and I felt, again, the same thing when I read this history.

0:28:280:28:32

In Iraq, we stayed and defended the compound,

0:28:320:28:36

but the British in Kabul, in 1841, were deeply divided.

0:28:360:28:40

Many young officers were determined to fight on,

0:28:410:28:44

but Elphinstone overruled them and ordered a retreat.

0:28:440:28:49

All the troops, their wives and children,

0:28:490:28:52

were forced to leave the relative safety of their compound,

0:28:520:28:55

and to try and reach the British garrison in Jalalabad nine days' march east of Kabul.

0:28:550:29:01

They made painfully slow progress

0:29:030:29:06

and, after two days, this straggling column of soldiers

0:29:060:29:09

and civilians met their fate beneath this mountain.

0:29:090:29:14

This valley is the jaws of hell.

0:29:160:29:19

Into this, in mid-winter,

0:29:190:29:21

the cream of the British army marched

0:29:210:29:24

and they were treated as though they were in a slaughterhouse.

0:29:240:29:29

By the time they reached this valley, Khord Kabul,

0:29:360:29:40

they had spent two nights out in the open, in three-foot snow

0:29:400:29:43

in temperatures of minus 15 without tents,

0:29:430:29:47

waking up to discover frozen corpses around them.

0:29:470:29:50

They staggered into this valley, starving, frozen, with no supplies,

0:29:500:29:57

and 80 miles to go, and it was at that point that the attack began.

0:29:570:30:02

Behind every bolder was an Afghan with a musket taking careful aim,

0:30:170:30:24

able to pick off, individually, 3,000 people and kill them

0:30:240:30:27

as they made their way through the valley.

0:30:270:30:30

And it continued, not just for one or two miles,

0:30:330:30:37

but for five miles of a ravine.

0:30:370:30:40

By the time they reached the end of that valley,

0:30:480:30:51

90% of the British army had been extinguished.

0:30:510:30:55

A handful of soldiers managed to fight their way through,

0:31:080:31:12

but only to meet their fate later.

0:31:120:31:14

What we've got here is the last stand of the 44th Foot at Gandamak.

0:31:140:31:20

50 men make it to the village of Gandamak.

0:31:200:31:23

They stand on this low hill and they have run out of ammunition,

0:31:230:31:26

they're relying only on their bayonets.

0:31:260:31:28

And the picture we see here is half of them are dead

0:31:280:31:31

and the Pathans are about to close in

0:31:310:31:34

and end it with their swords.

0:31:340:31:37

Of the 17,000 men, women and children who'd set out nine days earlier from Kabul,

0:31:370:31:43

only one made it to the British garrison in Jalalabad.

0:31:430:31:47

One man has made it on from there, this Dr Brydon.

0:31:470:31:51

And in this picture, Dr Brydon is sitting on his old nag,

0:31:510:31:54

about to collapse and he is seen limping towards Jalalabad,

0:31:540:31:59

and they assume he's only the first of thousands of troops to make it,

0:31:590:32:03

and the gates are opened and a party sent out.

0:32:030:32:06

And they realise he's the only one.

0:32:060:32:08

And that night the commanding officer orders the bugles to be sounded all night.

0:32:080:32:12

The wind was blowing very strongly that night and,

0:32:150:32:18

rather than billowing out into the plain of Jalalabad,

0:32:180:32:22

it blew back into the town, and he said that the noise of the trumpets

0:32:220:32:28

echoing amid the wail of the wind sounded like an elegy to the dead army.

0:32:280:32:33

The British Empire never had, and never would,

0:32:350:32:38

experience a defeat like it.

0:32:380:32:40

The first Afghan war was a major event for the Afghans.

0:32:400:32:43

We always see it through our perspective as the great imperial disaster,

0:32:430:32:47

but for the Afghans, this was their Trafalgar,

0:32:470:32:50

their Battle of Britain, their Waterloo, all in one.

0:32:500:32:54

They were the only non-colonial power

0:32:540:32:58

to see off a modern westernised army in the 19th century,

0:32:580:33:03

on the sort of magnificent scale that they did,

0:33:030:33:06

and completely destroyed an entire Victorian army at the very peak of Britain's power.

0:33:060:33:12

For Afghans, this had confirmed that they were a warrior nation,

0:33:140:33:18

one even capable of seeing off a great power like Britain,

0:33:180:33:22

but Western historians point to another legacy that resonates today.

0:33:220:33:26

The first time there's really a feeling of jihad inside Afghanistan

0:33:270:33:31

is the first Anglo-Afghan war.

0:33:310:33:33

After that, it never really goes away.

0:33:330:33:36

Beginning with the British invasions,

0:33:360:33:38

Afghans begin to perceive themselves as fighting an outside non-Muslim world.

0:33:380:33:44

Now, they had known this before.

0:33:440:33:46

When they raided India, that was jihad, you know.

0:33:460:33:48

You got to go into infidel lands and take home a lot of good stuff.

0:33:480:33:53

But inside Afghanistan, you couldn't do jihad.

0:33:530:33:56

Now when these foreigners invaded, people would say, "Yes, we're fighting non-Muslims."

0:33:560:34:00

The British government would have liked to cover up

0:34:030:34:06

the extent of this tragedy, but it was not to be.

0:34:060:34:09

Almost every last grisly detail was immortalised

0:34:090:34:13

in the bestselling diaries of Lady Sale,

0:34:130:34:15

wife of one of the senior officers in the Kabul Army.

0:34:150:34:19

She was captured during the retreat and later released,

0:34:190:34:24

and her original diaries and letters are kept here in the British Library.

0:34:240:34:28

I took a look at them with historian Jane Robinson.

0:34:280:34:34

Well, the book ran into several reprints in the first couple of years.

0:34:340:34:38

It sold 7,500 copies, which was huge, and it was serialised in The Times.

0:34:380:34:43

And the response to it was unprecedented, I think,

0:34:430:34:46

because this was the first time that a woman, a British woman,

0:34:460:34:50

had written from the theatre of war.

0:34:500:34:52

Lady Sale's account of the retreat from Kabul was shockingly explicit.

0:34:530:34:59

To see women and children and soldiers and camp followers

0:34:590:35:02

in various states of decomposition,

0:35:020:35:04

and she actually describes it...

0:35:040:35:07

I see here that some of the text has been excised,

0:35:070:35:10

I think as possibly being too strong.

0:35:100:35:12

This was horrific stuff.

0:35:120:35:14

"Subsequently we heard that scarcely any of these poor wretches escaped

0:35:140:35:18

"and that, driven to the extreme of hunger,

0:35:180:35:20

"they'd sustained life by feeding on their dead comrades."

0:35:200:35:25

And she knew that the army was doomed.

0:35:250:35:28

She does say earlier on, "I fear that nobody is going to survive this."

0:35:280:35:33

The newspaper serialisation sparked a macabre fascination

0:35:330:35:38

with the savagery of the Afghans.

0:35:380:35:41

She was a British representative in Kabul.

0:35:410:35:44

She was part of the establishment there, part of the machine.

0:35:440:35:47

And the fact that she had been attacked by the Afghans,

0:35:470:35:51

it meant that the Afghans were particularly dastardly

0:35:510:35:54

because they had attacked what was most, not sacred,

0:35:540:35:57

but almost sacred, about British society abroad.

0:35:570:35:59

But, actually, that's extremely unfair because, in fact,

0:35:590:36:02

the Afghans went out of their way to save all the women and children.

0:36:020:36:05

Yes, but that's not what the audience got from this. Not at all.

0:36:050:36:08

What they saw was the sensation.

0:36:080:36:10

What they was the dead bodies. What they saw was the cannibalism.

0:36:100:36:13

Perhaps to limit the damage to our imperial reputation,

0:36:140:36:18

the British spun this as a story of heroism and bravery.

0:36:180:36:22

The way this was treated when it was published was, indeed, propaganda, I think.

0:36:220:36:27

She was paraded before Queen Victoria.

0:36:270:36:30

There was a city named Sale in Australia. There was a ship named Sale in the Navy.

0:36:300:36:34

And she was promoted as a heroine.

0:36:340:36:36

She was made into a celebrity to try and distract, I think.

0:36:360:36:40

-We're defeated, but we turn out of the defeat the fact that we're really lions.

-Yes, yeah.

0:36:400:36:45

The British Empire had been humiliated.

0:36:500:36:53

And the defeat was seared into our historical memory,

0:36:530:36:56

creating a view of Afghanistan as a graveyard of empire, an unconquerable land.

0:36:560:37:02

But that's only part of the story, because later that year the British sent an army of retribution,

0:37:030:37:09

which sought savage revenge for its losses

0:37:090:37:13

and razed to the ground Kabul's historic bazaar.

0:37:130:37:16

But, having dealt the Afghans a punishing blow,

0:37:160:37:19

instead of occupying the country, they ended the first Anglo-Afghan war with a deal.

0:37:190:37:25

At this point they announce, "Now we're going to withdraw.

0:37:280:37:31

"But now you can see that if we want to come back, we can do it.

0:37:310:37:35

"You guys have not defeated us militarily.

0:37:350:37:37

"Now we need to cut a deal."

0:37:370:37:39

And they take Dost Mohammad, the ruler that they had dispossessed,

0:37:390:37:43

they say, "OK, you can go back again."

0:37:430:37:45

So it's like Dost Mohammad part two,

0:37:450:37:49

but he tells the British, "I understand your needs. You must understand mine,"

0:37:490:37:53

and the two sides come to a modus vivendi.

0:37:530:37:56

So, yes, the Afghans can claim a great victory but, on the other hand, the ruler they've put back in power

0:37:560:38:02

understands what Britain needs to such an extent

0:38:020:38:05

that when the mutiny occurs in India in 1857,

0:38:050:38:08

the so-called Sepoy rebellion,

0:38:080:38:10

and the Afghans are urged to march on Peshawar to ally with the rebels,

0:38:100:38:14

Dost Mohammad says, "No, I've signed an agreement with the British and,

0:38:140:38:17

"besides, I think they'll win."

0:38:170:38:19

The Afghans took enormous pride in their resistance to the British,

0:38:230:38:27

and the political settlement led to

0:38:270:38:29

a period of confidence and relative stability,

0:38:290:38:31

during which time the British and the Afghans treated each other with a wary respect.

0:38:310:38:37

But the rivalry between Russia and Britain only continued to intensify.

0:38:390:38:43

A thousand miles from Afghanistan, in 1854,

0:38:470:38:51

the two powers fought a brutal war in the Crimea.

0:38:510:38:55

And, if anything, the fears of Russian ambition was growing.

0:38:550:39:00

Then, in the late 1870s, Russians again appeared in Kabul.

0:39:000:39:05

A new generation of British hawks decided the only response was again to invade.

0:39:050:39:11

Again, there was a public outcry.

0:39:110:39:14

Again, imperial paranoia triumphed

0:39:140:39:17

and once again a British army, this time 40,000 strong,

0:39:170:39:21

was marching into Afghanistan.

0:39:210:39:24

To prevent Kabul being taken,

0:39:240:39:26

the Afghan emir signed an agreement with the British that a new envoy,

0:39:260:39:30

Sir Louis Cavagnari, another swashbuckling multilingual officer,

0:39:300:39:35

was installed in Kabul.

0:39:350:39:37

Remembering that Burnes had been massacred escaping from his unfortified house in the old city,

0:39:370:39:43

Cavagnari took up residency in this ancient citadel, the Bala Hisar.

0:39:430:39:48

Sir Louis Cavagnari, the new British envoy,

0:39:480:39:51

rode in on his elephant into this citadel with a tiny escort.

0:39:510:39:55

He'd taken three lessons from the death of his predecessor Alexander Burnes.

0:39:550:40:00

Always live within the fortified citadel.

0:40:000:40:03

Don't come in with a large army of occupation,

0:40:030:40:06

and never touch the local women.

0:40:060:40:08

But despite all his care, he was soon hearing rumours that the Afghans wanted to kill him.

0:40:080:40:14

Cavagnari thought he had learned from Burnes that it was

0:40:140:40:18

better to be in the Bala Hisar,

0:40:180:40:20

but this was actually the palace of the Afghan kings,

0:40:200:40:23

and his presence there also caused offence.

0:40:230:40:27

Here I met up with Prince Ali Seraj, a member of the Afghan royal family

0:40:290:40:34

whose palace this was.

0:40:340:40:36

People were not very pleased that a British Ambassador had been put in the Bala Hisar.

0:40:380:40:42

Why were the angry about that?

0:40:420:40:44

Because it reminded them of the first Anglo-Afghan war,

0:40:440:40:46

they forget here comes the British again you know,

0:40:460:40:50

and they're here to occupy Afghanistan once again.

0:40:500:40:53

We have never, ever liked to be conquered.

0:40:530:40:57

We have accepted poverty because we want to be free.

0:40:570:41:01

They don't understand the Afghan psyche.

0:41:010:41:03

They forget that they were in India and they took the East Indian Company,

0:41:030:41:07

you know, were so successful in India, they think,

0:41:070:41:09

"Oh, Afghanistan, rowdy people with baggy pants and turbans," you know,

0:41:090:41:13

we're easy to rule, easy to control,

0:41:130:41:15

but they forgot that Afghanistan is a nation of warriors.

0:41:150:41:19

I couldn't help asking him if we were making the same mistakes today.

0:41:190:41:24

There was an American, I'll not say which organisation, he say,

0:41:240:41:28

"Oh, Prince Ali, I have received a billion dollars from the United States."

0:41:280:41:32

I said, "What are you going to do with this money?

0:41:320:41:34

He said, "Well, we're going to roll into the village and we're going to build things."

0:41:340:41:38

I said, "Sir, if you roll into the village, they'll roll you out."

0:41:380:41:42

I said, "You roll up to the village, then you send an emissary inside the village,

0:41:420:41:46

"talk to the elders. They will do one of two things.

0:41:460:41:49

"Either invite you in or they will send somebody out to meet with you.

0:41:490:41:53

"Then once they invite you in, you sit down and you talk to them,

0:41:530:41:56

"but don't tell them what you're going to do.

0:41:560:41:58

"Ask them what they want.

0:41:580:42:00

"Respect. If you do that, you will have them in your pocket."

0:42:000:42:03

The Afghan king who'd negotiated with the British was seen as weak.

0:42:030:42:08

Ordinary Afghans hated the deal he'd struck with the British

0:42:080:42:12

and they hated the presence of Cavagnari in Kabul.

0:42:120:42:16

Finally, an Afghan regiment mutinied and marched on his residence.

0:42:160:42:20

Cavagnari looked out on the screaming mob,

0:42:200:42:23

knowing the nearest reinforcements were hundreds of miles away.

0:42:230:42:26

He led a suicidal charge,

0:42:260:42:28

was killed, and his mutilated corpse was put on display.

0:42:280:42:33

Mortified by his death and desperate to salvage their credibility,

0:42:340:42:38

Britain launched another invasion into Afghanistan.

0:42:380:42:41

The commander of the lead column, General Roberts, was told

0:42:410:42:45

"Your objective should be to strike terror and to strike it swiftly and deeply."

0:42:450:42:51

Four weeks after the envoy was killed,

0:42:510:42:54

a Highland Regiment had fought its way to the top of that ridgeline

0:42:540:42:59

and the next day General Roberts had seized Kabul.

0:42:590:43:02

He came here to the citadel where he saw the blood-spattered walls

0:43:020:43:06

and the mangled corpse of the envoy and his comrades.

0:43:060:43:10

Enraged, General Roberts set up a gallows on the wall.

0:43:100:43:14

He hanged a hundred Afghans,

0:43:140:43:15

demolished the palaces of the Afghan nobility

0:43:150:43:19

and, at that point, with honour satisfied,

0:43:190:43:22

many suggested he should withdraw.

0:43:220:43:24

But the Afghan king had been deposed, the country was unstable,

0:43:240:43:28

Britain had taken responsibility for Afghanistan and leaving no longer seemed an option.

0:43:280:43:35

While General Roberts sat in Kabul,

0:43:370:43:40

the countryside was now in revolt.

0:43:400:43:43

Suddenly, a jihad had been called against them and when

0:43:430:43:46

they looked out on a winter evening from their small camp in Kabul,

0:43:460:43:51

they could see right along this ridgeline,

0:43:510:43:54

60,000 watch fires burning from Afghans bent on their destruction.

0:43:540:43:59

It must have seemed as though history was repeating itself exactly,

0:44:000:44:05

and the one lesson that Britain should be taking away was never to invade Afghanistan.

0:44:050:44:11

This time, unlike his predecessor,

0:44:110:44:15

General Roberts decided to stay and fight and he was able, just,

0:44:150:44:19

to withstand the siege of his compound in Kabul.

0:44:190:44:23

But in Helmand Province, the Afghans completely defeated and wiped out another British unit,

0:44:230:44:28

this time in the Battle of Maiwand.

0:44:280:44:32

It's one of Afghanistan's most famous victories

0:44:320:44:37

and I met Abbie Aryan, an Afghan living in London,

0:44:370:44:40

at this British memorial to Maiwand.

0:44:400:44:42

History has it that the Afghans won

0:44:420:44:44

because of the rousing battle cry of a young woman called Malalai.

0:44:440:44:48

She's an ordinary Afghan girl.

0:44:500:44:52

As she's standing in the battle, she can see that the Afghans are losing

0:44:520:44:56

and she stood there, took her veil off and said,

0:44:560:44:59

"If you love your country and if you're a real Pashtun,

0:44:590:45:02

"and if you don't want to be ashamed, you have to go and fight the British."

0:45:020:45:06

-Remember when Elizabeth stood in front of Spanish Armada...

-Uh-huh.

0:45:060:45:11

-..gave this speech to the British army?

-Yep.

0:45:110:45:14

To us, that was equivalent to that.

0:45:140:45:16

And by revealing her face, actually, in some ways,

0:45:160:45:18

it's a kind of shame for her and her family, everybody sees her face.

0:45:180:45:22

But she's going to die so it doesn't matter?

0:45:220:45:24

Absolutely. And she, in fact, she dies in the battle as well,

0:45:240:45:28

but the encouragement she gave to the Afghans there was immense.

0:45:280:45:32

Unlike the massacre of the British army in the retreat from Kabul,

0:45:320:45:36

Maiwand was not covered in a serialisation in The Times.

0:45:360:45:39

So although a thousand British soldiers were killed,

0:45:390:45:43

this memorial in Reading is almost all that remains,

0:45:430:45:46

and its meaning is now largely forgotten.

0:45:460:45:49

But ask an Afghan and you get a very different response.

0:45:490:45:52

This battle, like the retreat from Kabul, is still the stuff of legend.

0:45:520:45:58

As an Afghan child, as you learn how to walk,

0:45:580:46:01

-you know about the battles we had with the British.

-Uh-huh.

0:46:010:46:05

It is part of our DNA It's part of our life.

0:46:050:46:08

Maiwand is like a legend in Afghanistan.

0:46:080:46:11

I think, in a way, the British try to justify it, saying,

0:46:110:46:14

"Oh, it was really sunny hot day. We didn't have as much as...

0:46:140:46:18

"Afghans had superior fire power."

0:46:180:46:20

How can Afghan army have a superior fire power than the British?!

0:46:200:46:24

British troops fighting in Helmand today are often warned by local Afghans

0:46:250:46:30

that they will meet the same fate as befell their predecessors in Helmand at Maiwand.

0:46:300:46:36

We say that all doors are always open for invaders.

0:46:360:46:39

Look from Alexander The Great, all the way to the British and today.

0:46:390:46:43

It's really easy to get into Afghanistan.

0:46:430:46:45

It's just the getting-out part that's very difficult.

0:46:450:46:48

We always don't mind foreign invaders getting in there,

0:46:480:46:51

relaxing and feeling comfortable, then we start our fight.

0:46:510:46:55

This is our traditional way of doing things.

0:46:550:46:57

What do you think an Afghan villager feels they're fighting for?

0:46:570:47:00

For their home and country. For their independence.

0:47:000:47:04

They don't like foreign invading army to come through their villages.

0:47:040:47:08

To do it with your mighty force and say,

0:47:080:47:11

"Look, I'm here, I'm going to provide you peace and security."

0:47:110:47:14

This is a joke, honestly is, because nobody believe that.

0:47:140:47:17

Afghans wouldn't accept that - as how can somebody bring peace with a gun and weapons?

0:47:170:47:22

You can't do that.

0:47:220:47:23

A thousand British soldiers had been massacred at the Battle of Maiwand,

0:47:260:47:31

the war was turning against Britain,

0:47:310:47:33

but the response this time was immediate.

0:47:330:47:36

There followed one of the most celebrated marches of the entire Victorian era,

0:47:360:47:42

General Roberts, with an elite band of Ghurkhas and Highlanders,

0:47:420:47:45

set off from Kabul, through unknown territory with no support.

0:47:450:47:50

320 miles, in 20 days,

0:47:500:47:55

in 100-degree heat, arrived safe at Kandahar,

0:47:550:47:59

and won a decisive victory that brought the second Anglo-Afghan war to a close.

0:47:590:48:06

Having won a victory, the question was, what would Britain do next?

0:48:100:48:14

All the fears, all the pride that had dragged them into Afghanistan was still there.

0:48:140:48:19

They'd spent blood and treasure.

0:48:190:48:21

There were so many reasons to try to continue an occupation

0:48:210:48:26

and yet they decided to declare a victory and get out.

0:48:260:48:31

And this is because, despite all these fears,

0:48:310:48:34

the British Empire had a lot of people who knew the region well,

0:48:340:48:38

who spoke the languages well, who understood their limits,

0:48:380:48:42

who understood that it couldn't be done.

0:48:420:48:45

And nobody summed it up better than General Roberts himself.

0:48:450:48:49

He said, "We have nothing to fear from Afghanistan

0:48:500:48:54

"and, offensive though it may be to our pride, the less they see of us,

0:48:540:48:59

"the less they will dislike us."

0:48:590:49:02

After decades of battling Russian influence in Afghanistan,

0:49:120:49:15

the British Empire, at the peak of its power,

0:49:150:49:19

bowed to Afghan realities and struck a deal with their opponent.

0:49:190:49:24

Just as in 1842, Britain again allowed the most powerful

0:49:240:49:28

Afghan leader to take the throne, even though he was their enemy.

0:49:280:49:33

Abdur Rahman was an ally of the Russians

0:49:330:49:36

and had been living on Russian soil,

0:49:360:49:38

but he was the only man who seemed to have the support and authority to control the country.

0:49:380:49:44

It's as though after ten years of fighting the Taliban today,

0:49:440:49:48

the United States and their allies left Afghanistan

0:49:480:49:51

and put the Taliban back in charge.

0:49:510:49:53

This extraordinary gamble paid off.

0:49:550:49:58

For his part, the new king, Abdur Rahman,

0:49:580:50:01

demanded a massive subsidy and no internal interference in his country.

0:50:010:50:05

In return, Britain got control of Afghan foreign policy

0:50:050:50:08

and, most importantly, Abdur Rahman did not allow the Russians to threaten British India.

0:50:080:50:14

For Britain, it was a perfect solution.

0:50:140:50:17

And even when Europe descended into the First World War,

0:50:240:50:27

Afghanistan remained neutral.

0:50:270:50:29

But this would change in the aftermath of that Great War,

0:50:310:50:34

as the great powers of Europe met here in Versailles.

0:50:340:50:38

Here, empires were broken up, new nation states were created,

0:50:400:50:44

and Afghanistan, although excluded from the negotiating table,

0:50:440:50:48

had its own ambitions.

0:50:480:50:50

For the first time, Afghanistan,

0:50:540:50:55

so often on the receiving end of British firepower,

0:50:550:50:58

itself became the principle aggressor.

0:50:580:51:01

The new king of Afghanistan saw Britain exhausted by war,

0:51:020:51:06

facing unrest in India.

0:51:060:51:09

He called another jihad, took his chance

0:51:090:51:11

and invaded British India through the Khyber Pass.

0:51:110:51:14

Although Britain saw off this unexpected aggression,

0:51:170:51:20

they suffered twice as many casualties as the Afghans.

0:51:200:51:23

But with Russia no longer the threat of old,

0:51:240:51:27

Britain saw less need for an interest in Afghanistan and granted the Afghans full independence.

0:51:270:51:33

But what Afghanistan did with that independence was the opposite

0:51:360:51:40

of what the British expected.

0:51:400:51:42

The new king, Amanullah, revealed himself to be a moderniser.

0:51:450:51:50

The British policy was really to keep Afghanistan locked in the Middle Ages.

0:51:500:51:56

The last thing they wanted was Afghanistan to change

0:51:560:51:59

and modernise and then, suddenly, in 1919, modernity came.

0:51:590:52:05

British ideas came to Afghanistan against Britain's will,

0:52:050:52:09

and this great process of modernisation came not through the empire,

0:52:090:52:15

came not through British bayonets, but through an Afghan king.

0:52:150:52:20

King Amanullah ruled from this extravagant palace in a European style,

0:52:200:52:25

which he built on the outskirts of Kabul,

0:52:250:52:28

and he championed a new modernising intellectual elite in Afghanistan.

0:52:280:52:33

But the country that he was determined to transform

0:52:330:52:36

had changed little in the century that had passed

0:52:360:52:39

since Britain first took an interest here.

0:52:390:52:41

It was a country with almost blanket illiteracy,

0:52:410:52:44

a fragmented country of isolated villages

0:52:440:52:47

and mountain valleys under feudal rule,

0:52:470:52:50

the way Britain had found it and left it.

0:52:500:52:53

Dreaming of modernity, in 1927,

0:52:580:53:00

Amanullah embarks on a grand European tour,

0:53:000:53:03

the first such trip by an Afghan ruler.

0:53:030:53:06

The Afghan king arrived in Britain for a full state visit.

0:53:110:53:15

The flags were out and a slightly anxious British government

0:53:150:53:18

responded in time-honoured fashion by taking him to shop for guns and for cars,

0:53:180:53:25

which his impoverished country could hardly afford.

0:53:250:53:29

And when he toured the Rolls Royce factory,

0:53:350:53:38

he bought a fleet of cars to take back home.

0:53:380:53:42

It started a long love affair between Afghan royalty and Rolls Royce.

0:53:420:53:46

And this car was later part of their fleet,

0:53:460:53:49

now owned by businessman Richard Raynsford.

0:53:490:53:53

For an Afghan, possessing this car shows that you are part of an international group.

0:53:530:53:57

You're no longer part of an isolated country at the other end of the world.

0:53:570:54:00

Well, that's right. He was a very sophisticated man.

0:54:000:54:03

When he went to Europe in 1928,

0:54:030:54:05

he was not just looking for Rolls Royce cars,

0:54:050:54:08

he was looking, really, to...means to be inspired by the west

0:54:080:54:12

to how he could modernise his very backward country.

0:54:120:54:15

And, therefore, the Rolls Royce trip to the Derby works

0:54:150:54:18

was part of that overall quest for inspiration and for modernisation.

0:54:180:54:23

A car like this at the time was a pretty expensive thing.

0:54:280:54:32

It would cost as much as a house in Fulham.

0:54:320:54:35

About £1,500 for the chassis

0:54:350:54:36

and another £1,500 pounds, even more, up to 2,000, for the body,

0:54:360:54:40

depending on how exotic a body was ordered by the excited owner.

0:54:400:54:44

What would an Afghan have felt, looking at this kind of car?

0:54:490:54:52

It'd be like looking at something equivalent to the space shuttle,

0:54:520:54:55

I imagine, to an Afghanistan farmer or peasant.

0:54:550:54:57

'I think it's tempting today when we look at a car like this

0:55:010:55:04

'to imagine Amanullah as some sort of corrupt dictator

0:55:040:55:08

'who was spraying money around on Rolls Royces,'

0:55:080:55:12

but in fact, really, this is part of his love of technology or machinery.

0:55:120:55:16

It's as though he's returning to the country with a jet engine or a new computer system.

0:55:160:55:21

He's coming back with whole new interests in railways and printing machines,

0:55:210:55:26

and mining technology and medicine,

0:55:260:55:28

but for the conservatives in Afghanistan, this is all very dangerous and very dubious.

0:55:280:55:34

The big story that's spreading through the streets when he arrives

0:55:340:55:38

is he's bringing back a new machine to turn human corpses into soap.

0:55:380:55:42

Amanullah was just beginning to discover how conservative his country still was.

0:55:420:55:47

Wild rumours were circulating about how he had become a Catholic,

0:55:470:55:51

ate pork, drank alcohol.

0:55:510:55:54

He became perceived as a foreigner in his own land,

0:55:540:55:57

attempting to impose a foreign ideology on his own people.

0:55:570:56:01

It's easy to laugh at Amanullah and, indeed, there's a lot that you can laugh at him for.

0:56:030:56:07

For example, he gathered the tribal elders

0:56:070:56:09

and insisted they wore pinstriped trousers and western jackets,

0:56:090:56:13

but there was also a highly developed serious programme of reform.

0:56:130:56:17

In fact, the most radical programme for state transformation

0:56:170:56:20

in Afghanistan came from an Afghan.

0:56:200:56:23

He wanted parliamentary elections, a progressive constitution,

0:56:230:56:26

education, particularly for women.

0:56:260:56:29

And, in the end, when photographs were circulated in the bazaar

0:56:290:56:33

of his wife, the queen, with her head uncovered,

0:56:330:56:36

with pearls over a plunging neckline, he had to flee,

0:56:360:56:40

the wheels of that new Rolls Royce spinning vainly in the snow, to exile in Italy.

0:56:400:56:48

It is ironic, when, today, we're concerned with the powerful hold of Islam

0:56:520:56:56

and the problems of establishing democracy in that country,

0:56:560:56:59

that the only attempt in this whole period to modernise and democratise Afghanistan

0:56:590:57:05

didn't come from British rule, but from the Afghans themselves.

0:57:050:57:09

So why did the British go into Afghanistan in the 19th century?

0:57:130:57:17

It wasn't really about Afghanistan in the end.

0:57:170:57:20

It was about the fears of empire, fear of empty space,

0:57:200:57:23

fear of the Russians, fear in the end about their own credibility, their pride.

0:57:230:57:28

In the second film, two superpowers come calling,

0:57:310:57:34

and these armies invade Afghanistan,

0:57:340:57:36

not just to protect their selfish strategic aims,

0:57:360:57:40

but also with the objective of bringing profound social change,

0:57:400:57:44

and reshaping Afghanistan more in their own image.

0:57:440:57:48

And the result for the people of Afghanistan,

0:57:480:57:51

and their invaders, was to be even greater horror and tragedy.

0:57:510:57:56

If you were going to pass a message to the American

0:57:560:58:00

and British troops today, what would you say to them?

0:58:000:58:03

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0:58:370:58:40

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