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 Afghanistan Revealed, edited by Caroline Richards and Jules Stewart
Afghanistan Revealed has been years in the making and owes much to writers and historians, such as Victoria Schofield and Ahmed Rashid…
Melissa van der Klugt, The Times, 16 March 2013.
The chapter on Pakistan by Victoria Schofield, among others, gave an authoritative (and very readable) insight into the dynamics of the region - and made it interesting.
Maz C, Customer Review on www.amazon.co.uk
Excerpt:
In ancient times, the north-west frontier of British India and later Pakistan was the eastern frontier of the Persian Empire. In the 6th century BC, Darius the Great of Persia conquered Kabul and Gandhara, as the valley of Peshawar was then known. In the 4th century BC Alexander the Great, son of Philip II of Macedon, defeated the Persians and continued into northern India. Huns, Mongols and Moguls all tried to expand their frontiers and conquer the region but were either pushed back or, as in the case of the Moguls, travelled further east, establishing a seat of authority in the heart of India.
It was not until the 18th century that the land between Persia and India, extending from Herat in the west to the Khyber Pass in the east, became a separate country – Afghanistan – and the idea of a “north-west frontier” of India took shape as a geographical reality. A hallmark of its nascence was its fluidity. Where would this north-west frontier lie and how would it be defined? Would it extend as far as the Hindu Kush mountains or be demarcated by the Indus river in the plains of India? Or, like Afghanistan itself, would it run somewhere in between?
As Britain’s imperial policy alternated between a “forward” offensive strategy and a “closed” defensive one, so the location of a potential north-west frontier shifted. In the early 19th century, the frontier could have followed the Indus river. The rulers of Afghanistan – successors to the country’s founder, Ahmad Shah Abdali – held sway as far as Peshawar and had briefly controlled the famed and beautiful valley of Kashmir.
When Mountstuart Elphinstone visited the ruler of Afghanistan, Shah Shuja, in 1809 – later writing his renowned Account of the Kingdom of Caubul – he met the Afghan ruler not in Kabul but at his winter capital, Peshawar. Soon afterwards, the rising power of the Sikhs in the Punjab under their charismatic leader, Ranjit Singh, pushed the Afghans back towards Central Asia.
Eager to prevent Tsarist Russia from gaining influence in the region, in 1839 the British briefly extended their imperial control to Kabul, unseating the ruler, Emir Dost Mohammad Khan, and reinstating his cousin to the throne, Shah Shuja, who had been deposed by another cousin in an earlier power struggle.
The British did not remain long, their occupation ending disastrously with the retreat and deaths of almost all the Army of the Indus, nearly 4,000 Europeans and Indians with 12,000 camp followers. Tradition holds that only Dr Brydon survived the humiliating withdrawal. Others, including the redoubtable Lady Sale, who were held as hostages, were later released. Henceforward, Afghanistan would be left as a buffer, while attention was focused on maintaining control of the points of entry further to the east at the Khyber, Kohat and Bolan passes.
Ch.4: Pakistan’s “Badlands”: Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa – the North-West Frontier, p. 59.
Links
http://afghanappealfund.org.uk/product/afghanistan-revealed/ - buy online via the Afghan Appeal Fund web site
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