The British occupied Kabul and blew up the great covered bazaar of the city, and the British soldiery plundered and set fire to many parts of the city. It was clear, however, that Afghanistan could not easily be held by the British without continuous fighting. So they retired.
Nearly forty years later, in 1878, the British in India were again unnerved by the Amir, or ruler, of Afghanistan becoming friendly with Russia.* To a large extent history repeated itself. There was another war, and the British invaded the country and seemed to have won, when the British envoy and party were massacred by the Afghans* and a British army defeated.* The British took some measures of retribution and again withdrew from the hornets’ nest. For many years afterwards the position of Afghanistan was peculiar. The British would not allow the Amir to have any direct relations with other foreign countries, and at the same time they gave him annually a large sum of money. Thirteen years ago, in 1919, there was a third Afghan War which resulted in Afghanistan becoming fully independent.*
* Following the Afghan civil war of 1863-6, Sher Ali took control in Kabul. He allied first with Britain, but then in 1876 he welcomed an envoy from Russian Emperor Alexander II at the same time as he rebuffed an envoy from Queen Victoria. The was enough to anger and frighten the Foreign Office. As it happens, London and St Petersburg quickly smoothed over their differences but the Afghans were not appeased and the Second Afghan War broke out in 1878. Sher Ali fled and his son Mohammad Yaqub Khan signed the Treaty of Gandamak May 26th, 1879, ceding land and sovereignty in foreign affairs to the British.
* Sir Pierre Cavagnari, a flamboyant and unpredictable Irish-Italian aristocrat who was the British Resident in Kabul, was murdered along with his escort on September 3rd, 1879.
* The rebel forces then moved towards Kabul, and some 10,000 of them inflicted a heavy defeat on a British relief force numbering around 170 men before laying siege to the Sherpur Cantonment. The Cantonment was relieved by Brigadier General Charles Gough on December 23rd, defeating a much larger Afghan army.
* The disquiet over the Treaty of Gandamak prompted Yaqub’s half-brother Ayub Khan, governor of Herat, to lead a rebellion, and Yaqub stepped down as Emir that October. Ayub Khan renewed the revolt and defeated a British detachment at the Battle of Maiwand on July 27th, 1880, and went on to lay siege to Kandahar. Major General Sir Frederick Roberts lifted the siege and put an end to Ayub Khan’s uprising on September 1st, 1880. His cousin Abdur Rahman Khan was awarded the title of Emir of Afghanistan.
* The Third Anglo-Afghan War ended with the Treaty of Rawalpindi, signed on August 8th, 1919. The Afghans regained their sovereignty, while the British gained confirmation of India’s border with Afghanistan.