Before The Kabul Retreat

Described as the ‘Graveyard of Empires’, Afghanistan was always termed to be at peace when it was at war. But the land-locked desert country that was always in turmoil and one of the worst targets of the Great Game suffered immensely throughout, especially in the last 40 years, Masood Hussain writes

- Masood Hussain

Before the American troops and their NATO allies landed in Afghanistan, days after the 9/11 twin tower attack in 2001, Afghans’ respected Americans. They had helped them fight the Soviet occupation through Pakistan and literally undo the USSR. The Kabul-Washington relation had evolved over the decades if not centuries.

INDIVIDUAL CONTACTS

There might have been a lot of contacts between the two cultures separate by faith and high seas but the first recorded one was somewhere in the 1830s when Josiah Harlan, an American adventurer and a Pennsylvania political activist sailed to India with the wildest imagination of becoming the King of Afghanistan.

Soon after his arrival, the situation in the region evolved so fast that becoming a king of Afghanistan seemed not a tall order. There were two claimants to the Durrani throne - Shuja Shah Durrani and Dost Mohammad Khan. This led to the first war between British India and Afghanistan, known as the First Anglo-Afghan War (1838–1842). The war, however, was not an ordinary one. From around 16500 invading the British army only one returned home alive – Dr William Brydon.

Before the war, Harlarn had worked for both the claimants and is credited for fighting many battles for Dost Mohammad till he became the Prince of Ghor. Harlarn is the one around whom Rudyard Kipling’s short story, the man who would be king was written. In 2002, Ben Macintyre, an editor at The Times London authored an extensive book The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan. This marked the beginning of contact between the two nations.