21. The Disastrous British Evacuation of Kabul
Messy as the recent US withdrawal from Afghanistan might have been, it was at least nowhere near as catastrophic as that of the British evacuation of Kabul nearly two centuries ago. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, the British and Russians jockeyed for influence in Central Asia in a contest that came to be known as “The Great Game”. A game that often turned deadly, driven in large part by the Russians’ quest to expand into the region in pursuit of their version of “Manifest Destiny“.
That alarmed the British, who suspected that the Russians coveted India, the “Jewel of the British Crown” and Britain’s most vital colony. So they sought to keep the Tsarist borders as far away as possible from India. Things came to a head in the 1830s, when an Afghan ruler became too friendly with Russia for Britain’s tastes. The result was the First Anglo-Afghan War, in which the British invaded Afghanistan in 1839. It began well for the invaders, but in hindsight, as seen below, it was a blunder that ended disastrously.