Abstract
The attention of NATO and Pakistani strategists has been occupied by the North-West Frontier region for the last decade. Despite this fact, a situation mirroring that faced by Victorian and Edwardian military planners, coverage of the area by Anglophone historians has been sparse at best, with some notable exceptions, such as the work by Moreman or Tripodi. This excellent work by Christopher Wyatt goes some way to redressing the balance and makes an important contribution to two crucial debates. Firstly, it aims to demonstrate the central importance of Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier to British imperial defence planning and diplomacy before 1914. The work outlines the various methods undertaken to understand and improve the British position, and how the volatile nature of Afghanistan and the frontier regularly undermined any attempts at careful planning. Secondly, it makes an effort to elucidate the lessons that modern strategists can learn from the long experience of the British on the frontier.
Wyatt’s work is exceptionally detailed, and has been thoroughly researched, as is evident in the extensive bibliography and references. Several useful appendices are provided for reference, giving the text of all the relevant treaties and a list of dramatis personae, which is particularly helpful for those unfamiliar with the less well-known Afghan officials. The brief outline of Afghan politics, explaining how the different pressures operating upon the Amir influenced his policies, is a welcome inclusion, as many of the older works on the subject focus mainly on Britain and Russia. The influence of Afghan events on the Amir’s responses to British overtures is a recurring theme in the work. Several key themes for the study of Britain’s relationship with Afghanistan are identified by Wyatt in the introductory chapter: the importance of geography, given the difficult fighting environment Afghanistan would offer for any army; the centrality of logistics in military planning; and the need to understand the sociocultural factors that motivated Afghan resistance. These issues were all routinely dismissed by British planners and statesmen, and Wyatt argues that ‘the overarching factor governing the British relationship with Afghanistan was ignorance’ and that ‘the reality of dealing with that country failed to penetrate into policy’ (p. 21).
Wyatt outlines the process that led to the improvement of British relations with Russia with the signing of the convention in August 1907. Issues that threatened to complicate relations with both Afghanistan and Russia led to in-depth British consideration of how they would respond to a Russian invasion. The realization that the military problems likely to be encountered in any major war fought in Afghanistan were insurmountable drove efforts to reach a diplomatic solution. Wyatt argues that this process was started by British anxiety that Herat could not be defended against Russian aggression, a fear compounded by determined Russian efforts to secure direct relations with the Amir so they could solve problems arising along their mutual border. This situation was only alleviated by the little-known Dobbs’s mission to the region, which the author argues has ‘not been assigned the importance it deserves’ (p. 46). Ostensibly aiming to restore the boundary pillars, Dobbs eventually went to Kabul for discussions with the Amir, thus leading the way for the later, better-known mission by Dane to renew agreements with Habibullah. The outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War combined with the Russian extension of their Central Asian railways (seen by Hardinge as a ‘sword of Damocles’, p. 70) to engender new British fears that an attack against Afghanistan would be launched.
The attention of the newly formed Committee of Imperial Defence was occupied with lengthy debates about the defence of India. Wyatt argues that some tangible decisions were reached, notably on proceeding with Kitchener’s much-needed reforms of the Indian Army to make it capable of holding the strategically vital Kabul–Kandahar line against Russia until British reinforcements arrived. Other issues proved less easy to solve, ranging from how to deal with the potentially hostile and well-armed Pathan tribes that would endanger British lines of communication in the event of war, to the number of troops that Russia could bring to the theatre on its new railways and how many British reinforcements would be needed to counter them, to the never properly addressed question of how to supply the huge numbers of troops planners believed necessary to occupy Kabul. Wyatt argues that it was only the advent of the more Eurocentric Liberal government that ended this deadlock. The Morley Sub-Committee, described as ‘the final arena in which the contending visions for Indian defence met one another face-to face’ (p. 147), accepted that some military preparations were necessary but confirmed that India could only be secured by diplomacy. Wyatt provides a vivid account of these debates and the opposing views of men such as Roberts and Sir George Clarke, who never really accepted that the military understood the scale of the logistical problems they would encounter.
Wyatt briefly discusses the negotiation of the Anglo-Russian Convention, which he describes as the result of weakness on both sides. He follows a traditional line in this respect, arguing that 1907 saw the end of military planning, although he does discuss in some detail the difficulties encountered with the growth of pan-Islamism up to 1914. Some further discussion on the continued belief among senior Indian Army officers that Russia still posed a threat to the Raj, and the British efforts to return their focus to internal defence with the Army in India Committee, would have been useful in this section. Wyatt is critical of those who have fought in Afghanistan more recently for failing to heed the lessons afforded by Britain’s experience, and his conclusions make valuable reading for anyone with an interest in the NATO operation. In Wyatt’s opinion both the Soviets and NATO failed to realize the centrality of logistics, remained overly confident in the superiority afforded by modern technology, and underestimated the resistance they were likely to encounter because they failed to understand its underlying motivations. His final conclusion is one that modern policy-makers should heed: ‘Perhaps the most useful lesson of history regarding Afghanistan is the need to understand the limits of what is known and act on the basis of what we know’ (p. 221).