Return of a King

The writer compares the events taking place during the British escapades in the First Afghan War of 1839-1842 with those taking place in the present Afghan Wars and discovers amazing similarities and much more….  
Sal Imam finds it ‘compulsive reading’ and chooses to review it.

This is a book about Human Folly writ large. In it, William Dalrymple, our most perceptive chronicler of British Indian history, turns his attention to the scarcely believable story of the so-called First Afghan War of 1839-1842. In the course of this campaign the Colonial authority—a curious amalgam of state and commercial interests represented by the Governor General appointed by the East India Company, Lord Auckland— attempted to impose its will on as wild and unruly a region as has ever existed on earth, the territory known today as Afghanistan or Khorasan in those days. The most large-scale irony, in a tale replete with ironies, was that the East India Company's Afghan objective, which can be best summarized in the telling phrase “regime change”, ended up causing within a few decades the demise of its own regime!  And as Dalrymple points out throughout this account there are amazing similarities and instructive resonances with the sad events that have been taking place in the Afghan Wars of our own times.
Fearing Russian and Persian moves aimed at setting up a stronghold in Afghanistan (which were largely non-existent in reality) the British Colonial administration in India decided to carry out its own pre-emptive capture of this strategic buffer zone. The then ruler, Dost Mohammad, a member of the leading Barakzai tribe, was considered by Lord Auckland and his senior staff to be unreliable and liable to succumb to Russian wiles. Therefore it was proposed that a King who had been deposed earlier, Shah Shuja, member of the other leading tribe the Sadozais, be restored to the Afghan throne—it being understood by the British that he would be allowed to be little more than a puppet. Thus it was that in 1839 a large East India Company army of 20,000 men, of whom 1000 were European officers and higher staff, accompanied by 30,000 camp followers and large numbers of camels and baggage animals, set off to invade Afghanistan and implement this change of rulers.  
The book is the story of this dismal adventure but it happens to be also a most dramatic tale, full of incredible reversals of fortune, of acts of derring-do which outweigh anything thought up by Kipling or performed by Flashman, of treachery and intrigue at every turn, of larger than life characters and incidents. Among the latter, and just choosing at random, there is the titbit of what happened because of the “jeweled band which fastened the trousers of the wife of the Governor.” Or later, when Mackenzie and Lawrence, two British officers were being abducted: “both men 'were surrounded by a circle of Ghilzai with drawn swords and cocked jezails, and the cries of “Kill the Kaffir” became more vehement'”. However the man who was their captor, Akbar Khan “protected them. He drew his sword 'and laid about himself right manfully', as Mackenzie gratefully noted. 'Pride, however, overcame his sense of courtesy when he thought I was safe; for he then turned around to me, and repeatedly said, in a tone of triumphant derision: “Shuma mulk-i-ma me-girid!—You'll seize my country, will you?'” A typical example of how extremely contradictory emotions permanently roil the Afghan breast! Almost every page of the book has some carefully chosen, highly revealing, usually exotic, fragment of history for us to wonder at.  
This is why it follows that there can be no better person to make us live through this thoroughly Orientalist labyrinth than William Dalrymple, who has always had an affectionate taste for the foibles of the East and understands well how contagious they can be to English men and women. We are also strongly affected by the tone of his writing: non-condemnatory yet clear-eyed, sorrowful yet leavened with wit. The reader, despite being caught up in the terrific roar of the events being described, is always left quietly reflecting on what it all means.
And reflection is highly necessary because the main outcome of the whole enterprise was widespread death and destruction. Thousands upon thousands of human bodies, both British and Afghan, are left sprawling all over the landscape as twisted agonized cadavers. Urban areas, from ancient buildings to stately gardens, end up destroyed, pillaged and often burnt to ashes. As if symbolic of the human weaknesses on display we have, winking through this phase of history in Dalrymple's expert hands, none other than the glittering snake's eye of the most famous diamond of all time, the Koh-i-Noor!
The basic reality which caused this disaster was that it was all too easy to conceive of the invasion of Afghanistan but impossible for the outlandish foreigners to hold on to it.  The East India Company army battled its way through the barren terrain of the country suffering hideous losses along the way but did reach Kabul in triumph eight months later, in late 1839. However,  once the new ruler Shah Shuja had been installed as planned and the celebrations concluded, it took less than two years for the invaders to become objects of general revulsion, both for the immoderation of their ways as well as for the unforgivable crime of cutting off or reducing subsidies to various Afghan chiefs. It is actually striking how successful a role money played in bribing and suborning Afghan leaders during the entire campaign, yet another parallel with modern times.
In any case the ineptness of the East India Company's political and military leaders at all levels set the stage for a violent revolt which broke out towards the end of 1841. This led in turn to the British decision to try and escape from Kabul just as winter broke out, with harrowing consequences as their troops and camp followers were cut down pitilessly by Afghan fighters in the mountain passes almost to the last man. This was followed in the course of 1842 by another British invasion for the explicit purpose of taking revenge which itself then concluded with a denouement which had the effect of completely undoing everything that had gone before! This grim story has been told before but never with the colourful detail and deep understanding which Dalrymple brings to it.
The author is able to provide such a unique rounded picture because he has made extensive use of Afghan sources, often in the form of epic poems written in the local languages or Persian, which have been translated into light lilting English (it is not clear who did the translations; if these are also Dalrymple's handiwork then we are doubly well served). These not only provide a different perspective from the usual accounts by British survivors but also add factual details which were not known before. The book is also magnificently illustrated helping one to imagine its action visually, at least until the movie which is crying out to be made about it is somehow achieved!
Alternating drama and tragedy, philosophy and humour, Eastern intimations and Western deliberations, Return of a King is truly compulsive reading.

Sal Imam is an aspiring author.