Counter-Insurgency and Empire: The British Experience with Afghanistan and the North-West Frontier, 1838-1947.

Afghanistan and Counter-Insurgency This paper assesses the British experience with counter-insurgency in Afghanistan, from the perspective of strategy over the long term. The question, how did Britain handle counterinsurgency in Afghanistan?, sounds simple. Actually, it is problematic. Britain rarely conducted anything like counter-insurgency in the modern territories of Afghanistan. It did so constantly in nearby locales, including some once regarded as part of Afghanistan, the modern Pakistani territories of Baluchistan and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas ( FATA). British officials described these locales through loose terms like the north west frontier, or by the names of specific areas and peoples, such as Waziristan or Afridis. This paper will follow British usage, with a critical edge. To authorities in Britain and Kabul, and to local peoples, these regions were linked. To divide them even purely for conceptual purposes presents difficulties. The borders-a problematic concept-- between Afghanistan, the north west frontier and Punjab, differed significantly in 1790, 1842, 1892, and today. So did politics within Afghanistan and the north west frontier. Neither British governors nor Afghan Emirs really controlled these populations, which often disregarded those rulers and their borders. Western concepts of legitimacy and sovereignty clashed with those held by Pashtuns, and Muslims. Many of these characteristics apply today to Afghanistan and the FATA. Counter-insurgency, moreover, whether gauged by modern definitions or those used by Britain, is a complex matter. Between 1838-1947, British officers did not use that term. They did sometimes refer to guerrillas, whom they purported to despise ( Garnett Wolseley, the best of Victorian generals, described them as brigands & assassins) or to guerrilla wars. 1 Britons did not describe Pashtuns as guerrillas, however, but as irregulars, rightly enough. British officers expressed the sense of counter-insurgency through terms like small wars and imperial policing, one of the few areas where they had anything like a modern concept of doctrine, complete with manuals which distilled experience and guided action. 2 They also linked these matters to issues involving police, politics, and imperial policy. For Britain, counter-insurgency was a tool of empire, one of many means to create a rule that it regarded as good, but which, if pursued today, we would not. British ideas on these issues varied widely by time, and institution. Their understanding and practice of counter-insurgency did not always fit our views. Even when it does, they described matters in different language than we use. These problems are redoubled because of the peculiarities in modern ideas of counterinsurgency. Those ideas emerged as European imperialism eroded, during an age of liberal decolonization, in reaction to Mao zhe-dongs theory of guerrilla warfare. They cannot merely be
1 2

Garnet Wolseley, South African Journal, 1879/80, entry 24.10.1879, WO 147/7. For classic views, cf. Lord Wolseley, The Soldiers Pocket Book for Field Service ( 1869), Charles Calwell, Small Wars, Their Principles and Practice ( 1896) and C.W. Gwynn, Imperial Policing ( London, 1934). The best recent studies of these matters are T.R. Moreman, Small Wars and Imperial Policing: The British Army and the theory and practice of colonial warfare in the British Empire, 1919-1939, The Journal of Strategic Studies, 19/4, Dec, 1996, pp. 105-131, and David French, The British army and the empire, 1856-1956, in Greg Kennedy, (ed), Imperial Defence, The old world order, 1856-1956 ( London, Routledge, 2008), pp. 91-110).

projected backward in time, before these empires existed, when insurgents and counterinsurgents took different forms than they do today. Not all insurgents are guerrillas, forces which refuse to engage conventional forces in battle, but instead endure the occupation of their villages while harassing the occupiers. They may be irregular forces which deliberately avoid a guerrilla strategy, because it exposes their people to attack, but instead stall invaders on their frontiers, through battles where they use conventional weapons unconventionally, creating killing zones through ground and fire. 3 Wars of conquest, and counter-insurgency, are not identical. Counterinsurgents can defeat peoples, only after the latter have been conquered. The term counterinsurgency conflates responses ( perhaps involving different forces and strategies) to two distinct threats, guerrillas and irregulars. Where the modern concept unifies actions involving police, pacification, struggle against guerrillas, and small unit operations, Victorians would have placed these matters in two distinct categories, pacification by police and political officers, and irregular operations by regular soldiers. Modern schools of thought on guerrilla warfare and counter-insurgency, whether Maoist or liberal, also are ideologically loaded, treating peoples not as people but rather conceptual categories. While people are real, the people is an idea. Abstractions do not fight wars. There is no such thing as the people, with just one set of aims or grievances. The theories of Maoists and liberal counter-insurgents work only when people behave as these ideas insist: often, they do not. Both theories assume that all guerrilla wars are won or lost through the application of the same universal principles and techniques. They are wrong: guerrilla wars always must be seen in the particular. These schools imagine that guerrilla wars are easier and simpler, and sometimes nicer, than they really are. Whether a campaign of counter-insurgency against a serious foe ever can be both liberal and effective, however, is dubious. The hearts and minds school of counter-insurgency purports to draw inspiration from British practices after 1945, which actually were rather brutal. 4 Nor do these categories exhaust all of the aims and means of counter-insurgency. The USSR, for example, had a sophisticated and unique model of counter-insurgency. It aimed to turn struggles for national liberation into class wars, by combining ruthless attacks on insurgents and their friends; with efforts to split local societies and bribe support into existence, by redistributing land from richer to poorer peasants; and by using amnesties to control some guerrillas while isolating the intransigent. This approach beat serious guerrillas with strong support in Europe, but failed in Afghanistan between 1979-86. 5 Counter-insurgency may aim not only to stabilize matters but to change them, perhaps fundamentally, even when authorities, as with British ones in Baluchistan, claim merely to be restoring an old order. Intention and effect have paradoxical relations in counter-insurgency a failed campaign may have great, perhaps counter-productive, consequences. Effects flow from whatever any ruler tries to do, actually achieves, or does without trying, and from the resistance it inspires, silent or violent.

3 4

James Belich, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict, ( Auckland, 1980). David French, The British Way in Counter-insurgency, 1945-1967, Oxford University Press, 2011. The classic critique of the liberal theory of counter-insurgency, especially in its American forms, is D. Michael Shafer, Deadly Paradigms, ( Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1988). 5 Alex Statiev, Social conflict and Soviet counterinsurgency in the western borderlands, 1944-50 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2009), especially the comparative analysis of modern counter-insurgencies, pp. 310-38.

These paradoxical and reciprocal relationships were doubly complicated in Afghanistan and on the north west frontier, where politics involved combat, and at the highest level, often meant civil war. No outside power seeking to shape events in this fragmented polity could succeed through normal diplomacy, but only through actions rather like the techniques of counter-insurgency. To help allies or oppose enemies might involve bribery and foment civil war. Equally, in 1893, so to ensure a defensible northern frontier given its inability to control Afghanistan, Britain annexed territory populated by Pashtuns who felt some loyalty to Kabul, and more to kin across the Khyber. Britain had to conduct counter-insurgency on the north west frontier, because it could not do so in Afghanistan. Power and Perception Any assessment of British counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and on the north west frontier must address all of its aims and means, in both areas. Those matters were linked to the greatest strategic competitions which Britain faced, power politics across Eurasia, and rule in India. Only then, a gentlemanly third, came the details of who controlled what, where, and how, in Afghanistan and on the north west frontier. Counter-insurgency was just one means to achieve those last aims. Britons believed that their Raj rested on reputation more than strength. A sense that they did not know what dangers lay beneath their rule caused fear and uncertainty. In 1852, one Viceroy, the chief British official in India, the Marquis of Dalhousie wrote, in India one is always sitting on a barrel of gunpowder, and no one knows how close or where a spark may be concealed. 6 The Indian mutiny sharpened this sense. Britons believed that their rule might be threatened from within, through a popular rising motivated by religion and guided by elites. They thought they had no friends in India, and many sorts of potential enemies. Hindus, the majority of the population, were divided by caste and elites. Muslims, however, members of an Islamic ocean stretching across continents, shared an underlying unity. Calls for jihad, holy war, could shake them as one, whether like a jelly, or a tsunami. Fear of jihad shaped British thinking between 1840 and 1925, but then declined. Thus, in 1875 one senior official, Bartle Frere, held that Indian Wahabis in their madrassa at Patna are held by the learned and orthodox to be dangerous and fanatical heretics, but are dreaded and courted by all classes. They are the natural vent for the undying fanaticism of Islam, requiring at all times to be watched, and in troubled times becoming a political force of much importance. 7 Such concepts were linked to a doctrine taught to all Indian officials and soldiers in the nineteenth century, the idea of an internalexternal threat. That idea assumed that Britain's hold in India was weak, while a small detonator fired beyond the Hindu Kush could spark the explosive in the magazine, the population of India. In 1891, one commander of the Indian Army, Lord Roberts, wrote that any Russian victory over Britain in Afghanistan would trigger an avalanche of enemies, Cossacks joined by almost every Afghan capable of bearing arms and many tribesmen on the northwest frontiers, while Indian soldiers and people of all ethnicities rose against Britain. 8 By this logic, external threat was a
6 7

John Baird, (ed), Private Letters of The Marquis of Dalhousie, ( Shannon, Irish University Press, 1972): p 189. John Martineau, The Life and Correspondence of the Right Hon. Sir Bartle Frere, ( London, John Murray, 1895); pp 131; John Ferris, The Internationalism of Islam: The British Perception of a Muslim Menace, 1840-1951, Intelligence and National Security, XX 8 Memorandum by Roberts, The dangers to which a reverse would expose us, 27.1.91, L/MIL/17/14/80, IORL.

euphemism for an internal one. The Russian menace really was an Indian one. What usually is taken as fear of Russia, was one of Islam. The unity of Islam, the combination of an Amir able to declare jihad, Pashtun tribes under his influence, and fellow Muslims to the south, was the powder trail connecting detonator and magazine. Such ideas are easy to lampoon. In fact, they were neither incomprehensible nor irrational, as shown by analysis of their times, and our dilemma since 2001. The rising of 1857 convinced Britons that peril could rise from the blue. The Raj faced many internal enemies. A sense of fraternity bound Muslims. During 1914-21, Pashtuns on the north west frontier and Indian Muslims responded to calls for jihad and hejira, voluntary emigration from lands ruled by infidels, to those controlled by the faithful. Russia, and other governments, sought to turn Afghanistan on India, and to spark revolts against the Raj. Between 1914-29, several states provoked internal-external attacks on India. The British, however, usually controlled these fears, viewing internal threat as latent rather than large. These concerns damaged but did not wreck British policy although, arguably, after 1919 the focus on jihad and an internal-external threat did lead decision makers to misconstrue the real threat to the Raj, colonial nationalism. 9 From this perspective, the greatest threat to India was internal, then internal-external, and only then, purely external. Afghanistan and the north west frontier were just parts of those problems, generally small ones, though potentially crucial. Britain could suffer losses in these areas without caring, so long as they did not shake its position in India, which essentially meant prestige, whether by reinforcing the lever of jihad or by destabilizing confidence in the subcontinent. Equally, local victory might not solve bigger problems. A chronic but cheap stalemate could be a success, better than a complete but costly effort. Victory in Baluchistan was useful, and preferable to stalemate in Waziristan; but British failure, or success, to the same degree in both areas, mattered little to major games. Had such victories been acquired at great financial and military costs, Britain could have lost big competitions precisely by winning small ones. Too much expense abroad might destabilize India. Control over Afghanistan, with its call on garrisons, might so have overstretched British power as to break it during 1857. Instead, Britain bought off threats from Afghanistan for pennies on the pound. To Britain, failures happened on the north west frontier and Afghanistan, as in 1841, 1881, 1898 and 1919, but no disasters. This orientation also precluded costly options. Success in counter-insurgency requires strength, conquest even more so. Britain lacked such strength on the north west frontier, which shows its estimate of the problem. Local strength stemmed from global strategy. British armies had to handle several competitions, roughly equal in moment, where irregular operations occurred regularly, and enemies combined conventional and unconventional forces, or used weapons in unorthodox ways. Britain needed forces able to manage all these competitions, and be recalibrated from one competition to another, and then to combine their strengths so to defeat any competitor. 10 All land forces of the Crown evolved to fill a strategic niche across continents, combining politics,
9

Ferris, Internationalism, op.cit., and Brandon Douglas Marsh, Ramparts of empire : India's North-West Frontier and British imperialism, 1919-1947,( Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, 2009). 10 John Ferris, Small Wars and Great GamesThe British Army and Hybrid Warfare, 1700-1970, in Williamson Murray and Peter Mansoor (eds), Hybrid Warfare: Fighting Complex Opponents from the Ancient World to the Present, ( Cambridge University Press, 2012, forthcoming).

power and technology, in which they had superiority over most competitors. These elements included general purpose forces ( the British and Indian armies) and scores of specialized ( regional, paramilitary or gendarmerie) units for particular problems, like the Khyber Rifles. Redeployable forces were tiny in number, rarely reaching 10,000 solders for any campaign, though able to rise higher in case of crisis, their power multiplied by quality and technology. For good and ill, this system limited Britains ability to solve problems by power, and drove it to search for political solutions, which matched force as a weapon. Britain rarely was too strong for its own good, that classic problem of the United States. Britains sensitivity to local politics was high, even when its understanding was not. British decision makers understood and co-opted individuals, but were merely good in handling movements which linked elites and masses, whether open or conspiratorial. This approach led Britain down a path which generally was fruitful. By working with local elites and interests, Britain created tolerance of and support for its presence, allies and instruments. This approach, however, automatically created problems whenever Britain got the politics wrong. No place better illustrates these conditions than Afghanistan and the north west frontier. Invading Afghanistan. Britain first invaded Afghanistan through habit and hubris. Since 1757, expansionist forces within the administration in India had driven its empire. Danger always stood beyond its borders, or could be made to look that way. War suited frontier officials rating promotion above peace. 11 They had a record of success. Indian authorities invaded Afghanistan in 1838 because they thought it easily could be made a protectorate, and used to dominate Central Asia. They were misinformed this invasion stemmed from trivial politics, intelligence failure, and confused policy. The failure was in net assessment, comparing the will and power of competitors, against oneself. Indian authorities knew little about Afghanistan, which they expected to control as easily as other states they had conquered in Asianot surprisingly, given the chaos which engulfed that country. They were overly impressed by the promises of the ally they hoped to place on the throne of Kabul, the exiled ex-Shah Shuja. During the occupation, his servants fed false intelligence to British authorities, leading them to destroy his enemies, and their credibility. 12 Even more, Indian authorities monitored internal plots against their rule, whom they thought might be inspired by an external enemy. 13 The Viceroy, Lord Auckland, believed The agents of Russia were openly striking the credit and power of this country, in political schemes, fraught with danger, not to our interests only, but to the safety, of the British Indian Empire...The most vague and wild alarms prevailed throughout India. Every element of malignity and disaffection within the vast limits of our supremacy, was called into eager action.

11

For the background to these events, cf. Garry Alder, "Big Game Hunting in Central Asia," Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 9, no. 3 (1981); David Gillard, The Struggle for Asia, 1828-1914, (London, 1977); Edward Ingram, The Beginning of the Great Game in Asia, 1828-1834 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979); M.E. Yapp, Strategies of British India, Britain, Iran and Afghanistan, 1798-1850 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980). D.M. Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in India, 1819-1835, ( New York, 1995). 12 Mohan Lal, Dost Mohammed, pp. 42-5. 13 Auckland to Hobhouse, 10.5.39, 1.4.39, Elpinstone to Hobhouse, 29.9.39, Broughton de Gyfford Mss, F 213/8, India Office Records and Library ( IORL), British Library.

Invading Afghanistan, he claimed, had killed these dangers. 14 Auckland talked defence, but took the offence. He and his servants acted more from desire than fear, believing Afghanistan the key to Asia, and easy to turn. Britains first occupation of Afghanistan failed, but not in a simple way. 22,000 British and Indian soldiers entered a country divided between hundreds of independent units. Many supported the British advance, few opposed it. The strongest leader, the Emir of Kabul, Dost Mohammed, fled. British forces garrisoned the cities, while political officers maintained influence in rural areas through irregular campaigns, bribes and paid levies. For two years, occupation faced little opposition. Afghans were willing to let Britain intervene in dynastic politics, but not to conquer them. As it began to do so, opposition rose. Yet British officials wanted Shuja to establish a real regime, albeit a protected one. Only when they saw that he could not do so, did they make their own, motivated by a search for what they regarded as good government. Thus, Shuja became seen as a puppet which, for his own reasons, he described himself to leading Afghans. As in all areas of Asia they ruled directly, Britons raised taxes and attacked existing customs and interests, especially of chiefs and warriors. In 1841-2, these matters sparked a combination of jihad, coup, Pashtun war of national resistance, and banditry, not a national revolution, but dozens of loosely related risings. The British had no friends; once they ceased to be feared, and slashed their subsidies, many enemies struck opportunistically. Alexander Burnes, the chief political and intelligence officer in Kabul, wrote, More fighting still! when will this country be pacified?15 Panicked leaders caused the revolt in Kabul by murdering Burnes. A private vendetta became political when their acts were not punished. Pashtuns saw threats to their society and religion, a chance to loot, and means to mobilize. In the nineteenth century, prolonged guerrilla or irregular campaigns were hard to mobilize from peoples with loose organisation beyond lineage or village. This required a fear by elites and people of threat to their way of life, and some widespread bodies, usually religious ones, to overcome social atomization and unify resistance. In Afghanistan during 1841-2, chiefs, Dost Mohammads son, and Sufi orders provided inspiration, legitimacy and leadership. 16 This combination of popular and elite resistance was unique in Asia at that time, but similar characteristics motivated contemporary opposition to European imperialism in Chechnya-Daghestan, Algeria, Punjab and Awadh. These cases, however, mattered so much that despite heavy losses, above anything Britain suffered in Afghanistan, European powers fought until they won. Right after abandoning Afghanistan, Britain crushed a greater power, the Sikh kingdom. What saved Afghanistan then, as later, was the fact that Afghans could make occupation expensive, while their country was worthless to foreigners. Each stage of the rising surprised the British, who were stunned into unusual steps: one political officer offered 10,000 rupees each, or even 15,000, for the heads of several Pashtun leaders. 17 The British force at
14 15

Auckland to Elphinstone, 13.11.39, ibid., F. 213/10. Mohan Lal, Life of the Amir Dost Mohammed Khan of Kabul, Volume II ( Karachi, 1978: original, 1846) , p. 388. 16 The best accounts are Yapp, Strategies, op.cit, pp. 307-460, and Rob Johnson, The Afghan Way of War, How and Why they Fight, ( OUP, 2011); cf. Senzil Nawid, The State, The Clergy, and British Imperial Rule in Afghanistan during the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 29/4 ( 11.1997), pp. 581605. 17 Hari Ram Gupta, Life and Work of Mohan Lal Kashmiri, 1812-1877 , (Lahore, 1943) pp. 337-59.

Kabul was smashed when its leaders were murdered. Their successors, naive and paralyzed, accepted an offer of free passage, which became a pitiless massacre of 4500 soldiers and more followers through snowdrifts down the Khyber Pass. Most other garrisons stood until relieved by another British force, which attempted to recoup the disaster by demonstrating its ability to devastate Pashtun territory, and left. After 1842, Britain abandoned attempts to establish a forward defensive system for India in Afghanistan. A new view arose on Indian security, a defensive one. The "close frontier" school held that India was best defended on the northwest frontier itself, without commitments beyond. It did not view Russian expansion in Asia as a threat. Exponents of these views, exemplified by John Lawrence as Viceroy, pursued little contact with states or peoples beyond India's borders. He held that Britain could exert little influence on Afghanistan because of the fanaticism, the pride of race, the feeling of strength and the inclination to combine against us of its people, the divisions among its princes, and the conflicting passions and interests which convulse the body politic.18 Meanwhile, Dost Mohammed returned to Kabul where, for twenty years, he created a new state, borrowing heavily from British ideas and aid. 19 Exploiting British subsidies of 7 lakhs ( L 35,000) and 8000 flintlock muskets, he balanced the old military system, of feudal cavalry and tribal lashkars, by a new army, armed and trained on western lines. He held no grudges against Britain that money could not buy. That subsidy, and recognition of British power in Punjab and Persia, kept him quiet during 1857. Britons encouraged these events through means they disliked, subsidies. It made an Emir dependent on a continuation of largesse, but left him stronger, and them looking suspiciously like paying blackmail. In 1867, during the civil war following Mohammeds death, the Indian Foreign Secretary was not in any hurry to subsidize the Cabul ruler with either money or arms. A subsidy of money vamps up their pride and pretension, is never applied to the purpose for which it is given, nor, indeed, to any useful or healthy purpose, but stimulates their insatiable avarice, and is regarded as a tribute extracted from our weakness and apprehensions. Aid in arms is less objectionable, but even in this form of affording help to the Cabul ruler, it is hardly expedient to be forward in pressing such assistance on his acceptanceA supply of arms is really the most valuable assistance that can be given to an Afghan ruler, and would be generally understood as a very decisive mode of ranging British aid on his side. 20 After that civil war, Dost Mohammads son and successor, Sher Ali, continued his work. He bolstered his army, aided by annual British subsidies of L 60,000 ( 12 lakhs) and 17,000 rifles which, through reverse engineering, were manufactured in large numbers by his armoury at Kabul. Under these Emirs, Afghanistan became more prosperous than it had been for decades. Around 1874, British views on these matters changed, as a new government took power in London, while Russia leapt cross central Asia, bringing its borders alongside Afghanistan. It
18

Lawrence to Wood, 27.5.65, Volume, 30, and Lawrence to Eastwich, 15.7.66, Volume 39, John Lawrence Mss, F. 90, IORL. 19 The best accounts are Christine Noelle, State and Tribe in Nineteenth Century Afghanistan, ( Padstow, 1997), especially pp. 250-97 and Vartan Gregorian, The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan, Politics of Reform and Modernization, 1880-1946, ( Stanford, 1969), pp. 52-90. 20 HM Durand, The Life of Major-General Sir Henry Marion Durand, Volume One ( London, WH Allen & Co., 1883): p 358.

also threatened the Ottoman Empire and Persia, strategic buffers for the British Empire. In response, a "forward school" emerged among Indian officials. They agreed that Russian expansion in central Asia threatened the Raj, which must establish a defense zone beyond the north west frontier. 21 Lord Salisbury, Secretary of State for India, held that Britain must make Afghanistan a protectorate, a shield against St. Petersburg rather than an agent of subversion. This would require overcoming the Afghan refusal to accept British diplomats. A few British officials stationed in Afghanistan would become the power behind the throne through the pacific invasion of EnglandThe principle of it is, whenever you bring the English in contact with inferior races, they will rule. 22 This policy rested on excellent intelligence about Russia, drawn from state papers stolen in St. Petersburg, which Salisbury used well, combined with crass stereotypes drawn from imperial anthropology, and poor understanding of how Afghans would react to his pressure. Though Sher Ali communicated with Russian authorities, nothing suggests that he wanted war with Britain. He did not wish to be a puppet. His efforts to avoid that fate, and Russias pursuit of influence in Afghanstan, so to shape British policy in Turkey, including a military march on the country and the dispatch of a mission to Kabul, led Britain to invade Afghanistan in 1878. This decision was made by authorities in India, triggering a machine they had built to British orders, but against the will of many ministers in London, including Salisbury. Britain wanted to prevent Russia from influencing Afghanistan, but invasion was partly an accident. It might not have happened without ostentatious Tsarist efforts. Conquest proved easy. 37,000 British and Indian soldiers marched, Sher Alis army broke and he fled, to die in exile. Control proved hard. British forces withdrew, leaving behind an allied emir, Muhammad Yaqub, Sher Alis son, with a British advisor, Louis Cavagnari. When a rising in Kabul killed Cavagnari, British forces returned, Yaqub abdicated, saying he rather would be peasant than puppet. Chaos emerged. British security rested on subsidies to tribes. One staff officer, an advocate of annexing Afghanistan, wrote, all this black-mail paying is very wrong in principle, but our force is so small that it requires all such help. 23 The enemy, although politically divided, pursued an effective strategy, combining lashkars and a decent regular army, with firearms to match Britain. 30,000 ghazis and soldiers, united under the banner of jihad and Yaqubs son, beseiged Kabul, catching British forces by surprise again. In December 1879, a third British offensive up the Khyber Pass in 13 months dispersed the besiegers, but several pretender cousins built local power bases and grabbed for the throne. A new British government altered its strategy. Britain could neither control Afghanistan nor let it splinter. It needed to find an Afghan prince able to keep his country united and quiet, strong enough to rule Afghanistan, smart enough not to bother Britain. Fortuitously, such a marvel was at hand, Abd-al Rahman, an able man with some power, in need of more. He offered Britain political support in return for military aid. For Britain, this step was a gamble: it distrusted any Afghan prince, and years of exile in Tsarist territory raised concerns that Abd al-Rahman was a Russian ally. Precisely for that reason, Russia aided his return with a gift of 200 muskets and R 300,000. Had Abd al-Rahman wished to do so, only another British invasion could have stopped

21

Lord Salisbury, Secret Intelligence, and British policy toward Russia and Central Asia, 1874-1878, in John Robert Ferris, Intelligence and Strategy, ( London, 2005), pp 8-44. 22 Ibid., p. 18. 23 Lady MacGregor (ed), The Life and Opinions of Major-General Sir Charles Metcalfe MacGregor, Volume II, ( William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh, 1888), p. 107.

him. The British could not be sure of the truth, that experience in exile had taught him cunning, and suspicion of St. Petersburg. The issue ceased to be national resistance to Britain, becoming instead a struggle between princes. By stating its intention to leave and to support a widely acceptable candidate, Britain negated opposition to its presence, while retaining some ability to shape Afghan politics. So long as Britain would go, even central figures in the jihad were willing to accept its candidate as Emir. 24 Abd el-Rahmans cousin, Muhammad Ayyub, with 20,000 men was not: he opened a rebellion and beat a British brigade at Maiwand on 27 July 1880. This revolt forced an alliance between political and military power. Abd el-Rahman used his influence to help Britain destroy Ayyub, neutralising his rivals support and helping his friends acquire supplies on the march. British forces, moving fast and hard, smashed Ayyubs forces, and helped their ally overawe other rivals. Then, they left the country, handing power to him, and proof of their utility: five lakhs ( R 5,000,000 ) and 1000 rifles, far more than the aid Russian authorities had given him, and nearly half its annual subsidy to Sher Ali. 25 Influencing Afghanistan. Over the next generation, Britain created a new policy toward Afghanistan, based on a version of the close frontier. It lasted as long as the Raj. Britain abandoned offensive attitudes toward Afghanistan. The latter became a strategic buffer, which Britain could defend against Russia, or not, as it chose. Through the declaration of the Durand Line and the annexation of Pashtun territories, Britain created a scientific frontier, a tactical buffer with a strong defensive position and great garrisons south of Afghanistan. That policy kept Britain and Russia from war, despite constant rivalry and occasional hostility, and enabled the management of Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Abd al-Rahman, his power primed by British aid, created an effective army and a state, as against a confederation of tribes, loose but more powerful than any seen in Afghanistan. It restedrelied-- on unprecedented levels of British aid, 12 lakhs per year, rising to 18 in 1893, in return for not fighting the declaration of the Durand Line, and over 40,000 rifles. He accepted Britains demand that Afghanistan have foreign relations only with India, and not Russia. Abd al-Rahman was willing to cooperate with Britain, which he found a useful counter to Russian expansion. 26 This system was imperfect, because intelligence was so. British authorities knew they could not be sure to spot a Russian attack before it began, and disliked the limits to their knowledge in Kabul, provided only by an Indian Muslim agent monitored by Abd el-Rahman. This ignorance left uncertainty and fear to haunt the north west frontier, though the concern was secondary. This policy lasted under the reign of Abd el-Rahmans son Habibullah, even during great tests of the internal-external threat to India. During the First World War, Germany and Turkey sought to spread jihad and revolution throughout the British empire. They sent 1, 000 soldiers, and some diplomats, to Kabul, to induce Afghanistan to attack India. British officials feared that the popular attitude in Afghanistan is pro-Turkish, fanatical and inflammable to a degree,
24 25

Nawid, State, pp. 589-90, is useful, despite errors of fact about British policy in 1878-80. D. P. Singhal, India and Afghanistan, 1876-1907, A Study in Diplomatic Relations, ( University of Queensland Press, Melbourne, 1963), pp 85, 89. 26 Gregorian, Emergence, pp. 129-62.

pressed by an anti-British faction led by Habibullahs younger brother, largely supported by the priests and the fanatical element in the population. Habibullah, however, saw the prospect of becoming a pawn, and sacrificed. Britain judged his aims and influence correctly.27 It carefully monitored all activities in Kabul and intercepted German communications from Kabul. So confident was their judgment, that when Habibullah requested a larger subsidy, British officials raised it only by two lakhs, from 18 to 20by L 10, 000. 28 In May 1919, four months after Habibullah was assassinated, his successor, Emir Amanallah, declared war and jihad against the Raj. That declaration might have been more inconvenient in 1916. British security blocked Amanallahs efforts to raise Muslim populations within India, but he sparked a revolt which broke Britains position in Waziristan. Britain, concerned with Bolshevik efforts to subvert India and manipulate Muslims, faced the greatest embodiment of the internal-external threat ever seen. 29 The Raj responded carefully, seeking a victory of politics rather than force. It merely defended its frontiers and began to restore its position in Waziristan, while forcing Amanallah to terms by stalling his armies and levies, bombing Kabul, bankrupting his regime, and agreeing that Afghanistan could have diplomatic relations with anyone it chose. After the third Anglo-Afghan war was over, the Government of India wished, as its Foreign Secretary noted, to let Afghanistan down light; to forgive and if possible to educate its truculent young Ruler, who has already been tainted by the catchwords of Bolshevism. 30 A desire to defeat Bolshevik subversion among Muslims drove British policy toward Afghanistan during 1920-21, which widened the breach Kabul and Moscow were building between themselves. British officials gave solutions of Soviet telegrams to Amanallah, which showed Russian cynicism toward him, and English knowledge of his intrigues. They gained from his shockone witness thought Amanallah evidently upset, especially about a Soviet message stating that treaty would make Afghanistan financially & militarily dependent on Bolsheviksbut this material merely aided a rearguard action, the abandonment of British hegemony over Kabul, and its replacement with education. 31 An independent Afghanistan posed new problems. Britains response was effective, because its intelligence was excellent. With Afghan independence finally came the chance to establish a British legation in Kabul, able to acquire information through normal diplomacy. British cryptanalysis mastered the codes of many countries, including Afghanistan and the USSR. The signs were complex. Amanallah did not wish bad relations with Britain, and often had poor ones with the USSR. Yet the USSR increasingly was involved in Afghanistan, so to limit its aid to the basmachi, Muslim guerrillas in Central Asia, and to support Amanallah, whom Soviet diplomats and intelligence officers saw as an ally. Britain thought Amanallah erratic and unfriendly, and the USSR hostile. In two, revealing contradictory, ways, Afghanistan became central to British strategy. Amanallahs effort to create an air force, aided by the USSR, raised fears of an Afghan air menace, an aerial assault on India as the razor edge for an internal-

27 28

No 644, 8.7.15, L/PS/10/473; Memorandum by India Office, 24.5.16, Situation at Kabul, L/PS/10/593 Minute by TWH ( Holderness), 25.10.15, L/PS/10/459 29 John Ferris, The British Empire vs. The Hidden Hand: British Intelligence and Strategy and The CUP-JewGerman-Bolshevik combination, 1918-1924, Neilson and Kennedy, , pp. 325-46. 30 Hamilton Grant to Arthur Balfour, 7.7.19, Arthur Balfour Papers, The British Library, Add Ms 49749. 31 Ferris, Hidden Hand.

external attack. Meanwhile, British planners prepared to dispatch mechanized and air forces to aid Afghanistan against Soviet attack. Despite these concerns, British policy toward Afghanistan remained calm, even during 1929, when Amanallahs reforms sparked a civil war which, intelligence showed, might cause Soviet intervention. As his regime collapsed, Soviet leaders advocated military intervention to save Amanallah. Otherwise, their agent in Kabul warned, the USSR must abandon all the progressive elements in AFGHANISTAN, which, increasing from day to day, are rallying round him, and ( involves ) in fact support to Afghan reaction. Leaving these decisions in force means canceling the whole of our ten years work in AFGHANISTAN ...we will for long be compromised not only in AFGHANISTAN but also in the whole of the Middle East and in INDIA. In any case no one will believe in our neutrality and what no one will be able to swallow is that after ten years we have thrown overboard the progressives of Afghanistan and gone back on all our declarations. Ultimately, the USSR did not invade Afghanistan, though it did attack basmachi there, and supported a faction which lost a civil war to one backed cautiously by Britain. 32 Throughout these events, Britain pursued its aims through diplomacy rather than force. Intelligence illuminated Amanullahs erratic path, Soviet policy and perceptions, and subversion of India. During the crisis of 1929, codebreaking revealed that the Soviet Foreign Minister, Maxim Litvinov, told the Turkish ambassador that unless AMANULLAs situation improved ( to such an extent that there was some hope of his final success) no help would be given, since any such help would only compromise RUSSIA without result. One Afghan ally of the USSR told another, the more these Russians promise, the less they fulfill. They do not realise what kind of Nemesis will overtake them at last. The Afghan Foreign Minister warned that unless the Soviets ceased intervention, the government would be compelled to unite whole population of AFGHANISTAN with intention of declaring Holy war against U.S.S.R. and...would have to ask ENGLAND for assistance. 33 Had the USSR invaded, it might have created the counter-weight of a coalition between a British army and an anti-Soviet jihad. This intelligence helped British authorities to avoid alarmism, and guided a cautious policy of avoiding any actions that might scare her ( Russia ) into dangerous counter-action. We are convinced by far our safest course is business as usual as far as possible within our own borders. Had such actions occurred in 1880, they would have maddened British authorities; those of 1929 were sufficiently informed, able and confident to watch the Soviet position collapse, and to help an acceptable alternative, Nadir Khan, become Emir, with little British intervention. As the Viceroy, Lord Halifax, noted, I hope we may succeed in getting Nadir Khan in without giving rise to too intensive an antiBritish agitation, and indeed it seems as if in this respect too things were working not unfavourably for us in that he appears to be generally regarded by all parties in Afghanistan as the duex ex machina. 34 A decade later, in the last internal-external challenge to British rule,
32

George Agabekov, O.G.P.U., The Russian Secret Terror, ( New York, 1931), a tolerably accurate memoir by the Soviet intelligence chief in Kabul; solutions of Soviet diplomatic and intelligence telegrams from Afghanistan, by British codebreakers, HW 12/117, No. 34443; HW 12/119, Nos. 35132, 34998, passim. 33 HW 12/117, No. 34443; HW 12/119, Nos. 35132, 34998, HW 12/85, No 023721, 31.8.26, HW 12/117, 34315, 4.4.29. 34 Telegram from Viceroy to India Office, 14.2.29, passim, FO 371/13992, N 1037; cf. FO 371/13995, FO 371/14003; Halifax to Peel, 13.2.19, 4.4.19, passim, Lord Halifax papers, C 152/5, IORL.

the USSR helped Britain to block an Axis effort to use an insurgent leader in Waziristran, the Faqir of Ipi, to foment revolution in India.35 British experience illustrates how one may win politically by leaving Afghanistan, after failing to do so during an occupation through military means. Britain attempted to conquer Afghanistan, or to practice anything like counter-insurgency there, only between 1838-41 and 1878-81. Otherwise, it treated Afghanistan as an independent polity on imperial frontiers, using means like indifference, aid, annexation, bullying and bribery, while foreswearing conquest and rule behind the throne. After its first shock, and only true failure, in 1841, Britain learned to live with civil wars and regime changes in Afghanistan. During the tests of 1880, 1915-17 and 1930, it identified a strong ally, even men like Abd al-Rahman and Nadir Khan for whom it once had held misgivings, and helped him to defeat his rivals. Britain learned to manage Emirs, to ensure they walked the line between too much strength and too little, to judge their character and intentions, and to develop means of influence. Since British policy in Afghanistan was linked to rivalry with other powers, it needed means to monitor and manage them, to solve problems in Kabul abroad, by diplomatic pressure in St Petersburg, or by countering subversion launched by Germany, Turkey, Japan and the USSR. Such actions were hard with Russia between 18301914, largely because of problems with intelligence. They became easier after 1914, when British intelligence became excellent. On the North West Frontier: Ideology, Institution, and Insurgency. Britain could leave Afghanistan and achieve its aims there, but not the north west frontier. Failure to conquer Afghanistan created a need to control that territory, which included the positions required to block external threat. The attempt at control routinely is characterized by terms like butcher and bolt. Such language is caricature. Along the north west frontier, ideology, doctrine, experience, and the institutional interests of the Indian army and government, and the Royal Air Force ( RAF), produced several approaches toward irregular warfare and pacification. These practices were distinct, though all shared aimsto keep a frontier quiet enough, to cause no problems elsewhere. Often, those aims had little importance. To have responsibility for achieving aims, meant more than doing so. That process took different forms by time and space. Ultimately, Britain achieved a cheap and moderate success in Baluchistan, and a more costly stalemate among Pashtuns. Nineteenth century commentators distinguished two views of frontier management, the Bombay and Punjab schools. The Bombay school stemmed from General John Jacobs confrontation with hillmen raiding lowland people, and each other, in Sind. He found solutions from British experience in pacifying India, the Scottish highlands, and London. Jacob sought to create order, develop support and intelligence from the population, and immediately pursue raiders, with soldiers performing the policemans hue and cry. His policies required cooperation from the population, and found enough of it to succeed. Jacob committed his few military resources to the problem, transferring forces from garrisons to the field. He linked force and

35

Alan Warren. Waziristan, the Faqir of Ipi, and the Indian Army: The North West Frontier Revolt of 193637, ( New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); Milan Hauner, India in Axis Strategy, Germany, Japan, and Indian Nationalists during the Second World War ( Stuttgart, 1980).

politics in the classic British tradition of pacification ( and, later, of counter-insurgency), combined with an ardent sense of imperialism and paternalistic idealism. It is moral more than physical force which is required to control predatory tribes: both are doubtless necessary, but the latter is so, chiefly, to enable us to apply the other. Justice, honesty, high principles, unswerving firmness, and force without violence, succeed best with these men, as with others. If we imitate their crimes, on pretence of retaliation, we only perpetuate the evilA few words will sum up the whole system. At first, put down all violence with the strong hand; then, your force being known, felt and respected, endeavour to excite mens better natures, till all men, seeing that your object is good, and of the greatest general benefit to the community, join heart and hand to aid in putting down or preventing violence. 36 In 1856, for purposes of external security, Jacob recommended that Britain use similar techniques, combined with a small garrison at Quetta, to dominate Baluchistan, territory between Sind, Persia, and Afghanistan. This proposal languished during the days of close frontier. In 1875, however, as part of its efforts to manage Afghanistan, the Government of India adopted Jacobs plan, and sent one of his students, Colonel Sandeman, to execute it. 37 Sandeman, a Scot, was the only man to achieve Salisburys pacific invasion of England. He was intended to keep Baluchistan quiet on the cheap, while indirect rule in Kabul managed Afghanistan and the north west frontier. That ambition failed, while Sandeman achieved success in pacification. His system minimized the use of force, instead relying on politics and subsidies. Force, while necessary, primarily was used to make Baluchs take bribes. He was authorized to offer Baluchi chiefs R 67,000 annually, and to raise the subsidy for their leading figure, the Khan of Khelat, which was doubled to one lakh. These figures were large, compared to those offered to Sher Ali, or the R 3000 down and R 2000 per month pledged to the Gilzai tribe during the darkest days of 1879. 38 Sandeman used this power to build influence and maintain balance, playing chiefs against each other while strengthening their hold over their peoples, and minimizing British interference in internal affairs. His system kept Baluchistan cheap and quiet until 1947. The Punjab school stemmed less from charisma, than corporation. It confronted a Pashtun population, more divided, independent and hostile, than that of Baluchistan. It disciplined them through the same means as Sandeman, politics, force and subsidies, but in different proportions. The Punjab school spent less money and more time fighting, emphasizing negative against positive reinforcement. It did not pursue pacification, but coercive diplomacy through militarized means. Throughout the nineteenth century, these means involved taking hostages, imposing fines, economic blockade and punitive expeditions, throwing regular forces against irregular ones, with the aim of combining surprise in operations and firepower in tactics. The Punjab

36

Captain Lewis Pelly (ed), The Views and Opinions of Brigadier-General John Jacob, C .B. , ( Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1858) p 4, 349-51; H.T. Lambrick, John Jacob of Jacobabad, ( OUP, Karachi, 1960. 37 John Lowe Duthie, Failure and success: John Jacobs Quetta Project, 1856-76, Asian Affairs, 10/3, 1979, pp 272-91; Thomas Henry Thornton, Colonel Sir Robert Sandeman, His Life and Work on our Indian Frontier, ( John Murray, London, 1895); Simanti Dutta, Imperial Mappings in Savage Spaces: Baluchistan and British India, (B.R. Publishing Corp., Delhi, 2002). 38 D. P. Singhal, Relations, pp. 20; Thomas Henry Thornton, Colonel Sir Robert Sandeman, His Life and Work on our Indian Frontier, ( John Murray, London, 1895): pp 65. Cf. Lady MacGregor (ed), Life and Opinions, ibid. p 107.

school was driven by fear of jihad, which could be self reinforcing. 39 Its tactics were more effective against the weak than the strong. Many targets were hard to reach. Attack provoked reciprocity, as each side adjusted to the other. Initially, foes often charged formations with swords, but then, despite British efforts at blockade, adopted modern rifles and tactics. 40 Britain found operations in these areas increasingly hard, because the population, including veterans of the Indian Army, played its hand well. During the Tirah campaign in 1897-98, snipers fought 59,000 British and Indian soldiers to a standstill, ambushing units and picking off officers. Mahsud and Waziri lashkars hammered large British attacks during the rebellion of 1919-20. After the First World War, the Indian Army pursued firmer control over the north west frontier, deploying large garrisons behind barbed wire in advanced cantonments. 15,000 regular soldiers, a division, were deployed permanently in Waziristan. Three divisions, about 50% of the Indian armys strength, its field force, fought the Faqir of Ipi. 41 Its forces adapted increasingly well to these irregular conditions. Britain also spent far more money on gaining support, creating forces, like the Khyber Rifles, which were intended essentially to pay Pashtuns to be police, rather than bandits. The full scale of subsidies is difficult to define. Roughly 40% of Indias secret service budget was spent on subsidies for protection and raids in North West Frontier Province. 42 In Waziristan alone, 4600 irregular khassadars, local tribesman hired to as constables, cost R 1,4000,000 annually. When well trained and experienced, the Indian army performed well in these operations, but anything less than good performance tempted disaster. From these experiences, commanders generated principles of frontier warfare, on the numerical or alliterative model familar among armies As one general said in 1937, The formula which always guided me when giving advice about our dealings with the tribesmen was: Fear, fence, face, fanaticism. Fear, in that the tribesman is in no sense of the term a superman and is, like anyone else, anxious to preserve his life and subject to fear of losing it. Fence. With the exception of the immediate offenders, the neighbouring sections will as a rule sit on the fence in the critical stages waiting for the result of the opening engagement. Face. They are always on the lookout for some excuse to save their faces. Fanaticism. One Jehad is declared they become mad dogs and reason goes to the wind.

39

Keith Surridge, The Ambiguous Amir: Britain, Britain, Afghanistan and the 1897 North-West Frontier Uprising, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 36/3, September 2008, pp 417-34; Michael D. Kasprowicz, 1857 and the fear of Muslim rebellion on Indias NorthWest Frontier, Small Wars & Insurgencies, Autumn 1997, 8/2, pp 1-15. 40 T.R. Moreman, The arms trade and the North-West frontier Pathan tribes, 1890-1914, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 22: 2, April 1994, pp 187-216.
41

Marsh, Ramparts of Empire, op. cit, T.R. Moreman, The Army in India and the Development of Frontier Warfare, 1849-1947, ( London, 1998) and Christian Tripodi, Edge of Empire: The British Political Officer and Tribal Administration on the North West Frontier, 1877- 1947, ( Farnham & Burlington, Ashgate, 2011). 42 Appendix to Finance Department, 14.1.31, R/1/4/1028, IORL.

The problem is to provide them, and as rapidly as possible, with the means of saving their faces, and so induce them to come down on our side of the fence, and the means, surely, an early display of adequate force. 43 The north west frontier never was pacified. Britain could live with this stalemate, because ultimately, political officers always could negotiate an acceptable settlement. For all sides, strategy involved creating and maintaining an ability to talk. War was a form of politics by other means, shooting a mode of discourse. Yet this outcome was unsatisfactory. Officers with universalist ideas of counter-insurgency claimed that Sandemans solutions would work better. 44 Most officers of the Indian army disagreed. Some, combining imperial anthropology and the concept of martial races, held that Baluchs simply were less formidable than Pashtuns. Thus, in 1879, Roberts denied that most regiments of the Bombay Army, the force handling Baluchistan, could cope with Afghans. 45 Others used sociological arguments: Baluch society was more hierarchical, thus manageable, than fragmented and egalitarian Pashtuns. As one general wrote in 1932, It is comparatively easy to keep a chief well disposed by giving him moral support, as well as an allowance, and occasionally perhaps some arms. He can then take the edge off his tribesmans warlike proclivities, while the mutual jealousies of the chiefs are likely to keep the whole in a state of some equilibriumnot too stable perhaps but a great deal better than among the irresponsible democracies...Sandemans policy was to support the Khans and make them control their clans. If the Khans disobeyed or abused their position, he deposed them. 46 Such ideas, central to British views of controlling the north west frontier, and to any judgment of them, sound easy to discount. They reek of orientalism and empire. Yet British views of all peoples, Muslim or otherwise, combined competent observation with interpretation by stereotype. The latter were influenced by many systems of ideas, complementary and contradictory : imperial anthropology, racism, orientalism, whig paternalism, concepts of national characteristics, cultural ethnocentrism, and a model of the evolutionary modernization of all peoples on British lines. These concepts are hard to handle as a whole, or individually. Thus, racism had simple effects at lower levels of decision making, but complex results at higher ones. The evidence is vast, and filled with language or logic which was, or can be seen as being, racist or orientalist, but they must be treated as problems, not as self evident. Decision makers held many opinions about Muslim peoples, who were not seen as one unchanging other. Imperial knowledge altered over time. Often it simply was knowledge. Ideology shaped British views of peoples on the north west frontier more than usual with them, but still their stereotypes

43

General Sir Kenneth Wigram, Defence in the North-West Frontier Province, Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 24: 1, 1937, pp 74-5, 44 Chrstian Tripodi, Good for one but not the other: The Sandeman System of Pacification as Applied to Baluchistan and the North-West Frontier, 1877-1947, The Journal of Military History, 73/3, July 2009, pp. 767802. 45 Lord Roberts, Forty-One Years in India, From Subaltern to Commander-in-Chief, ( Richard Bentley and Son: London, 1897): p 336-7. 46 Major General S.F. Muspratt, The North-West Frontier of India, The Royal United Services Institution Journal, 77/507, ( 1932), p 472-4.

had force. 47 Subsequent Pakistani experience suggests that no form of externally imposed police, or counter-insurgency, easily can master Pashtuns. Nor did ideology alone shape approaches to counter-insurgency. Institutional interests had a greater impact. Thus, Sandemans system was dominated by political officers. Its soldiers, few in number, in the background, stemmed from the Bombay army, increasingly marginalized in the military politics of the Raj. The victor in that struggle, the Bengal Army, dominated the united service after 1895. It had institutional reasons to keep its fighting edge keen for real soldiering, which frontier war did better than pacification could have done, and to justify its existence. Punjab and the north west frontier became the centre of its dispositions, and two of its main assignments, to control the border and defeat external assault. 48 These forces did not practice counter-insurgency because they did not want to. Nor did they have to, so long as they alone kept responsibility for the task. Here, in the last years of the Raj, they faced competition. After 1919, British authorities expected mechanical devices to replace manpower in imperial policing with economy and effect. From this concept, the RAF generated a strategy for expanding at the expense of the older services, substitution, and a theory and practice of counter-insurgency, air policing. The RAF provided a key link in the process from 1911 in which western airpower struck Islamic insurgents. Its earliest uses by Britain, between 1916-21, involved full scale attacks on villages, killing hundreds of civilians. Thereafter, Britain applied air policing less ruthlessly, because authorities believed their public would not tolerate indiscriminate attacks on civilians. 49 Still, Britain used the tool constantly and effectively across the Middle East. Thus, during 1920, in its attack against the so-called Mad Mullah of Somaliland, an airstrike on Mohammed bin Abdullah Hassans encampment wounded him, killed some of his lieutenants, and scattered his flocks, a base for his power, which hostile tribesmen seized. He fled and died. The precision of this strike, while illuminating, proved hard to replicate during the interwar years. Indias experience with air policing was different from the Middle East. In 1920, Indian authorities opposed the initial attempt to apply air control, in Iraq. As the Military Advisor in the India Office, H.V. Cox, noted, aircraft can do nothing but act in one of 2 ways (a) pay a visit (b) drop a bomb. To rule and administer a great deal is necessary between these 2 acts! 50 Indian officials believed that air policing violated central principles for tribal control. In 1921, when pressed to police the north west frontier by air, the Viceroy replied that the principle of retaliation was so deep-rooted in the tribes that attacks on our women might easily follow sooner or later if we resorted to indiscriminate bombing of tribal villages. C-in-C holds with me that both psychologically and militarily it would be unsound to wage war on women and children of tribesmen who
47

Paul Titus, Honour the Baluch, Buy the Pushtun: Stereotypes, Social Organization and History in Western Pakistan, Modern Asian Studies, 32/3, 1998, pp 657-87; Hugh Beattie, Negotiations with the Tribes of Waziristan 1849-1914-The British Experience, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 39:4, November 2011, pp. 571-87. 48 Tai Yong Tan, The garrison state: The military, society and government in colonial Punjab, 1849-1947, ( London, Sage, 2005). 49 John Ferris, The Evolution of British Strategic Policy, 1919-1926 (Macmillan, 1989) ; David Omissi, Air Power and Colonial Control, 1919-1939, ( Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1990) . 50 Minute by H.V. Cox, 4.8.20, L/PS/10/766

are already in a sense our subjects and who may some day become such in reality and who are fanatically susceptible as regards their women folk. We are therefore against bombing of frontier villages. If we are forced to it in exceptional circumstances we should always endeavour to give women and children time to depart. 51 For the RAF, the north west frontier was the imperial locale where it could most gain from air policing, especially by using the same squadrons to replace soldiers on the north west frontier, and warships in the Indian Ocean. Thus, in 1925, it argued that 10 RAF squadrons could police the north west frontier, replacing the 7 cavalry regiments, 34 batteries, and 46 infantry battalions presently there--50% of the Indian army, which would become vulnerable to reduction. 52 Air control might have worked in Waziristan: after all, it did so, combined with a version of the Sandeman system, in Kurdistan and southern Iraq. Against this, air control always failed whenever it confronted troubles in towns, or major insurgencies, as in Palestine during 1929 and 1936-39, and Iraq during 1941, when only soldiers could save the situation. Their numbers were few, because of substitution engendered by the RAF. Given Britains need for the Indian army in 1939-45, adopting air control on the north west frontier would have ranked high among the false economies of the British Empire. The RAF focused on this target, against great resistance. In 1922, it advocated a trial involving intensive bombing by 30-40 machines for months if necessary just to make life intolerable for the offending sections by preventing them from moving freely about, grazing cattle, tilling fields, etc.,--upsetting, in fact, as completely as possible their normal mode of life. 53 The RAF was not allowed such a trial until 1925, when for 54 days, 26 aircraft attacked villages and any targets which might present themselves. Yet it minimized attacks on civilians, failed in attempts to set fire to crops, and carefully controlled damage, such as destroying terraced fields, which might prejudice the resumption of normal economic life when peace should be made. 54 Generals conceded that the RAF had made an immense difference on the north west frontier, yet until 1947, air support became a routine but secondary element of military control on the frontier, restrained by political officers and controlled by the army. 55 It bolstered the power of blockade and the ability to strike isolated foes. It was fundamental to the last great frontier campaign, against the Faqir of Ipi, yet always restrained. Britain treated Muslims more gently than it did Germans. The RAF understood the roots for its failures. In 1922, a senior airman, John Salmond, noted that soldiers were weary of their lives in awful birdcages of wire in Waziristan, but would offer the most uncompromising hostility to air policing so long it threatened massive cuts in the army. 56 Air policing in India was governed by politics at high levels. Ironically, the orientalist views of generals sheltered civilians from air attack, in part, because of the imprecision of contemporary airpower. In 1922, army officers thought that with good intelligence mullah-chasing should be a profitable employment for one or two aeroplanesi.e.
51 52

Viceroy telegram to India Office, 28.11.21, L/PO/415 Memorandum by Deputy Director of Operations and Intelligence,, 29.6.25, Outline Scheme for the Control of the North West Frontier of India by RAF, AIR 5/413. 53 Salmond to Trenchard, 21.7.22, AIR 2/232 S. 19755 54 Commander in Chief India to India Office, 29.6.25, L/MIL 7/16950 55 Chetwode to Findlater Stewart, 23.11.31, General Philip Chetwode papers, IORL, D 714/17 56 Salmond to Trenchard, 21.7.22, AIR 2/232 S. 19755

the instigating man who is behind every jihad should have his life made a burden to him. Had British forces possessed aircraft as precise as Predators, probably they would have used them, as we do. Conclusions.

57

This paper has explained a negative: Why did Britain use counter-insurgency so rarely as a solution to its problems in Afghanistan, and the north west frontier? These experiences regarding Afghanistan of a western empire spread across the world, with one pillar in the Indian sub-continent, are unique, but they have similarities to those of the Mughals and Pakistan. The root of British policy, its views of an internal, or an internal-external threat, are hard to generalize. No modern leader of India would say, as British officials did, that India is as quiet as a barrel of gunpowder. Many Indian and western leaders, however, might say that Pakistan is as quiet as a nuclear stockpile. So too, for Pakistan, Pashtuns pose an atomic version of an internalexternal threat. For all parties, counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and the FATA carries the risk of destabilizing more important places. British concerns with the links between Afghanistan, the north west frontier and global jihad parallel modern western views. These links are as strong as Britain ever faced, or feared, partly because its actions created these connections. Its operations in Afghanistan and the north west frontier encouraged the rise of a new ethno-religious identity among Pashtuns, which linked manliness, resistance to occupation, and the idea of holy warrior, or ghazi. British diplomatic experience in managing Afghanistan, in Kabul and other capitals, easily can be extrapolated elsewhere. Britain showed one example of what to do with Afghanistan when one cannot conquer it or conduct counter insurgency there. Britain succeeded when three conditions coincided: it had something to offer, was feared, and could find Afghans willing to cooperate. Britain found solutions to some problems, but was left with a costly condition, which it could not overcome. Britain contained that condition, which was all that it needed, or really wanted, to do. Their condition is our inheritance. John Ferris The University of Calgary

57

No VI, Diary of Inspection Tour by A.V.M. Sir J. Salmond, n.d., c. July 1922, AIR 2/232 S. 19755