- 6 months ago
Documentary, Afghanistan The Great Game Part 1
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00:00Afghanistan one of the most isolated barren landscapes on earth it's difficult to believe
00:14that any Empire would want to invade it and yet it's become the unlikely target
00:20an obsession of some of the world's greatest empires and superpowers
00:25in 1839 up these city walls above Kabul marched red coated veterans of Waterloo in 1879 Highlanders
00:38charged to the sound of the bagpipes in 1979 Russian special forces swooped over these
00:46hills and their helicopters and in 2001 an American-led coalition invaded Afghanistan
00:55each of these invasions has ended in tragedy and humiliation and each has sparked a fierce
01:02Afghan resistance we have never ever liked to be conquered it's really easy to get into Afghanistan
01:11it's just getting out part is very difficult don't go into Afghanistan and get whatever you do involved
01:18in a tribal war starting with the British invasions of the 19th century how has this history forged the
01:28Afghanistan of today and what is it about this place and the paranoia and aggression of empires
01:34that has created repeated tragedy in these two films I want to explore what dragged these great
01:43nations into Afghanistan and why they found it so difficult to leave
01:50to sense some of the complexity of the Afghanistan the Victorian Britain chose to invade you don't even need to leave contemporary London I've come to Ealing for an evening of Afghan food music and traditional
02:20costume with a group of Afghans now resident here in west London in this room a dizzying array of ethnic groups Pashtun, Tajik, Khazara, Turkmen, Noristani all Afghans and all holding different religious and political views
02:42The divisions and consequences of war have led to more than five million Afghans fleeing their country since the 1980s
02:49The divisions and consequences of war have led to more than five million Afghans fleeing their country since the 1980s
02:54Do you think for example Britain should remain in Helmut?
02:57Until they will have the infrastructure in the proper way I think they should remain
03:03So you don't think the British should remain in Helmut?
03:06Absolutely not!
03:07The microcosm of Afghanistan is there in that room and some of these people are now sitting down together around a table and in those histories and the suspicions of who joined the Jihad, who came from which ethnic group and many of the fissures that continue to haunt Afghanistan today
03:26And all this complexity and Afghan history, both ancient and modern, so difficult to understand, so often overlooked, still matters deeply for all of us today
03:38And it continues to preoccupy commentators such as Akbar Ahmed, who I've come to meet here in Washington DC
03:45Professor Ahmed, a Pakistani who once worked as an administrator on the Northwest Frontier with Afghanistan arrived in the States where he now teaches a day before the World Trade Center attack
03:58But his direct appeal to the White House for caution fell on deaf ears
04:04I think on 9-11 the US administration had no idea about Afghanistan, its tribes, its history
04:14But it was so motivated, so intensely motivated by a sense of anger, a sense of revenge, a sense of honour
04:23That at all costs, it had to rush into Afghanistan
04:27I said, many, many superpowers have gone charging into Afghanistan, be very careful
04:33And that is the big problem, that when you combine arrogance with a lack of knowledge of that part of the world, you are almost guaranteed to run into trouble
04:43I sensed this tension myself when I walked across Afghanistan shortly after 9-11
04:49I found a hospitable and attractive country, but still deeply conservative, isolated and difficult for a foreigner to understand
04:58It made me reflect on the superpowers who have so often invaded the mountains of Afghanistan
05:04How often they get caught up in their own strategic games
05:08How easily they become out of touch, failing to grasp the complexity and resistance of Afghanistan
05:15And I felt the same was true for the British in the 19th century
05:19When they came, they were focused not on Afghanistan itself, but its neighbours
05:24If I were a British redcoat standing on this wall in 1839
05:28I would have been told that the reason I was here was that British India lay to the east and Russia lay to the north
05:35And Afghanistan was trapped between two expanding empires
05:40Afghanistan, a largely barren country, but with a rich Islamic civilisation, had long fought and traded with its Muslim and Asian neighbours
05:53But it had never encountered a non-Muslim power as alien as Britain
05:57And yet in the 1830s, Afghanistan was perceived, as it is believed to be today
06:03To be an immediate threat to British national security
06:08A place for the politicians and generals of empire to fret about
06:14For hundreds of years, all the conflicts had happened here in Europe
06:19And suddenly, it exploded east
06:22Russia raced towards Japan
06:24Britain came into India
06:26And as these great empires expanded
06:29There was this zone in between
06:31Almost a blank space on the map
06:33With very, very few towns
06:35A place of deserts and mountains
06:38And although these two empires were still 4,000 miles apart
06:43They were certain that they were about to meet
06:46They were going to meet here, in Afghanistan
06:49As Britain and Russia stretched and flexed, Afghanistan
07:00One of the most remote and impoverished kingdoms in the world
07:04Found itself sandwiched between two empires
07:07Who both claimed, at least, to be its friend
07:10Britain feared Russia might creep south towards British-ruled India
07:16The jewel in the crown of the empire
07:19And the second centre of British political power
07:21But suspicions worked both ways
07:24The Russians were equally nervous about Britain moving north from its base in India
07:36Sensing that these two empires would collide in Afghanistan
07:39The British government was hungry for intelligence on this blank space
07:44A spy was dispatched
07:47Alexander Burns
07:49A man I believe to be one of our greatest ever political officers
07:54This is not a man actually in fancy dress
07:58He's in disguise
08:00One of dozens of British officers who made their reputations
08:05Doing journeys which were almost suicidal
08:08Burns was one of the very first to study Afghanistan for British intelligence
08:13His spying mission was both extraordinary and brave
08:18In 1831, travelling undercover in disguise
08:22He surveyed the route all the way from India through Kabul to Bukhara
08:27And produced the first detailed accounts of Afghan politics
08:32He set off with no protection into one of the most dangerous and unknown parts of Asia
08:37A place where his predecessors had been killed
08:40Where he was having to run the gauntlet of slave traders
08:44Where he was a Christian moving through some regions which were fanatically Muslim
08:48And which were famous for killing infidels
08:50Trying to rely all the way, not on his sword, but as he says in a letter to his mother
08:56On his languages, on his charm, on his politeness
08:59Along with the suicidal danger of what Burns did
09:04Was the incredible reward
09:06Because when he returned back to London
09:09Having completed this journey
09:10This nearly 12 month journey
09:12Through largely unknown country
09:14He was a massive celebrity
09:16He returned 28 years old
09:19Had an audience with the king
09:21Was made a member of the Athenean club
09:23Got a gold medal from the Royal Geographical Society
09:28And the book Burns wrote, Travels to Bukhara, became an overnight bestseller
09:33But although it gave Britain a unique insight into this largely unknown land
09:38According to historian William Dalrymple
09:40His visit also terrified the Russians
09:43And had an unanticipated counterproductive effect
09:48There are British agents in Central Asia
09:50Long before the Russians are taking any interest
09:52In cities like Bukhara and Kiva
09:54And it's only when Burns' travel book
09:57Journeys into Bukhara
09:58Is translated into French
09:59And becomes widely read in Moscow
10:01That the Russians think they should send an agent in
10:05To make sure the British are not manoeuvring
10:08And making plots in their backyard
10:14Shortly after Burns was sent back to Kabul in 1836
10:17He spotted this Russian agent, Yan Vykevich
10:21And the Russians' arrival terrified the British
10:24They became in turn very suspicious of Russia's ambitions in the country
10:30And this mutual paranoia
10:32Led to more and more foreign intelligence operations around Afghanistan
10:37With rival officers like Vykevich and Burns
10:41Sending back countless reports on each other's activities
10:48The Russians called it the Tournament of Shadows
10:51The British now remember it
10:53Thanks to Rudyard Kipling's later writing as
10:56The Great Game
10:59One of my favourite books is Kipling's Kim
11:03Which describes the Great Game through the eyes of this young English boy
11:09Who's working on the Northwest Frontier as a spy
11:12It's incredibly dangerous work, his intrigues with the Russians
11:16He's a secret agent, he's deniable, he's at arm's length from the British government
11:21But of course, this was a game that had two teams
11:24And on the other side, the Russians
11:28Men like Vykevich
11:30Travelling into Kabul
11:32Developing relationships with the Afghan king
11:34Returning with his own documents and maps
11:36The beginning of a whole tradition
11:38Whereby, whenever the British saw a Russian painter turn up in the city
11:43A Russian hunter turn up on the frontier
11:46They would immediately assume that this was a double game of espionage
11:50It was all these fears and suspicions of empire
11:54That were to turn Afghanistan into a battleground
11:57According to Britain's former ambassador to Moscow
12:00Historian Sir Roderick Braithwaite
12:02They thought that the Russians are getting their agents into Kabul
12:07And we must forestall them
12:09We've got to do something here
12:10These Russians allegedly coming over the front
12:12Of course the Russians had a mirror image view of us
12:15They saw our agents penetrating north of Afghanistan
12:18Into areas of Central Asia
12:20Which they thought were their interest
12:22They believed that these guys would come with propaganda
12:24Islamic propaganda
12:26Weapons, money
12:27And stir up these places against the Russians
12:29So they were as terrified as we were
12:39By 1839, the British government was increasingly obsessed with the Russian threat
12:43Key advisors, men who'd never set foot in Afghanistan
12:49Began to claim that Russia might use Afghanistan
12:52As a stepping stone for the invasion of British India
12:58Britain's man on the ground in Afghanistan, Alexander Burns
13:01Thought that Afghanistan should be left well alone
13:04But a small group of policy makers in the government of India
13:08Had very different ideas
13:10They ignored Burns completely
13:12In their minds, Afghanistan was an empty, failed state
13:17Into which Russia would move
13:22The Hawks decided the answer was regime change
13:25To topple the sitting king of Afghanistan, Dost Muhammad
13:28And replace him with their own man
13:30British intelligence felt they had the perfect candidate
13:36Shah Shuja
13:38A man who'd been living in British India for 30 years
13:41A bane and beautifully dressed
13:43A man who could be relied upon to do Britain's bidding
13:49To justify themselves, they published a document
13:51Claiming that Dost Muhammad
13:53Who was trying to keep his distance from both Russia and Britain
13:56Was in fact disloyal to the British
13:59And represented an imminent and urgent threat
14:02To the British Empire
14:06The motives are always very mixed
14:08It's both the aggressive, expansive imperial instinct
14:11Plus the terror that it's going to come up against a brick wall
14:14Or somebody's going to come and take it all away from you
14:17And the trouble with intervention is that you may or may not have identified
14:21The right target, but you then tend to use the wrong means for dealing with it
14:26So were the Hawks right to fear Russia?
14:33Here in Moscow, I've come to meet an eminent Russian historian of the period
14:37Professor Tatiana Zagorodnikova
14:41I wanted to ask her if Russia was really preparing to invade Afghanistan
14:45As a bridgehead for an attack on India
14:47That was the time of colonization of smaller, weaker states
14:54And that was a process all over the world
14:57Not only in Great Britain and in Russia
15:00The same in France, the same in other great powers
15:06Great Britain at that time considered every step of Russia
15:10Either in Europe or in Asia and maybe even in Africa
15:20As a Russian step towards India
15:23Everything was considered as the Russians march to India
15:27Were the British paranoid?
15:29Well, it was just, to my mind, it was a game
15:34Kind of making face towards audience, towards public opinion
15:41Another thing is that it was a wonderful pretext in the parliament
15:47To demand more money for military purposes
15:51For keeping big armies in India and so on
15:55The Hawks were obsessed with putting their man on the throne
16:03But their belief in a Russian threat was more faith than reality
16:07The dossier was torn to pieces in the British press
16:11Everyone from the Duke of Wellington attacked the idea as madness
16:16But rather than calling off the mission, these men pushed on
16:20And within a few weeks, the army of the Indus was marching into Afghanistan
16:25As we know in our own time, if you create a phantasm, a horror figure
16:31Of your own imaginings, that figure can actually come into being
16:34You can imagine a threat into life
16:37Just like the neocons had wanted to topple Saddam Hussein long before 9-11
16:43And 9-11 gave the neocons the excuse they were looking for
16:46In the same way the Hawks, the Russophobes in the British establishment
16:50In Simla and in Calcutta, had been wanting to pre-empt the Russians in Central Asia
16:55As they wound their way through the narrow passes towards Kabul, the British army was supremely confident
17:09They had never been defeated in Central Asia
17:13And many in the army were treating it as a game
17:17A lot of the young officers were behaving as though they were going on a grand picnic
17:21Their generals were enraged
17:24These 22-year-olds were travelling with camel trains
17:27Piled with meth silver, with eau de cologne, with exotic wines
17:30The 16th Lancers even managed to bring their own pack of foxhounds towards Afghanistan
17:43The army of the Indus arrived in Kabul in April 1839
17:48And as they swaggered into the city, they had little idea of the horrors ahead
17:52The British entered Kabul in squadrons
18:05The Royal Horse Artillery in gold
18:08The Lancers in scarlet, the Dragoons in blue
18:11The ostrich feathers on the hats of the envoys
18:14With all the glory of a parade, a victory parade
18:16But around them in the crowded bazaar, blank faces, hostility, suspicion
18:23Britain had taken a decisive step and placed an army of occupation in this distant and unlikely land
18:32But as the soldiers settled into life in Kabul, their need for security made them live in protected compounds
18:39Separate from the Afghan people
18:41And this only encouraged suspicions on both sides
18:44The English knew so little about the real life of Kabul
18:49If they came down to the city at all, they travelled in armed groups
18:54Seeing hostile Afghan faces, glimpses of tiny windows, blank mud walls
19:01And they had very, very little idea about the rich civilisation behind those doors
19:07Largely hidden from and totally misunderstood by most British troops was a culture of extraordinary richness
19:24A culture of calligraphy, miniature painting and poetry
19:28With sophisticated Afghan forms of law, government and patronage
19:34The occupation dragged on and the British only became more and more entrenched and the Afghans began to get anxious
19:48The thing that really worried the Afghans was when the women began to arrive and European babies were born
19:57That the British were here to stay
20:00The British and the towers of their fort and the Afghans gazing back at them from their family compounds
20:12Began to look at each other with deepening mistrust and incomprehension
20:16I've come to a rain-soaked Boston to meet a world authority on Afghan anthropology and history, Professor Tom Barfield
20:29Appropriately, I met him here in the Helmand restaurant
20:33And I wanted to ask him about some of the many differences between these cultures
20:37If you go to an Afghan feast, people are very religious
20:43But they're religious at the end of the meal
20:46You thank God for having eaten a wonderful meal
20:49As one of my Afghan friends said to me
20:51Why do you Americans pray before the meal?
20:54You haven't eaten it, you have no idea whether God deserves the praise or not, or the host
20:59But the lesson that I took from him is that we foreigners
21:02Are too keen to praise the fact that the feast is here
21:07And the Afghans' sake, there's one more step
21:10Let's eat the feast and decide whether it deserves it
21:14So the Afghans tend to look more at the outcome than at the intentions
21:18And that logic appears to apply to how Afghans choose the perfect leader
21:24The ideal ruler says to the Afghans
21:27That without me, these foreigners would invade and occupy our country
21:33Without me and my skill, Afghanistan would not be independent
21:38I am defending a Muslim nation
21:41At the same time, he turns to the foreigners and says
21:44Only I can keep control of the Afghans
21:47And I can only do that if you send me money and weapons
21:51By 1841, Britain's choice of ruler had proved a disaster
21:55Once Shah Shuja was on the throne, Afghans quickly saw him as weak, as corrupt
22:02And worst of all, as a puppet of a foreign, non-Muslim government
22:07In a courtyard in Kabul, I asked Afghan academic Omar Sharifi
22:12About how Afghans perceived Shah Shuja
22:14When Shah Shuja came and his era as a king
22:19The tradition was like you meant a coin
22:23With a poem that describes who you are and what you mean
22:27I am Shah Shuja the great king
22:29And I will rule the one who rules from the depth of the sea
22:32All the way to the height of the skies
22:34Afghans saw that in the bazaar, in the market
22:37They've changed the poem and the poem says
22:40This infidel Shah Shuja
22:42He's nothing but the light of the eyes of the lords
22:45Which was the British
22:47And Burns, which was Alexander Burns
22:49If you were an Afghan seeing a red-coated British soldier in the street
22:53What would your reaction be?
22:55Well, the Afghans saw a bunch of people
22:58In red coats
23:00Muskets on their shoulder
23:02They do not look like them, do not talk like them, do not think like them
23:06How they can live when they see the foreigners, the British, walking in the streets
23:11And they are not Muslims
23:16Nobody really knew what was happening in Afghanistan
23:19Optimistic British officers felt that with a bit more time and a bit more money
23:23They were going to be able to win
23:24And suddenly when rumours began to spread through the teahouses and the bazaars
23:28That British officers were interfering with Afghan women
23:31A match had been lit
23:33Which would spark an insurgency
23:35Suddenly, up and down the country
23:38Afghans began to feel that their culture had been insulted
23:41That their king was only a puppet
23:43And that they needed to fight for Afghanistan and for Islam
23:47Against a foreign military occupation
23:54And that they needed to fight for Afghanistan
23:56And that they needed to fight for Afghanistan
23:58And that they needed to fight for Afghanistan
24:00Dost Muhammad, the Emir the British had deposed
24:04To make way for Shah Shuja, was in exile
24:07But he and his family used the presence of non-Muslim occupiers
24:12To mobilise Afghans by calling for a jihad
24:16And for many Afghans, this action was the birth of the modern state of Afghanistan
24:22The moment around which they united as a nation
24:26By November 1841, Muslims in Kabul were ready to join this jihad
24:31But the British were taken completely by surprise
24:35Even Alexander Burns, our envoy so prized for his local knowledge
24:40Completely underestimated how dangerous the situation had become
24:45Alexander Burns loved Kabul and Afghan culture
24:48He was used to walking through the streets as though he was at home in Scotland
24:53If you'd asked him, he would have said he could have trusted Afghans with his life
24:57But on that night, in November 1841, he walked home to a city that had changed
25:05He looked into eyes that no longer greeted him
25:08And as he made his way back through the narrow streets towards his house
25:12He was seeing a hostility that he hadn't sensed before
25:18By dusk, an armed mob had surrounded his house
25:23In one last attempt, he walked out onto the balcony of his house
25:28And in his most confident manner, in beautiful Persian
25:32Appealed to their sense of hospitality, of generosity, their treatment of a guest
25:37But he got nothing back
25:41And in the end, he had to send a desperate message to the British garrison
25:46Asking for help
25:48And for the first time, retreated back into his house
25:52Knowing that the only thing that stood between him and death
25:56Were the gates of his house
25:57Burnes' home
26:08His paradise where he'd entertained for so long
26:12The Kabul that he loved had become a death trap
26:20Burnes' last glimpse of a city that he loved and thought the most beautiful in the world
26:24Was not of gardens, not of poetry
26:27But a last desperate sprint across his neighbours' roofs
26:31Hoping that he could find a way out
26:33But the crowd was everywhere
26:35He wrapped a turban around his head
26:37Dropped down, praying he wouldn't be recognised
26:39And for a moment, he wasn't
26:41But then the cry went up
26:43Sir Kander Burns, he was hacked down
26:47The next morning, his head was on a pole
26:50In the bazaar
26:51The day before Burns' death, the British had been congratulating themselves on the peace and tranquillity in Afghanistan
27:08The day after, everything had collapsed
27:11A British trooper came staggering into the fort with five musket wounds in his body
27:16Cuts to his head and shoulders, stark naked, having just escaped from the Afghan insurgents
27:22The food was lost, the ammunition was running down
27:25And within three days of Burns' death, the British generals were talking about a treaty of surrender
27:32And a retreat from Kabul
27:34The British commander, General Elphinstone, tried to negotiate with the Afghans
27:40The Afghans offered him safe passage, provided the British handed over their heavy weapons
27:46And retreated immediately to India
27:48It must have felt like an impossible decision
27:51If the garrison tried to stay, they could starve and be wiped out
27:56But if they were to retreat, could they really trust the assurances of their enemy?
28:01I faced a similar dilemma, on a smaller scale, when I was a deputy governor in the south of Iraq
28:08After the invasion, in 2004
28:11Our compound was under siege, we were being attacked by Sadrish militia
28:15And their commander came to us and said that if we agreed to leave our weapons
28:20And hand ourselves over to him, he would take us safely out of the fort and back
28:24At the time, I thought it was a trick, it was a trick to massacre us
28:28And I felt, again, the same thing when I read this history
28:33In Iraq, we stayed and defended the compound
28:37But the British and Kabul, in 1841, were deeply divided
28:41Many young officers were determined to fight on
28:45But Elphinstone overruled them and ordered a retreat
28:48All the troops, their wives and children, were forced to leave the relative safety of their compound
28:55And to try and reach the British garrison in Jalalabad
28:59Nine days march east of Kabul
29:02They made painfully slow progress
29:06And after two days, this straggling column of soldiers and civilians
29:11Met their fate beneath this mountain
29:14This valley is the jaws of hell
29:19Into this, in mid-winter
29:23The cream of the British army marched
29:26And they were treated as though they were in a slaughterhouse
29:29By the time they reached this valley, Khord, Kabul
29:40They had spent two nights out in the open in three-foot snow
29:44In temperatures of minus 15, without tents
29:48Waking up to discover frozen corpses around them
29:51They staggered into this valley
29:53Starving, frozen, with no supplies and 80 miles to go
29:59And it was at that point that the attack began
30:02The attack began
30:18Behind every boulder was an Afghan with a musket
30:23Taking careful aim
30:25Able to pick off individually 3,000 people and kill them
30:28As they made their way through the valley
30:31And it continued, not just for one or two miles
30:37But for five miles of a ravine
30:49By the time they reached the end of that valley
30:5190% of the British army had been extinguished
30:55A handful of soldiers managed to fight their way through
31:12But only to meet their fate later
31:15What we've got here is the last stand of the 44th foot at Gundamug
31:2050 men make it to the village of Gundamug
31:23They stand on this low hill
31:25And they have run out of ammunition
31:28They're relying only on their banners
31:30And the picture we see here is half of them are dead
31:33And the batons are about to close in
31:36And end it with their swords
31:38Of the 17,000 men, women and children
31:41Who'd set out nine days earlier from Kabul
31:44Only one made it to the British garrison in Jalalabad
31:47One man has made it on from there
31:50There's Dr Bryden
31:52And in this picture Dr Bryden is sitting on his old nag
31:55About to collapse
31:57And he is seen limping towards Jalalabad
32:00And they assume he's only the first of thousands of troops
32:03To make it through and the gates are opened
32:05And a party is sent out
32:07And they realize he's the only one
32:08And that night the commanding officer orders the bugles to be sounded all night
32:14The wind was blowing very strongly that night
32:19And rather than billowing out into the plain of Jalalabad
32:22It blew back into the town
32:24And he said that the noise of the trumpets echoing amid the wail of the wind
32:31Sounded like an elegy to the dead army
32:34The British Empire never had and never would experience a defeat like it
32:40The First Afghan War was a major event for the Afghans
32:44We always see it through our perspective as the great imperial disaster
32:48But for the Afghans this was their Trafalgar, their Battle of Britain
32:52Their Waterloo all in one
32:54They were the only non-colonial power to see off a modern westernized army
33:01In the 19th century
33:04On the magnificent scale that they did
33:07And completely destroy an entire Victorian army
33:10At the very peak of Britain's power
33:14For Afghans this had confirmed that they were a warrior nation
33:18One even capable of seeing off a great power like Britain
33:22But western historians point to another legacy that resonates today
33:27The first time there's really a feeling of Jihad inside Afghanistan
33:32Is the first Anglo-Afghan War
33:34After that it never really goes away
33:37Beginning with the British invasions
33:40Afghans begin to perceive themselves as fighting an outside non-Muslim world
33:45Now they had known this before
33:47When they raided India that was Jihad
33:49You know, you got to go into infidel lands and take home a lot of good stuff
33:53But inside Afghanistan you couldn't do Jihad
33:57Now when these foreigners invaded people would say
33:59Yes, we're fighting non-Muslims
34:03The British government would have liked to cover up the extent of this tragedy
34:08But it was not to be
34:10Almost every last grisly detail was immortalized in the best-selling diaries of Lady Sale
34:16Wife of one of the senior officers in the Kabul Army
34:20She was captured during the retreat
34:23And later released
34:25And her original diaries and letters
34:27Are kept here in the British Library
34:30I took a look at them with historian Jane Robinson
34:33Well, the book ran into several reprints in the first couple of years
34:38It sold seven and a half thousand copies, which was huge
34:41And it was serialized in the times
34:43And the response to it was unprecedented, I think
34:48Because this was the first time that a woman, a British woman
34:51Had written from the theatre of war
34:53Lady Sale's account of the retreat from Kabul was shockingly explicit
34:59To see women and children and soldiers and camp followers
35:04In various states of decomposition
35:07And she actually describes it
35:09I see here that some of the text has been excised
35:11I think has possibly been too strong
35:13That this was horrific stuff
35:15Subsequently we heard that scarcely any of these poor wretches escaped
35:19And that driven to the extreme of hunger
35:21They'd sustained life by feeding on their dead comrades
35:25And she knew that the army was doomed
35:29She does say earlier on
35:31I fear that nobody is going to survive this
35:34The newspaper's serialisation sparked a macabre fascination
35:39With the savagery of the Afghans
35:41She was a British representative in Kabul
35:45She was part of the establishment there
35:47Part of the machine
35:49And the fact that she had been attacked by the Afghans
35:51It meant that the Afghans were particularly dastardly
35:55Because they had attacked what was most
35:57Not sacred but almost sacred about British society
36:01But actually this is extremely unfair
36:03Because in fact the Afghans went out of their way
36:05To save all the women and children
36:07Yes but that's not what the audience got from this
36:09Not at all
36:11What they saw was the sensation
36:12What they saw was the dead bodies
36:13What they saw was the cannibalism
36:15Perhaps to limit the damage to our imperial reputation
36:17The British spun this as a story of heroism and bravery
36:22The way this was treated when it was published
36:25Was indeed propaganda I think
36:28She was paraded before Queen Victoria
36:30There was a city named Sail in Australia
36:32There was a ship named Sail in the Navy
36:35And she was promoted as a heroine
36:37She was made into a celebrity
36:39To try and distract I think
36:41We're defeated but we turn out of the defeat
36:43The fact that we're really lions
36:45Yes
36:51The British Empire had been humiliated
36:53And the defeat was seared into our historical memory
36:57Creating a view of Afghanistan as a graveyard of empire
37:01An unconquerable land
37:03But that's only part of the story
37:06Because later that year the British sent an army of retribution
37:09Which sought savage revenge for its losses
37:13And raised to the ground Kabul's historic bazaar
37:16But having dealt the Afghans a punishing blow
37:19Instead of occupying the country
37:22They ended the first Anglo-Afghan war with a deal
37:26At this point they announced
37:28Now we're going to withdraw
37:31But now you can see that if we want to come back
37:34We can do it
37:35You guys have not defeated us militarily
37:38Now we need to cut a deal
37:40And they take Dos Mohamed
37:42The ruler that they had dispossessed
37:45They say okay you can go back again
37:47So it's like Dos Mohamed part 2
37:49But he tells the British
37:51I understand your needs
37:53You must understand mine
37:55And the two sides come to a modus vivendi
37:57So yes the Afghans can claim a great victory
37:59But on the other hand the ruler that they've put back in power
38:01Understands what Britain needs
38:04To such an extent that when the mutiny occurs in India in 1857
38:08The so called Sepoy rebellion
38:11And the Afghans are urged to march on Peshawar to ally with the rebels
38:15Dos Mohamed says no I've signed an agreement with the British
38:18And besides I think they're going to win
38:19The Afghans took enormous pride in their resistance to the British
38:25And the political settlement led to a period of confidence and relative stability
38:30During which time the British and the Afghans treated each other with a wary respect
38:37But the rivalry between Russia and Britain only continued to intensify
38:42A thousand miles from Afghanistan in 1854 the two powers fought a brutal war in the Crimea
38:56And if anything the fears of Russian ambition was growing
39:01Then in the late 1870s Russians again appeared in Kabul
39:05A new generation of British Hawks decided the only response was again to invade
39:12Again there was a public outcry
39:14Again imperial paranoia triumphed
39:17And once again a British army
39:19This time 40,000 strong was marching into Afghanistan
39:24To prevent Kabul being taken
39:27The Afghan emir signed an agreement with the British
39:30But a new envoy Sir Louis Cavanaire another swashbuckling multilingual officer
39:36Was installed in Kabul
39:38Remembering that Burns had been massacred escaping from his unfortified house in the old city
39:43Cavanaire took up residency in this ancient citadel the Bala Hisar
39:48Sir Louis Cavanaire the new British envoy rode in on his elephant into this citadel with a tiny escort
39:55He'd taken three lessons from the death of his predecessor Alexander Burns
40:01Always live within the fortified citadel
40:04Don't come in with a large army of occupation
40:07And never touch the local women
40:09But despite all his care
40:11He was soon hearing rumors that the Afghans wanted to kill him
40:15Cavanaire thought he'd learned from Burns that it was better to be in the Bala Hisar
40:19But this was actually the palace of the Afghan kings and his presence there also caused offense
40:27Here I met up with Prince Ali Siraj
40:32A member of the Afghan royal family whose palace this was
40:36People were not very pleased that a British ambassador had been put in the Bala Hisar
40:42Why were they angry about that?
40:45Because it reminded them of the first angri-Afghan war
40:47They figured here comes the British again, you know
40:50And they're here to occupy Afghanistan once again
40:53We have never ever liked to be conquered
40:57We have accepted poverty because we want to be free
41:01They did not understand the Afghan psyche
41:03They figured that they were in India and they took, you know, the East Indian Company
41:07You know, I was so successful in India
41:10They figured, ah, Afghanistan, rowdy people, you know, with baggy pants and turbans, you know
41:14We're easy to rule, easy to control
41:17But they forgot that Afghanistan is a nation of warriors
41:20I couldn't help asking him if we were making the same mistakes today
41:25There was an American, I will not say which organization
41:28He told to me, he says, oh, Prince Ali
41:31I have received a billion dollars from the United States
41:33I said, what are you going to do with this money?
41:34He says, well, we're going to roll into the village
41:38And we're going to build things
41:39I said, sir, if you roll into the village, you're going to roll you out
41:43I said, you roll up to the village
41:46Then you send an emissary inside the village
41:48Talk to the elders, they will do one of two things
41:50Either invite you in, or they will send somebody out to meet with you
41:53Then once they invite you in, you sit down and you talk to them
41:57But don't tell them what you're going to do
41:59Ask them what they want
42:01Respect
42:02If you do that, you will have them in your pocket
42:05The Afghan king who'd negotiated with the British was seen as weak
42:09Ordinary Afghans hated the deal he'd struck with the British
42:13And they hated the presence of Kavanari in Kabul
42:16Finally, an Afghan regiment mutinied and marched on his residence
42:21Kavanari looked out on the screaming mob
42:24Knowing the nearest reinforcements were hundreds of miles away
42:26He led a suicidal charge, was killed, and his mutilated corpse was put on display
42:33Mortified by his death and desperate to salvage their credibility
42:39Britain launched another invasion into Afghanistan
42:42The commander of the lead column, General Roberts, was told
42:44Your objective should be to strike terror, and to strike it swiftly and deeply
42:51Four weeks after the envoy was killed, a highland regiment had fought its way to the top of that ridge line
42:58And the next day, General Roberts had seized Kabul
43:03He came here to the citadel, where he saw the blood spattered walls and the mangled corpse of the envoy and his comrades
43:11In rage, General Roberts set up a gallows on the wall
43:15He hanged a hundred Afghans, demolished the palaces of the Afghan nobility
43:19And at that point, with honour satisfied, many suggested he should withdraw
43:25But the Afghan king had been deposed
43:28The country was unstable
43:30Britain had taken responsibility for Afghanistan
43:34And leaving no longer seemed an option
43:39While General Roberts sat in Kabul, the countryside was now in revolt
43:43Suddenly a jihad had been called against them
43:47And when they looked out on a winter evening from their small camp in Kabul
43:51They could see right along this ridge line, 60,000 watch fires burning
43:57From Afghans bent on their destruction
44:00It must have seemed as though history was repeating itself exactly
44:06And the one lesson that Britain should be taking away
44:10Was never to invade Afghanistan
44:11This time, unlike his predecessor, General Roberts decided to stay and fight
44:18And he was able just to withstand the siege of his compound in Kabul
44:23But in Helmand province, the Afghans completely defeated and wiped out another British unit
44:30This time in the Battle of Maiwand
44:34It's one of Afghanistan's most famous victories
44:36And I met Abi Arian, an Afghan living in London, at this British memorial to Maiwand
44:43History has it that the Afghans won because of the rousing battle cry of a young woman called Malalai
44:49She's an ordinary Afghan girl
44:52As she's standing in the battle, she can see that the Afghans are losing
44:56And she stood there, took a veil off, and said,
45:00If you love your country, and if you're real Pashtun, and if you don't want to be ashamed
45:04You have to go and fight the British
45:06Remember when Elizabeth stood in front of the Spanish Armada?
45:10Give this speech to the British Army
45:15To us, that was equivalent to that
45:17And by revealing her face, actually, in some ways, it's a kind of shame for her and her family
45:22Everybody sees her face, but she's going to die, so it doesn't matter
45:25Absolutely, and in fact, she dies in the battle as well
45:29But the encouragement she gave to the Afghans there was immense
45:32Unlike the massacre of the British Army and the retreat from Kabul, Maiwand was not covered in a serialisation in the times
45:40So although a thousand British soldiers were killed, this memorial in Reading is almost all that remains
45:47And its meaning is now largely forgotten
45:50But ask an Afghan, and you get a very different response
45:53This battle, like the retreat from Kabul, is still the stuff of legend
45:58As an Afghan child, as you learn how to walk, you know about the battles we had with the British
46:05It's part of our DNA, it's part of our life
46:09Maiwand is like a legend in Afghanistan
46:12I think, in a way, the British are trying to justify it
46:14They say, oh, it was really a semi-hard day
46:17We didn't have as much as...
46:19The Afghans had superior firepower
46:21How can Afghan army have a superior firepower than the British?
46:25British troops fighting in Helmand today are often warned by local Afghans that they will meet the same fate
46:32As befell their predecessors in Helmand at Maiwand
46:36We say that all doors are always open for invaders
46:40Look from Alexander the Great all the way to the British and today
46:44It's really easy to get into Afghanistan
46:46It's just getting out part is very difficult
46:48We always don't mind foreign invaders getting in there, relaxing and feeling comfortable
46:54Then we start our fight, this is our traditional way of doing things
46:58What do you think an Afghan villager feels they're fighting for?
47:01For their home and country
47:03For their independence
47:05They don't like foreign invading army to come through their villages
47:09To do it with your mighty force and show, look, I'm here, I'm going to provide you peace and security
47:13This is a joke, honestly it is
47:16Because nobody believed that, Afghans wouldn't accept that
47:19How can somebody bring peace with a gun and weapons?
47:23You can't do that
47:27A thousand British soldiers have been massacred at the Battle of Maiwand
47:31The war was turning against Britain
47:34But the response this time was immediate
47:36There followed one of the most celebrated marches of the entire Victorian era
47:42General Roberts, with an elite band of Gurkhas and Highlanders
47:47Set off from Kabul through unknown territory with no support
47:51320 miles in 20 days in 100 degree heat
47:57Arrived safe at Kandahar
47:59And won a decisive victory that brought the Second Anglo-Afghan War to a close
48:11Having won a victory, the question was, what would Britain do next?
48:16All the fears, all the pride that had dragged them into Afghanistan were still there
48:21They'd spent blood and treasure
48:23There were so many reasons to try to continue an occupation
48:26And yet, they decided to declare a victory and get out
48:31And this is because, despite all these fears
48:35The British Empire had a lot of people who knew the region well
48:39Who spoke the languages well
48:41Who understood their limits
48:43Who understood that it couldn't be done
48:46And nobody summed it up better than General Roberts himself
48:50He said, we have nothing to fear from Afghanistan
48:54And offensive though it may be to our pride
48:58The less they see of us, the less they will dislike us
49:03After decades of battling Russian influence in Afghanistan
49:15The British Empire at the peak of its power bowed to Afghan realities
49:22And struck a deal with their opponent
49:25Just as in 1842, Britain again allowed the most powerful Afghan leader to take the throne
49:32Even though he was their enemy
49:34Abd al-Rahman was an ally of the Russians and had been living on Russian soil
49:37But he was the only man who seemed to have the support and authority to control the country
49:44It's as though after ten years of fighting the Taliban today
49:48The United States and their allies left Afghanistan and put the Taliban back in charge
49:54This extraordinary gamble paid off
49:57For his part, the new king Abd al-Rahman demanded a massive subsidy and no internal interference in his country
50:06In return, Britain got control of Afghan foreign policy
50:09And most importantly, Abd al-Rahman did not allow the Russians to threaten British India
50:15For Britain, it was a perfect solution
50:17And even when Europe descended into the First World War, Afghanistan remained neutral
50:31But this would change in the aftermath of that great war
50:36As the great powers of Europe met here in Versailles
50:39Here empires were broken up, new nation states were created
50:44And Afghanistan, although excluded from the negotiating table, had its own ambitions
50:51For the first time, Afghanistan, so often on the receiving end of British firepower
50:59Itself became the principal aggressor
51:02The new king of Afghanistan saw Britain exhausted by war, facing unrest in India
51:09He called another jihad, took his chance
51:11And invaded British India through the Khaiba Pass
51:15Although Britain saw off this unexpected aggression, they suffered twice as many casualties as the Afghans
51:23But with Russia no longer the threat of old, Britain saw less need for an interest in Afghanistan
51:30And granted the Afghans full independence
51:33But what Afghanistan did with that independence was the opposite of what the British expected
51:44The new king, Armanullah, revealed himself to be a moderniser
51:50The British policy was really to keep Afghanistan locked in the Middle Ages
51:55The last thing they wanted was Afghanistan to change and modernise
52:01And then suddenly, in 1919, modernity came
52:06British ideas came to Afghanistan against Britain's will
52:10And this great process of modernisation came not through the empire
52:15Came not through British bayonets, but through an Afghan king
52:19King Armanullah ruled from this extravagant palace in a European style which he built on the outskirts of Kabul
52:29And he championed a new modernising intellectual elite in Afghanistan
52:34But the country that he was determined to transform
52:37Had changed little in the century that had passed since Britain first took an interest here
52:41It was a country with almost blanket illiteracy
52:45A fragmented country of isolated villages and mountain valleys under feudal rule
52:50The way Britain had found it and left it
52:58Dreaming of modernity in 1927, Armanullah embarks on a grand European tour
53:04The first such trip by an Afghan ruler
53:06The Afghan king arrived in Britain for a full state visit
53:08The flags were out and a slightly anxious British government responded in time-honoured fashion
53:22By taking him to shop for guns and for cars
53:25Which his impoverished country could hardly afford
53:28And when he toured the Rolls-Royce factory he bought a fleet of cars to take back home
53:42It started a long love affair between Afghan royalty and Rolls-Royce
53:47And this car was later part of their fleet now owned by businessman Richard Rainsford
53:53For an Afghan possessing this car really shows that you're part of an international group
53:58You're no longer part of an isolated country at the other end of the world
54:01Well that's right, he was a very sophisticated man
54:03When he went to Europe in 1928
54:06He was not just looking for Rolls-Royce cars
54:08He was looking really to means to be inspired by the West
54:13To how he could modernize his very backward country
54:16And therefore the Rolls-Royce trip to the Derby works
54:19Was part of that overall quest for inspiration and for modernization
54:23A car like this at the time was a pretty expensive thing
54:33It would have cost as much as a house in Fulham
54:36It would have been about £1,500 for the chassis
54:38And another £1,500 even more after £2,000 for the body
54:41Depending on how exotic a body absorbed by the excited owner
54:44Excited owner
54:49What would an Afghan have felt looking at this kind of car?
54:52It would be like looking at something from the space shuttle I imagine
54:55To an Afghanistan farmer or peasant
54:58I think it's tempting today when we look at a car like this
55:04To imagine Amanullar as some sort of corrupt dictator
55:09Who was spraying money around on Rolls-Royces
55:12But in fact really this is part of his love of technology or machinery
55:17It's as though he's returning to the country with a jet engine
55:20Or a new computer system
55:22He's coming back with whole new interests
55:24In railways, in printing machines, in mining technology, in medicine
55:29But for the conservatives in Afghanistan
55:32This is all very dangerous and very dubious
55:34The big story that's spreading through the streets when he arrives
55:37Is he's bringing back a new machine to turn human corpses into soap
55:42Amanullar was just beginning to discover how conservative his country still was
55:48Wild rumours were circulating about how he had become a Catholic
55:51Ate pork, drank alcohol
55:55He became perceived as a foreigner in his own land
55:58Attempting to impose a foreign ideology on his own people
56:04It's easy to laugh at Amanullar
56:06And indeed there's a lot that you can laugh at him for
56:08For example he gathered the tribal elders
56:10And insisted they wore pinstripe trousers and western jackets
56:12But there was also a highly developed serious programme of reform
56:18In fact the most radical programme for state transformation in Afghanistan
56:22Came from an Afghan
56:24He wanted parliamentary elections, a progressive constitution
56:27Education particularly for women
56:29And in the end
56:31When photographs were circulated in the bazaar
56:33Of his wife the Queen
56:35With her head uncovered
56:37With pearls over a plunging neckline
56:38He had to flee
56:41The wheels of that new Rolls Royce
56:43Spinning vainly in the snow
56:45To exile in Italy
56:48It is ironic
56:53When today we're concerned with a powerful hold of Islam
56:57And the problems of establishing democracy in that country
57:00That the only attempt in this whole period
57:04To modernise and democratise Afghanistan
57:06Didn't come from British rule
57:08But from the Afghans themselves
57:13So why did the British go into Afghanistan in the 19th century?
57:17It wasn't really about Afghanistan in the end
57:20It was about the fears of empire
57:22Fear of empty space
57:24Fear of the Russians
57:25Fear in the end
57:27About their own credibility, their pride
57:29In the second film
57:33Two superpowers come calling
57:35And these armies invade Afghanistan
57:37Not just to protect their selfish strategic aims
57:41But also with the objective of bringing profound social change
57:45And reshaping Afghanistan more in their own image
57:49And the result
57:51For the people of Afghanistan
57:52And their invaders
57:54Was to be even greater horror
57:56And tragedy
57:58If you were going to pass a message
58:00To the American and British troops today
58:03What would you say to them?
58:05Faster and return to live and healthy
58:07It's not
58:10It's not
58:12It's not the same
58:14It's not the same
58:16It's not the same
58:18It's not the same
58:19But it's not the same
58:20It's not the same
58:23Thank you
58:25Julie
58:26The
58:39names they buy
58:41Two
58:42врем
58:44People
58:47Of
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