Afghanistan: a playground for spies The Great Game

Afghanistan has traditionally been a place where spheres of influence clash. In the 19th century, it was part of The Great Game: a brutal geopolitical struggle between Russia and Britain.

In the ever turbulent Afghanistan of the 1930s, the diplomat William Hay Macnaghten represented the interests of the British motherland. Macnaghtan was arrogant, but the complexities of colonial diplomacy were clearly beyond him. He tried to keep the Afghan chieftains calm by lavishing money on them; the treasury was soon empty.A bloody revolt in November 1841 was the result. An angry mob hacked Macnaghten's talented assistant Alexander Burnes to pieces in Kabul. Macnaghten tried to save what he could. He negotiated separately with the tribal leaders and with Akbar Khan, son of Emir Dost Mohammed. Khan was not amused by this double game and captured Macnaghten. Two days before Christmas, his mutilated body hung on a meat hook in the bazaar.

?Meanwhile, the besieged British garrison in Kabul had degenerated into an orderly mess. In that chaos, the weak and sick Major General William Elphinstone decided to retreat to the military base in Jalalabad in early January 1842. A disastrous decision. Out of 16,000 soldiers and civilians, only one army doctor and a few Indian auxiliary troops reached the base. All others were killed on the way or captured by the emir's army. Elphinstone himself died in captivity. In the autumn of 1842, a British 'revenge army' razed much of Kabul to the ground. But the humiliation of the disastrous retreat was indelible.

?In some places in the world, the geopolitical tectonic plates grind against each other. Afghanistan is one such scourge: traditionally a crossroads of civilisations, trade routes and spheres of influence. For most of its history, Afghanistan has been at the mercy of foreign powers. Especially its strategic location was to blame.

?After centuries of invasions, Afghanistan cautiously took shape in the 18th century as an independent but fragile nation state under Ahmad Shah Durrani. But Afghanistan was not granted much stability: as a link between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, it was simply too unhappy. The Khyber Pass alone was a strategic headache. Writer Rudyard Kipling aptly called this vital passage from Afghanistan to Pakistan 'a sword-cut through the mountains'.

?Money, jobs and status

Two rival empires made Central Asia the playground of their imperialist power politics in the 19th century: the Russian Tsarist Empire and Victorian Britain. Russia advanced southwards. As early as 1801, Tsar Paul I planned a Russo-French invasion of British India. But before the adventurous plan really took off, conspirators put an end to the Tsar's life. Yet the seeds of British distrust of Russian intentions towards India had been planted.In the following decades, the Russians proved quite successful in steadily expanding their influence in the region. Most of the Muslim peoples in Central Asia had to submit. This advance troubled the Ottoman Empire, Persia, Afghanistan, British India and even the Chinese Empire. The British East India Company, the de facto ruler in India, rang all possible alarm bells. With some success. For the British, one consideration was all-important: protection of 'crown jewel' India. Britain hoped to expand the Ottoman Empire, Persia and Afghanistan into a buffer zone. The British feared that Russian ambitions might even extend to the acquisition of warm water ports in the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. Whether Tsarist Russia after Paul I actually seriously considered conquering India is questionable.

This British-Russian rivalry came to be known as The Great Game. The term, incidentally, only really gained popularity with Rudyard Kipling's 1901 novel Kim: 'When everyone is dead, the Great Game is finished. Not before.' But the term was already floating around in the nineteenth century. The British captain and spy Arthur Conolly is often referred to as the spiritual father. In 1840 he wrote to a superior, exultant about the civilising work that awaited the British in the region: 'You have a great game, a noble game, before you. In turn, the Russians spoke of the sinister 'tournament of shadows', a telling name coined by Foreign Minister Count Karl Robert Nesselrode.

?The Great Game was a haven for spies, double agents, schemers, adventurers, explorers, mapmakers and whatnot: a fascinating collection of Great Gamers. Indeed, British policy seems to have been heavily influenced by reports from official, semi-official and private adventurers. They eagerly embellished their reports or made up facts to prove alleged Russian machinations and questionable loyalties of local rulers. Money, jobs and status could be won that way. Disguising as a Muslim cleric or horse trader was a standard part of the spy repertoire.

?Bloody wars

The Great Game was in any case tragic. The fate of Captain Connolly symbolises the often bloody intrigues of the great power game. In the 1830s he was one of the most driven intelligence officers in Afghanistan. This drive had deep roots in his religious fanaticism. He was a firm believer in the British mission to civilise Central Asia by converting the whole region to 'muscular Christianity'. The Emir of Boechara felt insulted by Connolly's lack of respect for the local culture: he threw the unfortunate Briton into a well, tortured him for months and finally decided to decapitate him. Exit Connolly.Foreign mercenaries also made an exciting contribution to The Great Game, such as the flamboyant Italian adventurer Paolo di Avitabile (1791-1850), who ruled Peshawar for the British from 1835 to 1843. It was only natural that British and Russian secret expeditions would at times pay each other dearly tribute. Thus, in 1837, Major Henry Rawlinson spotted a Russian delegation led by the enigmatic Polish-Lithuanian explorer Jan Witkiewicz. The latter was on his way to Kabul to capture Prince Dost Mohammed. Rawlinson immediately hurried to Kabul - 1,200 kilometres away - to give the British envoy a preliminary warning.

?Much espionage work was aimed at reconnaissance of land routes for possible military operations. The Royal Geographical Society (founded in 1830) and the Russian Geographical Society (1845) were in fact no more than cover for espionage expeditions in Asia. To what extent exactly is unknown, but it is certain that Russian spies and freebooters stirred up trouble in India. The Russian master spy in The Great Game was undoubtedly the brilliant Count Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatjev (1832-1908). Utterly ruthless and cunning, he spent most of his career stirring up anti-British feeling in India and its neighbourhood.A rigid desire to control everything characterised British colonial policy. This rigidity contributed to a series of bloody and partly unnecessary wars, notably two Anglo-Afghan wars (1842 and 1878-1880), two wars against the Sikhs (1845-1846 and 1848-1849) and the Indian Revolt (1857-1858). Thus, The Great Game witnessed a highly complex rivalry - larded with wars, attacks, assassinations and espionage - between Britain and Russia, involving the spheres of influence of Central Asia and of Afghanistan in particular.

?The fighting between the British and their colonial auxiliaries on the one hand and the Afghan tribes and jihadi on the other was unprecedentedly brutal. Prisoners of war met an appalling fate. British soldiers were advised to put a bullet through their heads if they were in danger of falling into enemy hands.

?British incapacity

Did the British play the Great Game to good effect? Yes and no. Ability and incompetence were battling it out, as William Hay Macnaghtan's fatal blunders showed. In any case, the Ottoman Empire and Persia proved unwilling to dance to the tune of the British. Afghanistan never really became a British client state, although in practice it did to some extent act as a buffer between India and Russia.In turn, the Russians soon realised that remote intervention and clandestine operations were more profitable than large-scale military expeditions. Russia even managed to annex several territories permanently. Eventually, some Russian outposts were only a few kilometres from the Indian border. The British inability to make Afghanistan a true client state meant, in effect, that The Great Game could not be won. In 1889, the late Viceroy of India Lord Curzon stated unequivocally that relations with Afghanistan between 1838 and 1878 were characterised by 'blundering interference' and 'unmasterly inactivity'. It was just like that.

?Akbar Khan, zoon van emir Dost Mohammed, neemt wraak op de Britten en vermoordt diplomaat William Hay Macnaghten, 1841.Aan het einde van de negentiende eeuw klaarde de situatie wel enigszins op voor de Britten. In de eindfase van het bewind van tsaar Nicolaas II (1868–1918) verloor Rusland aan macht en invloed in de regio. De Britten verwierven nu zelfs een licht diplomatiek overwicht in de niet-Russische gebieden van Centraal-Azi?. Daarmee was ook de basis voor een diplomatieke uitweg gelegd, hoe kwetsbaar ook. Langzaamaan verpieterde The Great Game.

In 1895 tekenden Rusland en Groot-Brittanni? een protocol dat de Russisch-Afghaanse grens vastlegde. De Brits-Russische conventie van 1907 verdeelde Perzi? in respectievelijk een door Rusland beheerste noordelijke zone, een onafhankelijke centrale zone en een door Groot-Brittanni? gecontroleerde zuidelijke zone. Na een korte derde Brits-Afghaanse oorlog in 1919 gaven de Britten hun protectoraat over Afghanistan op.Sindsdien geldt 19 augustus als de Afghaanse onafhankelijkheidsdag. Afghanistan heeft trouwens nooit de door de Britten in 1893 opgelegde Durand Line – die geen rekening hield met etniciteit of stamverbanden – als zuidgrens erkend. Tot op de dag van vandaag levert deze omstreden grens stevige en soms gewelddadige spanningen op tussen Afghanistan en Pakistan.

Christ Klep is militair historicus