President Joe Biden’s evacuation from Afghanistan threatens to transform from a disorganized mess into a bloody repeat of the British retreat from Kabul in 1842, which saw a column of over 16,000 soldiers and civilians reduced to a few dozen in a week.
The State Department told congressional staff Wednesday that there are 4,100 Americans actively seeking to exit the country, but we’ve been told there are around 8,000 Americans actually in the country along with tens of thousands of our Afghan allies. Officials have admitted that it is likely that not all of them will be evacuated before the Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline. The U.S. military has also begun to pull out the troops stationed around Kabul airport after negotiations with the Taliban, making a precarious situation even more dangerous.
If the administration doesn’t change course, thousands of Americans and Afghan allies may be trapped in Afghanistan at the mercy of the Taliban after Aug. 31, and we could see a similar situation that resulted in the destruction of an entire British army a century and a half ago.
The British invaded Afghanistan from British-controlled India in 1839 to depose Dost Mohammad Barakzai, the emir of Afghanistan, and replace him with a more friendly ruler, Shah Shuja Durrani. British troops easily captured the major cities, exiled Dost Mohammad to India, and occupied the country to support Durrani. The cost of the occupation became too much for the British government in India to accept, and they cut off the bribes to various tribes around Kabul and the route back to India.
In 1841, Wazir Akbar Khan, Dost Mohammad’s son, started a revolt against the occupation and, with the support of the tribes previously paid off by the British, began attacking targets around Kabul. The British had about 4,500 men around Kabul at the time. Around 690 of the troops were European while the rest were made up primarily of Indian sepoys. The army was commanded by William Elphinstone, who had previously commanded a regiment at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Elphinstone did little to stop the Afghan raids, and eventually negotiated with Akbar Khan for safe passage from Kabul to Jalalabad, which was about 90 miles away and close to the Indian border. Akbar Khan agreed to allow the British safe passage to Jalalabad as long as the British handed over their gunpowder reserves, some new muskets and most of their cannons. The withdrawal began on Jan. 6 1842 and included around 12,000 British and Indian civilians who had been in Kabul as well as the army.
Elphinstone abandoned Durrani, who was at this point the puppet ruler of Afghanistan, his followers, the sick and the wounded at Kabul, since Akbar Khan had also guaranteed their safety. As soon as the army had left the city, Afghan irregulars took positions on the city’s walls and fired at the rear of the column. All those left behind by Elphinstone were killed.
The winter snows in the mountains impeded the army’s progress, and the guide promised by Akbar Khan never showed up. Despite pleas from some of his officers to turn back and retake Kabul, Elphinstone ordered the army to continue its journey.
Groups of Afghan guerillas began sniping at the column as soon as it entered the mountains. By the second day the Afghans had captured all but a handful of the army’s artillery pieces. Akbar Khan met with Elphinstone later in the day and asked for the army to stop so that he could negotiate their safe passage for the rest of the trip, losing Elphinstone precious time. Over the next few days, military cohesion broke down, with some units breaking off from the main group to be hunted down by the tribesmen, and Elphinstone stopped giving orders to the men.
By Jan. 11, only five days into the retreat, the army had been reduced to only about 200 effectives. Elphinstone was once again invited to negotiate but was taken captive by Akbar Khan once he arrived in the Afghan camp. The remaining soldiers tried to escape in the night but the path was blocked by the tribesmen.
About 20 officers and 45 European troops made a last stand at the village of Gandamak, about 35 miles from Jalalabad. The group only had 20 muskets and forty rounds of ammunition. All of them were either killed or captured by the Afghans.
A single European, army surgeon William Brydon, made it to Jalalabad on Jan. 13. When asked what had happened to Elphinstone’s army, a wounded and exhausted Brydon reportedly answered, “I am the army.” A few dozen Indian troops also made it to the city over the next few weeks.
Elphinstone died in captivity a few months later, while thousands of survivors from the march were taken to Kabul and sold into slavery. Some of those prisoners were rescued later in 1842 after another British army retook Kabul and demolished large parts of the city in retribution.
The 1842 retreat from Kabul is one of the worst disasters in British military history.
And our leaders have made many of the same mistakes Elphinstone did. They’ve permitted the Taliban to seize hundreds of thousands of small arms and thousands of military vehicles. They’ve allowed the Taliban to dictate the terms of America’s withdrawal from the country, even though those terms could strand American citizens in hostile territory. They’ve begun to reduce the number of troops in the country at the most dangerous time possible. They’ve taken the Taliban at their word that American citizens will not be harmed on their way to the airport, even though we are already seeing reports of Taliban enforcers stopping, harassing and even beating Americans.
If the withdrawal becomes a repeat of the 1842 retreat from Kabul, the American people should know that it was easily preventable if someone with some common sense had been in charge or spoken up. The account of the retreat should have been required reading for every general in Afghanistan, and these mistakes should have never been made by “the greatest army in the world” in the first place.
Biden and his generals have apparently refused to learn from the history of the country we have occupied for 20 years, and American citizens may have to pay the price for it.