Battle of Maiwand
Four weeks after envoy Louis Cavagnari was killed, a Highland Regiment had fought its way to the top of that ridgeline and the next day General Roberts had seized Kabul. These events would lead to the battle of Maiwand.
He came here to this citadel where he saw the blood-spattered walls and the mangled corpse of the envoy and his comrades.
Enraged, General Roberts set up the gallows on the wall. He hanged 100 Afghans, demolished the palaces of the Afghan nobility and at that point, with honour satisfied, many suggested he should withdraw. But the Afghan king had been deposed, the country was unstable, Britain had taken responsibility for Afghanistan and leaving no longer seemed an option.
General Roberts
While General Roberts sat in Kabul the countryside was now in revolt. Suddenly, a jihad had been called against them and when they looked out on a winter evening from their small camp in Kabul, they could see right along this ridgeline, 60,000 watch fires burning from Afghans bent on their destruction.
It must have seemed as though history was repeating itself exactly, and the one lesson that Britain should be taking away was never to invade Afghanistan.
But in Helmand province, the Afghans completely defeated and wiped out another British unit, this time in the Battle of Maiwand. It’s one of Afghanistan’s most famous victories and I met Abbie Aryan, an Afghan living in London, at this British Memorial to Maiwand. History has it that the Afghans won because of the rousing battle cry of a young woman called Malalai.
Abbie Aryan
Abbie Aryan “She’s an ordinary Afghan girl. As she’s standing in the battle, she can see that the Afghans are losing and she stood there, took her veil off and said, ‘If you love your country and if you’re a real Pashtun, and if you don’t want to be ashamed, you have to go and fight the British.’ Remember when Elizabeth stood in front of the Spanish Armada… Gave this speech to the British Army? To us, that was equivalent to that.”
And by revealing her face, actually, in some ways, it’s the kind of shame for her and her family, everybody sees her face. But she’s going to die so it doesn’t matter?
Abbie Aryan “Absolutely. And she, in fact, she dies in the battle as well, but the encouragement she gave to the Afghans there was immense.”
Unlike the massacre of the British Army in the retreat from Kabul, Maiwand was not covered in a serialisation in The Times. So although a thousand British soldiers were killed, this memorial in Reading is almost all that remains, and its meaning is now largely forgotten.But ask an Afghan and you get a very different response. This battle, like the retreat from Kabul, is still the stuff of legend.
Abbie Aryan “As an Afghan child, as you learn how to walk, you know about the battles we had with the British. It is part of our DNA. It’s part of our life. Maiwand is like a legend in Afghanistan. I think, anyway, the British try to justify it, saying, ‘Oh it was really sunny hot day. We didn’t have as much as… Afghans had superior firepower.’ How can Afghan army have a superior firepower than the British?”
British troops fighting Helmand today are often warned by local Afghans that they will meet the same fate as befell their predecessors in Helmand at Maiwand.
Abbie Aryan “We say that all doors are always open for invaders. Look from Alexander the Great, all the way to the British and today. It’s really easy to get into Afghanistan. It’s just the getting-out part that’s very difficult. We always don’t mind the foreign invaders getting in there, relaxing and feeling comfortable, then we start our fight. This is our traditional way of doing things.”
What you think an Afghan villager feels they are fighting for?
Abbie Aryan “For their home and country. For their independence. They don’t like foreign invading army to come through their villages. To do it with your mighty force and say, ‘Look, I’m here, I’m going to provide you peace and security.’ This is a joke, honestly is, because nobody believe that. Afghans wouldn’t accept that – as how can somebody bring peace with a gun and weapons? You can’t do that.”
A thousand British soldiers had been massacred at the Battle of Maiwand, the war was coming against Britain, but the response this time was immediate. There followed one of the most celebrated marches of the entire Victorian era, General Roberts, with an elite band of Gurkhas and Highlanders, set off from Kabul through unknown territory with no support. 320 miles, in 20 days, in hundred degree heat, arrived safe at Kandahar, and won a decisive victory that brought the second Anglo-Afghan war to a close.
Having won a victory, the question was, what would Britain do next? All the fears, all the pride that had dragged them into Afghanistan was still there. They’d spent blood and treasure. There were so many reasons to try to continue an occupation and yet they decided to declare a victory and get out.
And this is because, despite all these fears, the British Empire had a lot of people who knew the region well, who spoke the languages well, who understood their limits, who understood that it couldn’t be done. And nobody summed it up better than Gen Roberts himself.
He said, “We have nothing to fear from Afghanistan and, offensive though it may be to our pride, the less they see of us, the less they will dislike us.”
External Links
Battle of Maiwand – Wikipedia Page
Additional Reading
[amazon template=template&title=-&artist=-&asin=0752479377] Battle Story: Maiwand 1880 by Edmund Yorke
