British don't want to repeat the 1842 slaughter in Afghanistan

  Body of 100th British troop to die in Afghanistan in 2009 (Matt Cardy/Getty)

More than two-thirds of Brits believe UK troops should leave Afghanistan within a year, and the public sentiment that this is a futile war was reinforced last week when the 100th British soldier of 2009 was brought home from Central Asia in a body bag.

Many cite the Soviet’s struggle in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989 as the classic historical example of a failed intervention, a 10-year occupation that saw the Soviets lose 13,833 soldiers, an average of 1,383 deaths per year. Yet, the UK need only look at its own history as a potential harbinger of things to come, and one can’t blame them for not wanting to repeat the same horror they experienced in the 1800s – a wholesale slaughter that became symbolic of the decline of their empire.

In 1842 the good Afghans of Kabul rose up against 4,500 British occupiers and killed every single Englishman that breathed, save one - Doctor William Brydon. Brydon somehow escaped alive, trotted into Jalalabad while nearly falling off his horse because his head had been sheared.

The surgeon had stuffed a copy of Blackwood’s Magazine into his hat to protect himself against the brutal Afghan winter before the onslaught, thus the magazine ended up saving his life. The story is not one of man’s perseverance over great odds – but a story of the perils of trying to beat back insurgency in a distant land.

The British eventually withdrew and by doing so did not only lose the first Anglo-Afghan War but lost much of its international prestige, signaling that the Sun would soon set on the British Empire.

The Duke of Wellington described in a letter how concussive a blow it really was to the Brit’s world standing:

There is not a Moslem heart from Pekin to Constantinople which will not vibrate…. It is impossible that that fact should not produce a moral effect injurious to British influence and power throughout the whole extent of Asia."

Today in the town of Wooten Bassett crowds gathered and grieved at the site of the flag-wrapped coffin of Lance Corporal Adam Drane, Britain’s 100th victim of the Afghan war. The 23-year old was killed by insurgents while guarding a checkpoint in Helmand province on December 7th.

Mayor Allison Bucknell said: "A number is not important. Every coffin which is brought back has to be thought of as a person with friends and family."

And coffins will continue to come back. Tuesday two more British soldiers were killed in a suicide bomb blast in Afghanistan, bringing the 2009 death tally to 102. This is the deadliest year for the country’s armed forces since the 1982 Falkland’s War. A total of 239 British troops have now been killed in Afghanistan since operations began in October 2001.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is sending an additional 500 troops to Afghanistan, which would take the total number of Brits deployed to 10,000, alongside a surge of 30,000 American forces as part of Obama’s sweeping strategy to turn around the eight-year war.

Hopefully we see a return on this investment soon enough, or else the UK and the U.S. risk incurring the same types of cost in terms of blood and reputation as was absorbed during previous Western incursions into the treacherous terrain of this mountain kingdom. We are putting a lot of faith in this ambiguous strategy of our leaders as many more of our young men and women risk returning in coffins themselves. And many can only pray they have anywhere near the same type of luck as Dr. Brydon.

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