British Invasion of Afghanistan

When Afghanistan was beginning its formation as a nation in the 1700s, two of that era’s major world powers were advancing toward Afghanistan: Britain westward from India and Russia moving eastward. “England was busy conquering India between 1757 and 1857, Visalli writes, “and Russia was spreading its control east, and was on Afghanistan’s border by 1828.” One of the most lucrative products that England exported from its new colony, India, was opium and by 1770 Britain had a monopoly on opium production in India and saw to it that cultivation spread into Afghanistan as well (the boundary between the two was ill-defined until 1893). In 1859, England took control of all Afghan territory between the Indus River and the Hindu Kush, including Baluchistan, denying Afghanistan access to the sea. England invaded Afghanistan again in 1878, overthrew the ruling monarch, and forced the new government to become a British protectorate, i.e., rendering Afghanistan dependent on and under the rule of the British monarch, subjected to war, plunder, land grab, economic/development crippling, occupation.

The British invasions embittered the Afghan people, creating a sense of xenophobia that created powerful resistance to Western-style reforms put forward by Afghan leaders in years to come.

Power at its most abusive divides and conquers forever. England in 1893 creates the “Durand Line,” an arbitrary 1500-mile border between ‘British’ India and Afghanistan that makes permanent Britain’s previous territorial gains and lays claim to the Northwest Frontier Provinces, long considered part of Afghanistan. Without consulting the Afghan government, a 1907 Anglo-Russian convention made the boundary “‘permanent’.” The taking of these provinces divided th...

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...NATO aggression and occupation and the West’s expedient support of one or another oppressive indigenous or regional force. “The United States,” RAWA commented on this occasion, “wants the world to know that it is responsible for the establishment of order in the world and [that] nothing in the world changes without its will so it can extend its presence in the region by bringing together our enemies of different species and tightening their leashes in its hands.” The group went on to say that the United States “can create a regime that is much more mafia, dependent, corrupt, anti-people and more ridiculous than the current one in our homeland; and after the expiration date of its dirty creations, it will take each by the tail and throw them aside like mice. … These “insultingly painful games,” RAWA said, “are played with our suffering nation.…” However, they said,