During the nineteenth century, the British decided that their continuing control of India, the jewel of their empire, depended upon their subduing the warring nomadic tribes of Afghanistan. The catastrophic British experience in the rugged land offers important lessons for the allied coalition against Osama bin Laden and his Taliban hosts.

In late 1838 the Army of the Indus, comprising 16,500 British, Indian, and Afghan troops, set out from Lahore, in what is now Pakistan, to invade Afghanistan. Their purpose was to establish a bulwark against the southward advance of an increasingly ambitious Russia. Traveling with the army were 38,000 servants and family members. Opposing the British and Indians were Afghans led by a charismatic Pashtun tribal leader named Dost Mohammad. He had assumed control of the throne in Kabul in 1826.

In July 1839 the British won a decisive victory. Dost Mohammad and a few loyal followers were exiled to India, and the British installed a puppet ruler named Shah Shujah. Believing that the country was pacified by their use of bribes and bayonets, the British sent most of their solders back to India. But the various Afghan tribes never accepted the authority of the new king or his British protectors. Resentment festered, and in late 1841 the Afghans staged a general uprising. British officials were killed and dismembered, and the British-Indian army was surrounded.
On January 1, 1842, the British negotiated a capitulation agreement that promised a safe withdrawal from Kabul and through the mountain passes to the British garrison at Jalalabad, some 90 miles away. The Afghans insisted, however, that several soldiers be kept behind as hostages to ensure that the British force lived up to its promise to leave. On January 6, in the dead of winter, the demoralized British and Indians began their hasty retreat eastward through the snowbound passes.

The weeklong trek was an unmitigated disaster. Afghan tribesmen repeatedly ambushed the fleeing invaders as they groped their way along the high-walled canyons. Others died from exposure and exhaustion. Those who surrendered or were wounded were killed. The besieged British troops made their last stand at a place called Gandamak. Hopelessly outnumbered and armed with only 20 muskets and 40 bullets, the 65 soldiers were slaughtered.
Of the over 4,500 British and Indian troops and over 12,000 civilians-men, women, and children-who left Kabul, only one man, an army doctor wounded by an Afghan knife, made it out of the country to Jalalabad. Only a few others, nine children, eight women, and two men, were taken back to Kabul as prisoners. In his poem "The Young British Soldier," Rudyard Kipling conveyed with chilling precision the pitiless ferocity of the Afghans:

When you're wounded and left
On Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out
To cut up your remains
Just roll on your rifle
And blow out your brains,
And go to your Gawd
Like a soldier.

When word of the humiliating debacle in Afghanistan reached London, the government immediately ordered a new expeditionary force to the region. In the fall of 1842, this new British army entered Kabul long enough to rescue the British hostages and prisoners and burn the city center. They left behind a seething resentment of foreign intervention that has lasted to this day. Although British and Russian invaders would repeatedly return to Afghanistan, the Afghans take great pride in the fact that they have never been conquered by a non-Islamic power. Their tenacity, resourcefulness, and zealotry have made them formidable opponents in their own land.

Desperately poor Afghanistan remains a strategic place, but for new reasons: it has become the crossroads of international terrorism. President Bush has warned that rooting out the al Qaida terrorists and the Taliban who give them sanctuary will be a nasty business. The fighting will be unconventional; the Taliban has shown little interest in the etiquette of war outlined in the Geneva Convention. Prolonged ground combat will test the fortitude of the American people. The allied coalition has assembled the forces to prevail in Afghanistan.

Do we have the will to endure a protracted conflict? Will we have the insight to avoid the errors of previous interventions in Afghanistan? Only time will tell. But the fact that the leaders of the United States and Great Britain are wrestling openly with these questions is encouraging. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair stressed, "we will act with reason and resolve"-and a close reading of history, one hopes.