And here we are again, snarling at each other,

hating each other, but not wanting a war.

Lord Palmerston

INTRODUCTION

The “Great Game” was name given to the late nineteenth-century rivalry between Russia and
Great Britain for influence in South and Central Asia, not just in Afghanistan.But it was not a
game. It was a dirty, bloody, costly engagement for all sides.It was a geostrategic and
political struggle. But it was also a duel between the intelligence agencies of two powerful
empires. The Russians and British used Afghanistan's craggy heights and boulder-strewn
valleys to play the "Great Game" against each other.

Russia was fearful of British commercial and military inroads into Central Asia, and Britain
was fearful of Russia adding "the jewel in the crown", India, to the vast empire that Russia
was building in Asia. This resulted in an atmosphere of distrust and the constant threat of war
between the two empires.The most prominent feature in the history of Russia was territorial
acquisition. Howsoever the tide of its civilisation ebbed or flowed there was no alternation in
the resistless advance of the sea of encroachment. For beginning early in the seventeenth
century it continued steadily onward ever since, engulfing, absorbing everything.The United
Kingdom regarded Russia as the bughear of the North, the foe to all for which that British
stood in history.Hatred of Russia was instinctive with the Englishman, and crippling of the
great Northern Power he regarded as essential to English welfare.Britain cannot forget that
India was menaced constantly by Russian proximity.Britain made it a high priority to protect
all the approaches to India, and the "great game" is primarily how the British did this.

The Great Game began on 12 January 1830 when Lord Ellenborough, the President of the
Board of Control for India, tasked Lord William Bentinck, the Governor-General, to establish
a new trade route to the Emirate of Bukhara.Britain intended to gain control over the Emirate
of Afghanistan and make it a protectorate, and to use the Ottoman Empire, the Persian
Empire, the Khanate of Khiva, and the Emirate of Bukhara as buffer states between both
empires. This would protect India and also key British sea trade routes by stopping Russia
from gaining a port on the Persian Gulf or the Indian Ocean.Russia proposed Afghanistan as
the neutral zone.The results included the failed First Anglo-Afghan War of 1838, the First
Anglo-Sikh War of 1845, the Second Anglo-Sikh War of 1848, the Second Anglo-Afghan
War of 1878, and the annexation of Kokand by Russia.
Historians consider the end of the Great Game to be the 10 September 1895 signing of the
Pamir Boundary Commission protocols,when the border between Afghanistan and the
Russian empire was defined.

Beginning Of The Great Game

The Russian advance began with Ivan IV, "the Terrible," who conquered a remnant of
the vast Mongolian Empire, the Khanate of Kazan, during Russia's first great military
adventure in 1552.It was the conquest of Kazan that initiated Russia's transformation from a
small city-state into a multinational empire.Each newly defeated party given a key for further
annexation. Tsar Peter the Great, having made peace with Sweden, gathered an army in 1721,
and set off, as he said, on "the route to India."He planned to move down the Caspian River to
Herat on the Persian border, then turn east to Ghazni 's ancient fortress town, proceed up the
Helmand River to Kabul and then cross the Khyber Pass south to Lahore. He weren't making
it.

After 1792, after overcoming the Crimean Tatars, the Russians marched slowly, tiny Turkish
state by state, down the shores of the Black, Caspian and Aral seas to Persia and
Afghanistan.Their march route would lead them toward the target which Peter had
declared-India, the British feared. And, obsessed with fears of galloping hordes of cossacks
from Russia to India , the British believed that they would eventually have to defend India
from Russia.

A prominent Afghan warrior poet, Khushhal Khan Khattak led a revolt against the Mughal
Dynasty in the 1600's. Mir Wais Khan Hotaki took over Kandahar in 1708 and revolted
against Safavid rule.Afsharid ruler, Nadir Shaw, acquired control of the region by 1736.
Nadir was assassinated in the year 1747. Later that year a council of tribal leaders elected
Ahmad Durrani as king. Ahmad Shah Durrani extended the borders of Afghanistan to a part
of India during the 1760s. After centuries of invasions the Afghan nation gradually started to
take shape under the leadership of Ahmad Shah Durrani.

In 1773 Timur, son of Ahmad Shah Durrani, succeeded to the throne. He ruled Afghanistan
until his death in 1793, and left more than 20 sons. Later, descendants of Timur were engaged
in a fight for power. In 1793 his son Zaman Shah was made king. In 1800, Zaman Shah 's
brother Mahmud seized the throne.Another Shah Shuja brother reigned in 1803, after
Mahmud was replaced. In 1809, Mahmud compelled Shuja to flee and remained king until
1817, when he was driven from the throne. Afghan disintegrated into a group of small
groups, each ruled by a different Durrani chief from 1818 until 1826.During this time the
"Great Game" began to be played out between Great Britain and Russia. "The Great Game"
involved not only the confrontation of two great empires, whose spheres of influence moved
steadily closer to each other until they met in Afghanistan, but also repeated attempts by a
foreign power to impose a puppet government in Kabul.In 1826 the next leader, Dost
Muhammad, climbed to the throne. Concerned with growing influences from Persia and
Russia, the British, along with former King Shuja, invaded Afghanistan in late 1838 while
Dost Muhammad was still in power. A few years later Shuja was murdered and the British
were defeated. In 1843 Dost Muhammad was back on the throne.

As the British moved through the Indian subcontinent, bringing together the small states into
which the Mughal Empire had broken down, they entered what is now Pakistan. To the west
was Sind, where in 1820 a motley collection of local rulers would be cowed into a treaty.
European traders and American settlers were excluded from the terms of the Treaty.European
traders might have come to the market, and the British, having expelled the French so
recently, assumed that they would, but American settlers were a figment of their fiery
imagination. The British turned nord-east with Sind in their hands.

Having decided on the restoration of His Majesty Shah Soojah-ool-Moolk to the Kahul
throne, the Supreme Government of India issued orders in July 1838 for the deployment of a
force on India 's northwestern frontier for the purpose of carrying out the goal
contemplated.In September, the several corps intended for this service were moving towards
the general rendezvous, Ferozepore, where the "Army of the Indus" (a designation given to it
by the then Commander-in - Chief, Sir Henry Fane) was to be embodied for the scene of
operations prior to its march.By 1839, Indus Valley control brought the British into contact
with the Pathan people in what was later called the Northwest Frontier, and Afghanistan.

Under the system known as the Close Border System British officers were forbidden to go
beyond the red line, British troops were forbidden to patrol beyond the mouths of the passes,
and even parties in hot pursuit of robbers were warned not to follow them up into the hills.On
the other hand, hill men were not prevented from crossing the border into the district, while
murders, robberies on the highway and thefts were rampant, perpetrated by these men.There
is no doubt that Sir Robert Sandeman was the one who gave the death-blow to the Near
Border Structure and launched the Forward Strategy on its true lines when he crossed the
Dera Ghazi Khan border boldly in 1866. This system is precisely along the same lines that
Field-Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar described so forcefully and accurately.

During the years that followed the First Anglo-Afghan War, the Russians, interested in
Central Asian territories, continued their advance to the south. In 1854 the British resumed
relations with Dost Muhammad, hoping to stop Russian advances.In 1855 the Peshawar
Treaty proclaimed respect for the territorial integrity of Afghanistan and Britain and declared
each to be friends of each other's enemies and friends of each other's enemies.

The typical effects of the Crimean War ended. Russia, finding herself embroiled in war with
Britain, had obviously shifted in the direction likely to bring trouble and irritation to the
British.Her statesmen could hardly err their course. England had never been forgiven by the
Persians for leaving them in 1828 and thwarting them in the year 1838 of ersia. Indeed in
ordinary circumstances, they would hardly have dared to threaten the British nation's
opposition.But although they gave British counsel a nominal deference, they secretly resented
the restraint that the British Embassy at Teheran placed upon them. For Persian politics was
in radical opposition to British politics.The British had been educated into the belief that
Herat was the key of India; they were alarmed at the possibility of Persia becoming at any
moment the creature of Russia; and they concluded, therefore, that Herat should never be
allowed to pass into Persian hands; and that "the key of India" should be entrusted to other
keeping. In 1856 the Anglo-Persian War broke out and the Qajar Dynasty took Herat back
into its control.

During the 1860s the Russians intensified their southeastern advances. “The Russian foreign
minister claimed the Russian movements in Central Asia were taken simply to unite Russia,
not to oppose any other government.”In 1872, Russia concluded an agreement with Great
Britain to protect Afghanistan 's northern frontiers. In July 1878 King Sher Ali allowed an
uninvited Russian delegate to come into Kabul. British Viceroy Lord Lytton, hoping to retain
British influence, ordered a diplomatic mission to travel to Kabul on 14th August.The British
sent a military force to cross the Khyber Pass, when no reply was received. Afghan
authorities refused the British permission to cross. That incident triggered the Anglo-Afghan
Second War. About 40,000 British soldiers entered Afghanistan on 21 November 1878. Two
years later, the British withdrew, having faced strong resistance from the Afghan forces.

The Treaty of Gandomak was signed between the British Government and Amir Yaqub Khan
at the end of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The treaty was about building peace and
friendship between the two countries.It provided amnesty for Afghan collaborators with
British occupational forces and committed the amir with advice from the British government
to conduct its foreign relations. In return, Great Britain agreed to back the amir against any
foreign aggressions.

From 1880–1901, Abdur Rahman Khan controlled Afghanistan. He modernized the country,
established a strong army, brought in foreign professionals and imported equipment.Caught
between the Russians and the British, Abdur Rahman turned his formidable energies towards
what turned out to be virtually the creation of the modern state of Afghanistan, while the
British and the Russians determined the borders of the Afghan State, with the Afghans as
bystanders.In 1884, Russian forces seized the Merve Oasis which was inhabited by the
Turkomans. They had taken possession of the Panjdeh Oasis in 1885. Afghan efforts to
recapture the land have failed. The Anglo-Russian Boundary Commission reached agreement
in 1886 on a border along the Amu Darya River. The Russian-British agreement resulted in a
permanent northern frontier but the region of Panjdeh lost a lot of territory.
Seeing that Britain had partly occupied Egypt as Europe's compulsory land and now refused
to evacuate it, the Russian Government had a good excuse for retaliation. As has happened
since 1855 at every moment of tension between the two empires, the Czar chose to embarrass
the Island Power by pushing on toward India.Indeed, the greater the pressure Russia put on
the Afghan frontier, the greater England's determination not to withdraw from Egypt became.
Thus, in the years 1882-4, both Powers plunged deeper into that "vicious circle" in which
they had been enclosed by the policy of the Crimean War, and from which they never
liberated themselves.

The fact is lamentable. It has caused endless tension and strained the resources of two great
empires; but in the Merv case, the accusation of Russian perfidy can be left to those who look
at facts only from an insular point of view.In the eyes of patriotic Russians England was the
offender, first by opposing Muscovite policy tooth and nail in the Balkans, secondly by
seizing Egypt, and thirdly by refusing to withdraw from that commanding position.The
important fact to note is that after each of these provocations Russia sought revenge on that
flank of the British Empire to which it was guided by its own sure instincts and the shrieks of
insular Cassandras. By moving a few Cossacks sotnias towards Herat, she compelled her
rival to spend a hundred times as much in Indian military preparations.

On 12 November 1893 Abdur Rahman Khan and the Colonial Government of India's Foreign
Secretary, Sir Mortimer Durand, agreed to mark the boundary between Afghanistan and
British India. The Durand Line had split tribal areas and villages via Pashtun. It was a cause
of dispute between the Afghan and British Indian governments, and later between
Afghanistan and Pakistan.

From 1901–1919 the son of Abdur Rahman, Habibullah, reigned. In 1904 the border between
Iran and Afghanistan was determined by a boundary commission. The boundary was
accepted by both countries. The 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention divided Afghanistan into
zones of influence from Russia and Britain.Habibullah wanted full independence from
Afghanistan and assistance from Great Britain in an attempt to regain lands taken from the
Russians. "Britain was far more interested in the struggle for European power and India's
defense through an Afghan buffer state was uninterested in such a scheme."Habibullah was
murdered in the year 1919. He was succeeded by His son Amanullah. The long Third
Anglo-Afghan War of 1919 led to complete Afghan independence during his reign. In 1919
Amanullah established diplomatic relations with Russia, in 1921 with Iran and in 1922 with
Great Britain.
 Resources

● Great Britain's Great Game: An Introduction (Edward Ingram) - Article

● The Great Game in Asia (David Fromkin) - Article
● https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/south-asia/1980-03-01/great-game-asia
● https://www.thoughtco.com/what-was-the-great-game-195341
● https://www.britannica.com/topic/Great-Game
●