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Convention Theme – July 26-29, 2007
Afghanistan and Pakistan (and the North-West Frontier)
“We are content with discord, we are content with alarms,
and we are content with blood; but we will never be content with a master”
– Pathan quote |
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| The security of the North-West Frontier (today much of Pakistan) concerned the British for as long as they ruled India. This wild and inhospitable country, rising in a series of hot plains and jagged mountains in the Hindu Kush massif in Afghanistan was the overland gateway to the west. Beyond Afghanistan lay Persia (present day Iran) in the south, Central Asia to the north, and Russia beyond. For nearly 200 years successive Indian administrations feared that Russia would one day march into the subcontinent via Afghanistan. Afghanistan became the chessboard between the British lion and the Russian Bear, known as the “Great Game”. A harsh land of dizzying peaks and narrow fertile valleys, of stifling hot summers and bitter cold winters, Afghanistan’s people possessed a toughness of spirit that matched their environment. |
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 It is difficult for anyone to understand the reasoning behind the extraordinary attitude of the British toward Afghanistan; the Afghans must have found it impossible. While always protesting friendship, the British repeatedly invaded the country and shot at its inhabitants, never really managing to subdue them in over a hundred years of military actions. Operations on the North-West Frontier were marked by innumerable small actions and desultory sniping even in time of peace, often resulting in punitive expeditions or even full campaigns launched to “pacify the frontier”. The terrain encountered in many colonial operations was as difficult and intimidating as the enemy themselves, but nowhere was it as rugged or inhospitable as on the North-West Frontier. |
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 Combat on the frontier could be marked by revolting barbarity on the part of the tribesmen, however the British propensity to treat the injuries of their prisoners and subsequently release them tended to inspire admiration among the tribesmen. Those who won their trust found them not only brave but also loyal, and quite different from the characteristics of treachery and savagery that were often accorded them. Yet 1897 (the same year as Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee) was also noted as “The Frontier Ablaze” and the time of “The Mad Mullah” – when the Pathans rose up in a great revolt, to remind everyone how fierce and bloodthirsty the tribesmen could be.
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 Not only did the North-West Frontier feature prominently in the lives of the Victorian men, women and children living in India, it also touched the minds of many of their fellow countrymen at home and throughout the English speaking world through books, periodicals, paintings and engravings. Any reader of the period is certainly familiar with the Gordon Highlanders storming up the Dargai heights while being raked by murderous fire from the Pathans above – “one of the most magnificent charges in British military history”. Much familiarity with the Frontier, and the men of different races who worked out their lives upon it, has been acquired from the stories and poems of one of England’s great men of letters: Rudyard Kipling. Certainly, the name of Gunga Din, the regimental bhiste (water carrier) made famous by Kipling’s immortal poem (and subsequent 1939 Hollywood movie!), is well known, and has helped generate interest in the frontier as well. |
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 History and scenario writers have draped the North-West Frontier in glamour – the romance of adventure and derring-do; of exotic peoples and forlorn columns of Bengal Lancers, Sikhs, Highlanders and elephant batteries, led by stiff-lipped British officers looking small and lost in narrow passes surrounded by rocky and precipitous mountains; of tribesmen, with weapons ready, crouched in the heat of the hillsides watching for the chance to pick off stragglers or to launch a savage attack. This is the classic picture of the North-West Frontier. The fascination of the campaigns, punitive expeditions and wars on the North-West Frontier from 1839-1947, over which Britain held responsibility for over a hundred years, has lingered on, especially for colonial wargamers. As a result, there will be quite a number of games for this part of the theme, and where the terrain creates quite a challenge for the tabletop.
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 Afghanistan continued to be a battlefield after the British left and remains one today – from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (Soviet-Afghan War, 1979-89) to the United States and its allies against the Taliban (Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001-Present). This has added another aspect for wargaming modern wars, and one in which the terrain remains every bit as inhospitable as it was in the colonial era.
For a complete list of many of the battles, campaigns and wars that encompass this year’s theme, click on the following link: The Wars of South Asia, 1800-2007. |
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For more information on the Afghanistan and the North West Frontier, click on the following links:
History of Afghanistan
Afghanistan by Frederick Engels
The North-West Frontier
The Indian Army and Development of Warfare on the North-West Frontier, 1914-29
The Three Afghan Wars
First Afghan War, 1839-42
Second Afghan War, 1878-81
Third Afghan War, 1919
Soviet-Afghan War, 1979-89
Operation Enduring Freedom - 2001
The Soviet and US Wars in Afghanistan: Why They Differed
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