Pakistan Military Review: April 2017 Issue - Pakistan Army Till 1965 Serialised

The simple reason for this reverse was incompetence, since similar East India Company garrisons at Kandhar and Jalalabad in fortified positions successfully held their positions despite assaults by Afghans in overwhelming numbers .Thus the British held Jalalabad with a small garrison of just about 2,000 troops from just one European infantry regiment one Native infantry regiment and some cavalry.During this period when a major earthquake also damaged the walls of the fort, they were repeatedly defeated assaults by overwhelmingly large Afghan forces. In this five month period the British casualties were less than I 00 men 41 ! Kandahar was held by a simihtrly small garrison of just one European regiment and six Native infantry regiments and successfully held out from August 1839 till August 1842 . Only Ghazni was lost which was held by one weak native infantry battalion.The East India Company's forces recaptured Kabul in September 1842 and withdrew from Afghanistan, since the East India Company being a commercial entity had no wish to annex to its territory a barren non productive country.Later on a myth was made and popularised as part of anti Soviet propaganda after 1979, that Afghanistan was a formidable country and had never been successfully invaded!The actual fact remains that troop strength wise it was a small affair.The only fact which made it costly was the logistic aspect of supplying the army via a 1,500 miles long route through terrain which had very limited local foraging and agricultural resources.The Afghan war contrary to the popular myth was a British success since the lesson taught in September 1842 was so convincing that the Afghans desisted from the temptation of attacking British India even in 1857, when the Company was very vulnerable and even ready to abandon territory till river Indus! The First Afghan War was followed by the Sind War as aresult of which Sind was annexed.Militarily the Sind War was a highly insignificant affair. The British force which won the decisive Battle of Miani ( 17 February 1843) had less than 1,800 men (including just one European infantry regiment ).The British losses in this battle were just 64 men killed and 194 wounded 42 According

• | Author: Agha H. Amin
• | Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• | Publication Date: May 01, 2017
• | Number of Pages: 202 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 1546404074
• | ISBN-13: 9781546404071