I’ve come to a rain-soaked Boston to meet a world authority on Afghan anthropology and history, Professor Tom Barfield. We are here to discuss the events that had preceded the death of Alexander Burnes. Appropriately, I’m meeting him in the Helmand Restaurant. And I wanted to ask him about some of the many differences between these cultures.” Tom Barfield “If you go to an Afghan feast, people are very religious. But, they’re religious at the end of the meal. You thank God for having eaten a wonderful meal. As one of my Afghan friends said to me, ‘Why do you Americans pray before the meal? You haven’t eaten it. You have no idea whether God deserves the praise or not, or the host’. However, the lesson that I took from him is that we foreigners are too keen to praise the fact that the feast is here. The Afghans say, there is one more step. Let’s eat the feast and decide whether it deserves it. So the Afghans tend to look more at the outcome, than at intentions.” And that logic appears to apply to how Afghans choose the perfect leader. Alexander Burnes loved Kabul and Afghan culture. He was used to walking through streets as though he was at home in Scotland. If you’d asked him he would have said he could have trusted Afghans with his life. But on that night in November 1841, he walked home to a city that had changed. He looked into eyes that no longer greeted him. And as he made his way back through the narrow streets towards his house, he was seeing a hostility. A hostility that he hadn’t sensed before. Unbeknown to the officer was the depth of hatred that would end in the death of Alexander Burnes By dusk, an armed mob surrounded his house. In one last attempt he walked out into the balcony of his house and in his most confident manner. In beautiful Persian, appealed to their sense of hospitality, generosity, their treatment of the guest. But he got nothing back. In the end, he had to send a desperate message to the British garrison asking for help. And, for the first time, retreated back into his house. He now knew that the only thing that stood between him and death were the gates of his house. learnedontv.com/the-death-of-alexander-burnes-as-the-outcome-of-jihad. As Burnes left the house he was hacked down. And the next morning his head was on a pole in the bazaar. So came about the death of Alexander Burnes. British Surrender Following the inevitable insurgency the British commander, General Elphinstone, tried to negotiate with the Afghans. The Afghans offered him safe passage, provided the British handed over their heavy weapons and retreated immediately to India. The British surrender was inevitable considering the opposition they faced. In Iraq, we stayed and defended the compound, but the British in trouble, in 1841, were deeply divided. Many young officers were determined to fight on, but Elphinstone overruled them and ordered a retreat. All the troops, their wives and children, were forced to leave the relative safety of their compound. And to try and reach the British garrison in Jalalabad nine days march East of Kabul. They made painfully slow progress for two days. This straggling column of soldiers and civilians met their fate beneath this mountain. A handful of soldiers managed to fight their way through, but only to meet their fate later. This defeat led to the inevitable British Surrender in Afghanistan. Of the 17,000 men, women and children who set out nine days earlier from Kabul, only one made it to the British garrison in Jalalabad. One man has made it on from there, he is Dr Brydon. To discover more about the people of Afghanistan read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mujahideen
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AuthorStephen Walker has had MS since 1994. In that time, he has discovered how to live a fulfilling life with multiple sclerosis Archives
February 2022
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