Marlborough to Malakand

Pashtun tribesmen in Malakand, circa 1897

If you've been following our ongoing Malakand series here, you'll be glad to know others have been examining that obscure old text, too. General Petraeus' reading list for Afghanistan:

So what would be Petraeus's reading list? The answer came back: Thomas Barfield's "Afghanistan, a Cultural and Political History''; Ali Ahmad Jalali's " The Otherside of the Mountain, Mujahideen Tactics in the Soviet War''; Greg Mortenson's "Three Cups of Tea''; and Winston Churchill's "The Story of The Malakand Field Force,'' about frontier fighting in the late 19th century. In Churchill's time there was a similar tremendous debate about Britain's "Forward Policy,'' whether to really go in and build up civil institutions, pacifying the Pashtuns, or whether to maintain a lesser footprint, punishing the frontier tribes when necessary; the 19th century equivalent of drone attacks and special-ops, nicknamed "butcher and bolt.''

Petraeus would have noted that Churchill closed his Malakand book by endorsing the former. But did the general notice Churchill's "crushing'' conclusion to the contrary? "It is this,'' Churchill wrote: "we have neither the troops nor the money to carry it out.''

That's mostly right. Britain maintained the largest Empire in history with an economy of force. According to Churchill biographer William Manchester, in Churchill's early soldiering days there were just thirty-one cavalry regiments in the whole of the British Empire. "By Continental standards, the number of men in uniform was tiny," Manchester wrote. "Asked what he would do if the British army landed in Prussia, Bismark replied: "Send a policeman and have it arrested.""

But England was too big to worry about big wars - that era had ended at Waterloo - and the spirit of the British colonial might be captured in the final lines of this excerpt from a poem of the day...

'Whatever happens, we have got
The Maxim Gun, and they have not.'*

The similarity to modern times is clear - while the existence of an "American Empire" is debatable, the point that we have a small army globally dispersed is not.

And for further cause for modern despair, the whole of Afghanistan was not part of Churchill's calculus - his "not enough" comment meant only for that mountainous region called the Northwest Frontier (direction reference from India) - the remote border area between what's now Pakistan and Afghanistan, where many believe Osama bin Laden could be found today.

But the Boston Globe author's characterization is wrong - Churchill actually dismissed the notion of occupation in force (for the stated reason - though some might conclude he was goading the reading public of the wealthiest Empire in history) and endorsed the policy then favored (or at least, announced) by the government in England. From Malakand:

The inevitable alternative is the present system, a system which the war has interrupted, but to which we must return at its close; a system of gradual advance, of political intrigue among the tribes, of subsidies and small expeditions.

Though this policy is slow, painful and somewhat undignified, there is no reason that it should not be sure and strong. But it must be consistently pursued. Dynamite in the hands of a child is not more dangerous than a strong policy weakly carried out. The reproach which may be justly laid upon the rulers of India, whether at home or abroad, is that while they recognise the facts, they shrink from the legitimate conclusions.

They know they cannot turn back. They fully intend to go on. Yet they fear to admit the situation, to frankly lay their case before the country, and trust to the good sense and courage of an ancient democracy. The result is, that they tie their hands by ridiculous and unnecessary proclamations, such as that which preceded the Chitral expedition of 1895. The political officers who watch the frontier tribes are expected to obtain authority by force of personal character, yet strictly according to regulations, and to combine individuality with uniformity. And sometimes this timidity leads to such dismal acts of folly as the desertion of the Khyber forts.

"Dynamite in the hands of a child is not more dangerous than a strong policy weakly carried out" - a stinging rebuke - and the reproached "rulers of India, whether at home or abroad" it was aimed at were the very fine gentlemen who comprised the government of Great Britain. Among them, the Viceroy - who, Churchill wrote in Malakand, "belonged to that party in the State which has clung passionately, vainly, and often unwisely to a policy of peace and retrenchment. He was supported in his reluctance to embark on warlike enterprises by the whole force of the economic situation. No moment could have been less fitting: no man more disinclined." The benefits gained from reading Churchill's account today extend well beyond achieving a greater appreciation for the history of the region.

A summation of the whole affair from Churchill's later (mid-life) account of his younger years fits this discussion, too:

So a lot of people were killed, and on our side their widows have had to be pensioned by the Imperial Government, and others were badly wounded and hopped around for the rest of their lives, and it was all very exciting and, for those who did not get killed or hurt, very jolly.

But all that was well over a hundred years ago - we've advanced in many ways, and have great and wonderful things like color photography today.

Still, spend some time reading Churchill's musty old sepia-toned thoughts today and you'll find yourself stopping frequently to admire the passages he committed to paper, and to history - to us. Because he authored dozens of books and hundreds of speeches, such discoveries are not difficult or rare. Here's one from Marlborough: His Life and Times, Churchill's biography of his ancestor, the First Duke:

"But no battle ever repeats itself. The success of a commander does not arise from following rules or models. It consists in an absolutely new comprehension of the dominant facts of the situation at the time, and all the forces at work. Cooks use recipes for dishes and doctors have prescriptions for diseases, but every great operation of war is unique."

That was a response to those who'd speculated that most of the credit for Marlborough's military successes was due to the influence of his earlier commander, French Field Marshall Turenne. (Marlborough wasn't the first or last military leader to learn his trade fighting alongside the soldiers of a nation he'd gain fame fighting against.) The biographer Churchill acknowledged that influence, in-part. But "There is no surer road to ill-success in war," he wrote, (perhaps he had an aversion to the word "defeat," as some do to "victory" today) than to fit past lessons into novel situations.

If it isn't obvious from the above (or the entire series), there's much to be learned from reading Malakand, much that applies to our Afghanistan situation today. But that last quote isn't found in that volume, and it's one with which any Malakand-reading Iraq veteran should agree.

(There are other lessons worth learning from the life of Marlborough - a discussion that continues here...)