European influence in Afghanistan has been present in the country since the Victorian era, when the competing imperial powers of Britain and Russia contested for control over Afghanistan as part of the Great Game.
The Third Anglo-Afghan War began on 6 May 1919 when the Emirate of Afghanistan invaded British India and ended with an armistice on 8 August 1919. The Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919 resulted in the Afghans gaining control of foreign affairs from Britain and the British recognizing the Durand Line as the border between Afghanistan and British India. According to British author Michael Barthorp, it was a strategic victory for the British because the Durand Line was reaffirmed as the border between Afghanistan and India, and the Afghans agreed not to foment trouble on the British side. However, Afghans who were on the British side of the border did cause concerns due to revolts.
The North-West Frontier was a region of the British Indian Empire. It remains the western frontier of present-day Pakistan, extending from the Pamir Knot in the north to the Koh-i-Malik Siah in the west, and separating the modern Pakistani frontier regions of North-West Frontier Province, Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan from neighbouring Afghanistan in the west. The borderline between is officially known as the Durand Line and divides Pashtun inhabitants of these provinces from Pashtuns in eastern Afghanistan.
The 101st Grenadiers was a regiment of the British Indian Army.
The Treaty of Gandamak officially ended the first phase of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Mohammad Yaqub Khan ceded various frontier areas as well as Afghanistan's control of its foreign affairs to Britain.
The Battle of Maiwand, fought on 27 July 1880, was one of the principal battles of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Under the leadership of Ayub Khan, the Afghan forces defeated a much smaller British force consisting of two brigades of British and Indian troops under Brigadier-General George Burrows, albeit at a high price: between 2,050 and 2,750 Afghan warriors were killed, and probably about 1,500 wounded. British and Indian forces suffered 969 soldiers killed and 177 wounded.
Mohammad Yaqub Khan was Emir of Afghanistan from February 21 to October 12, 1879. He was the son of the previous ruler, Sher Ali Khan.
Ghazi Mohammad Ayub Khan also known as The Victor of Maiwand or The Afghan Prince Charlie was, for a while, the governor of Herat Province in the Emirate of Afghanistan. He was Emir of Afghanistan from 12 October, 1879 to 31 May, 1880. He also led the Afghan troops during the Second Anglo-Afghan War and defeated the British Indian Army at the Battle of Maiwand. Following his defeat at the Battle of Kandahar, Ayub Khan was deposed and exiled to British India. However, Ayub Khan fled to Persia. After negotiations in 1888 with Sir Mortimer Durand, the ambassador at Tehran, Ayub Khan became a pensioner of the British Raj and traveled to British India in 1888, where he lived until his death in 1914 in Lahore, Punjab. He was buried in Peshawar and had eleven wives, fifteen sons, and ten daughters. Two of his grandsons, Sardar Hissam Mahmud el-Effendi and Sardar Muhammad Ismail Khan, served as brigadiers in the Pakistan Army.
The Battle of Ahmed Khel took place during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. It was fought on 19 April 1880, on the road between Kandahar and Kabul in central Afghanistan between Afghan tribesmen and soldiers of the British Empire, including forces from both British and Indian armies.
The Battle of Kabul was part of a punitive campaign undertaken by the British against the Afghans following the disastrous retreat from Kabul. Two British and East India Company armies advanced on the Afghan capital from Kandahar and Jalalabad to avenge the complete annihilation of the British-Indian military-civilian column in January 1842. Having recovered prisoners captured during the retreat, the British demolished parts of Kabul before withdrawing to India. The action was the concluding engagement to the First Anglo-Afghan War.
The Battle of Kandahar, 1 September 1880, was the last major conflict of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The battle in southern Afghanistan was fought between the British forces under command of General Roberts and the Afghan forces led by Ayub Khan. It ended with a decisive British victory, having inflicted nearly 3,000 casualties in total on the routed Afghans.
The siege of the Sherpur Cantonment was a battle fought in December 1879, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War.
The Emirate of Afghanistan, known as the Emirate of Kabul until 1855, was an emirate in Central Asia and South Asia that encompassed present-day Afghanistan and parts of present-day Pakistan. The emirate emerged from the Durrani Empire, when Dost Mohammad Khan, the founder of the Barakzai dynasty in Kabul, prevailed.
The Battle of Ali Masjid, which took place on 21 November 1878, was the opening battle in the Second Anglo-Afghan War between the British forces, under Lieutenant-General Sir Samuel James Browne, and the Afghan forces, under Ghulam Haider Khan. The perceived offence of an Afghan general's refusal to allow a British envoy entrance to the country was used as an excuse to attack the fortress of Ali Masjid, as the opening battle in the war. Despite numerous setbacks, including half the troops getting lost or delayed and missing the battle entirely, the British were lucky that the Afghans abandoned their position overnight.
The Peshawar Valley Field Force was a British field force. It was the largest of three military columns created in November 1878 at the start of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-1880), each of which invaded Afghanistan by a different route. The Peshawar force initially consisted of around 16,000 men, a mix of both British and Indian Army regiments, under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Samuel J. Browne.
The following lists events from 1879 in Afghanistan.
The Battle of Charasiab was fought on 6 October 1879 during the Second Anglo-Afghan War between British and Indian troops against Afghan regular forces and tribesmen.
The siege of the British Residency in Kabul was a military engagement of the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The British resident, Sir Louis Cavagnari and his escort were massacred after an 8-hour siege by mutinous Afghan troops inside their Residency in Kabul. This event triggered the second phase of the war, during which an Anglo-Indian army invaded Afghanistan and captured Kabul.
The Kurram Valley Field Force was a British military formation during the first phase of the Second Afghan War, 1878–79.
