Армия эмирата Афганистан/Архив 1

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Assuming that the aesthetic charms of the 19th Century Afghan army have captured your imagination, you may now be wondering who you could pitch them against. Who did the Afghan regular army actually fight? A surprising number of people, in fact. For a start there was a war with Persia in 1855-57, disputing the possession of Herat (only problem here being that no-one, as yet, produces 19th Century Persians, though the Perry twins have it under consideration; keep your fingers crossed). Then, more obviously, there's the Second Afghan War of 1878-80, where regulars were present in sizeable numbers at most of the major engagements, as well as at numerous minor ones. There were also 'collisions' (as contem- poraries tactfully described them) with the Russians, not only in Penjdeh in 1885, but also at Somatash in 1892 and in Badakhshan in 1893. The conquest of Kafiristan in 1895-96 and of the Uzbek khanates of Afghan Turkestan between 1850 and 1876 also have wargaming potential, as too do the remarkably hard-fought civil wars of 1864-69, 1880-81 and 1888 - all of which involved regular troops on both sides - and an almost non-stop series of tribal uprisings between 1881 and 1892. For those of you looking for something even more exotic, there's the recapture of the frontier town of Somatash from the Chinese in 1892. Frontier clashes with British India also bubbled fairly close to the surface on more than one occasion before the 19th Century was out, notably in Waziristan in 1892. You might also consider developing the Russo-Afghan con- frontation of 1885 into a full-scale war, which it would indeed have become if Britain had not made her support of Afghanistan very clear to the Russians. Indeed, here at the crossroads of three major empires, virtually anything could happen; and often almost did.