Afghanistan. A History from 1260 to the Present - Jonathan L. Lee (2018)

nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47

officers took things even further and began affairs with local women, some
of whom were married to high­ranking Afghans, while the rank and file
sought pleasure in prostitutes who had accompanied the army from India
and local ‘ladies of the night’. Few, if any, had any concept of the impact
such liaisons might have on the army’s image, let alone the potential risk
to life and limb that affairs with local women entailed. Later, after the
officers’ wives, including the formidable Lady Macnaghten, were allowed
to join their husbands in the field, these liaisons went underground, but
still continued.

The occupation of Kabul and strategic misjudgements

The general aura of euphoria helped fuel Macnaghten’s tendency to head­in­
the­sand optimism and contributed to one of the most disastrous decisions
of the war: the construction of the army’s cantonment and Macnaghten’s
residency on a greenfield site north of the Kabul river. Located some 2 kilo­
metres (1.2 mi.) north of the Bala Hisar, the cantonment was built on land
that today includes the site of the u.s. embassy. The decision went against
the recommendation of the Royal Corps of Engineers, who wanted most
of the troops to be stationed behind the walls of the Bala Hisar, but Shah
Shuja‘ opposed this plan, claiming that the presence of foreign forces in
the royal citadel would make it appear that he was a puppet of the British.
As a sop to the king, Macnaghten agreed and all repair work on the Bala
Hisar’s defences ceased. Instead, the Royal Engineers were put to work
constructing a new cantonment and only a handful of British officers and
troops remained in the citadel.
The design of the cantonment was as unsuited to the army of occu­
pation as was its location. The ground plan – the standard one used in
India – may have been adequate in a country already pacified, but it was
utterly unsuited to a war zone. The eastern and western walls were more
than 1.5 kilometres in length and required a great number of men to guard
them, troops that would have been far better employed in combat oper­
ations. The cantonment walls themselves were so low that a mounted rider
had no difficulty jumping over them. A dry ditch was added later, but only
as an afterthought. The cantonment itself was surrounded by fields and
orchards criss­crossed with irrigation ditches that hampered the movement
of artillery, providing excellent cover for snipers as well as making it easier
for thieves to infiltrate the compound.
On the northwest the cantonment was overshadowed by the twin
peaks of Qal‘a­yi Musa and Tepa­yi Behmaru, which the British called