Britain's military involvement in Afghanistan is a contentious subject, yet it is often forgotten that the current conflict is in fact the fourth in a string of such wars dating back more than 170 years. Aiming to protect British India from the expanding Russian empire, the British fought a series of conflicts on Afghan territory between 1838-1919. The Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th and early 20th Centuries were ill-conceived and led to some of the worst military disasters ever sustained by British forces in this part of the world, with poor strategy in the First Afghan War resulting in the...

In 1915, at the height of World War I, the Central Powers sent a diplomatic mission, led by Oskar Niedermeyer and Werner Otto von Hentig, to the court of the Emir of Afghanistan, Habibullah Khan. Jointly operated by the governments of Germany and Turkey, the aim of the mission was to persuade the Emir to declare full independence from the British Empire, enter the war on the side of the Central Powers and attack British India. Britain saw this mission as a serious and credible threat - so much so that they tried to intercept the travellers in Persia en route to Kabul and subsequently...