In the side street of Kabul, the angry crowd had been gathering since nightfall. Daggers drawn, they advanced menacingly up to the gates of the mission. Taking cover of darkness, some Afghans entered the compound and set fire to a building. Embassy staff confronted the intruders and engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
Several were cut down by swords. This was the attack on the British garrison in Kabul on 1 November 1841, in which the Famous British explorer-diplomat Sir Alexander Bumes and his staff were hacked to death. But it could very well fit the description of the attack on the Pakistani embassy in Kabul in September 1995, in which diplomats were lynched and the mission burnt to the ground. In Afghanistan, history is always repeating itself—in the same place. In this land of deadly deja vu, fresh blood of 20th century wars are spilt on earth that contains the bleached bones of warriors who fell in battles centuries ago.
Scenes of historic carnages with place names like Gandamak, BolanPass, Herat, Charasyab are today´s new battlefields. The crackle of jezails (long-barrel musket used with deadly accuracy against the British) and the glint of blood-stained swords are replaced by helicopter gunships, stinger missiles and ´Stalin´s Organs´—the dreaded multiple-rocket launchers. Afghanistan today is a theatre of war where medieval rivalries are being fought out with the most efficient killing machines ever designed.
The ignominious retreat of the British officers and their families with Gurkha and Sikh guards from Kabul in 1842 remains a reminder of the fierce xenophobia that fuelled Afghan resistance against outsiders. Of the 16,000 soldiers, civilians, women and chil¬dren who left Kabul on foot in the bitterly cold morning of 1 January 1842, one British doctor rode into Jalalabad a week later. He told a horrifying tale of how the retreating garrison was cut to pieces one by one as it struggled through snow-bound passes.