284 The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 12:2 

Book Review 

Beyond the Khyber Pass: The Road to 

British Disaster in the First Afghan War 

By John H. Waller. Austin: University of Texas Press, 

1990, 329 + xxxiii pp. 

John Waller, an American foreign service officer and retired inspec­
tor general of the CIA, is now an independent writer based in McLean, 
Virginia. He is also the author of Gordon of Khartoum and has travelled 
extensively in the Middle East and Asia. The book is beautifully illus­
trated with photographs of men, women, and events of the time, which 



Book Reviews 285 

succeed in invoking visually the time period with which he is dealing: the 
First Afghan-British War. 

This thirty-chapter book is the story of the British failure in 
Afghanistan in the 1840s, as Britain competed with Czarist Russia for 
strategic advantage in Central Asia. Beyond the Khyber Pass is a sweep-
ing saga, chronicling the brutal wars and international intrigues of the 
nineteenth century in India, Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Russia-the 
"Great Game" that culminated in the siege of Kabul and the massacre of 
sixteen thousand British soldiers, their families, and camp followers in 
1842, the year of the First Afghan-British War. Waller tells the tale of 
intrigue, treachery, and wild adventure with relish evident in the juicy 
anecdotes and asides. 

It is always tempting to compare the British invasion of Afghanistan 
in the nineteenth century with that of the Soviet Union in 1979. But com-
parisons should not be taken too far. Certainly there were many similari-
ties and differences between the two invasions. The common lesson in 
both cases was that foreign interference led to disasters for both the 
invader and the victim. 

Omar Khalidi 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology 

Cambridge, Massachusetts 

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