Proceed to Peshawar. George J. Hill

      The three officers who made the trip:

       Major (later Colonel) Gordon Bandy Enders, USAR

       Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Sir Benjamin Gonville Bromhead, OBE, IA

       Lieutenant (later Lieutenant Commander) Albert W. Zimmermann, USNR

      Five others mentioned in the letter:

       Sir George Cunningham, GCIE, KCSI, OBE, LLD, governor, North-West Frontier Province

       Lieutenant Commander Francis H. Smith, USN

       The Honorable Cornelius Van H. Engert, CBE, U.S. minister to Afghanistan

       John R. Harris, central liaison officer, Karachi

       “Intelligence Bureau, Quetta”—unidentified, but perhaps a “Father Wood”²

      Personnel at the naval liaison office, Karachi:

       Lieutenant (jg) Howard Voorhees, USNR

      Two others, not mentioned in the letter, but who were involved in the planning:

       Lieutenant Colonel (later Sir) Reginald “Rex” Benson, Kt., OBE, MVO, MC

       The Honorable Clarence E. Macy, American consul at Karachi

      Two more, who met the travelers during the trip:

       Field Marshal Archibald Wavell, GCB, CMG, MC, first earl of Wavell, viceroy of India

       Lieutenant Colonel (later Sir) William Rupert Hay, CBE, CSI, KCIE, commissioner, Baluchistan

      Three who learned about the trip while it was under way, if not before:

       The Honorable (later Lieutenant Colonel, Office of Strategic Services) Charles Wheeler Thayer, chargé d’affaires, Kabul

       Lieutenant Curtin Winsor, USNR, Far East desk, Office of Naval Intelligence

       Captain (later Rear Admiral) Gene Markey, USNR, senior naval liaison officer, China-Burma-India Theater

      Two who probably learned about the trip immediately after it was completed:

       Major General (later Ambassador) Patrick Hurley, special representative of the president

       Major Ernest F. Fox, USAR, military attaché to Kabul

      And seven others, who could have learned about the trip:

       Sir Francis Verner Wylie, GCIE, KCSI, British minister to Afghanistan

       Sir Denys Pilditch, CIE, director, Delhi Intelligence Bureau

       Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck, commander in chief, India

       Colonel C. Suydam Cutting, Office of Strategic Services, head of U.S. observer group, Delhi

       Major General Sir Stewart Graham Menzies, director, Secret Intelligence Service

       Major General William Donovan, director, Office of Strategic Services

       Admiral of the Fleet Louis Mountbatten, first earl of Mountbatten, KG, commander, South East Asia Command

One

       Background

       You’ve a great game, a noble one, before you.

      —Captain Arthur Conolly, in Bokhara (1842)

       Go up the hill and ask. Here begins the Great Game.

      —Rudyard Kipling, Kim

      Long before the beginning of the Great Game—the contest for empire between Britain and Russia—other invaders had crossed Central Asia. As it was in the Great Game of the nineteenth century, the prize was India and access to the Indian Ocean. Darius I in 515 BCE and Alexander III of Macedon (Alexander the Great), in 326 BCE were the first whose troops crossed the Hindu Kush Range into India, but then turned back. They learned that getting there was hard enough, and staying there was even more difficult. And getting back home was deadly. Others learned the same lesson, the hard way.

      Britain called this contest the “Great Game” and Russia referred to it as bol’shaia igra (tournament of shadows). Some in Britain thought it would lose this game if it did not control Afghanistan as a forward base to keep Russia at bay, and Russia thought it must control Afghanistan to launch its drive to the Indian Ocean. Britain also fought the expansion of the Russian Empire to the west, as well as to the south. The spoils of the greater contest once included the decaying empire of Turkey, and the Crimean War was also part of this struggle.

      The notion of the Great Game draws on our recollections of other games. It is exemplified by Montaigne’s reference to le jeu, the game, in an expression paraphrased by Moorcroft, an early British explorer in Central Asia. The idea of “the game” includes both chance and skill; you have to take what you are dealt, and then play it to win. It is universally understood, because that is the game of life itself. The expression “great game” has become common. Perhaps this derives from Kipling’s popular novel, Kim, which referred to “the Great Game,” although more likely it is because the game of chance is so deeply imbedded in human activities. Kipling’s words resonate with our beliefs and aspirations. The term “great game” as used by Kipling has been traced back to the origin of the game of rugby, which in 1823 arose as a great game at Rugby College. After Kipling introduced the term “Great Game,” it became a metaphor for spying, or for any great contest. Winston Churchill supposedly “acquired in his adventures on the outposts of the British empire a fascination for the ‘Great Game’ of secret intelligence.”¹

      I will use the term “Great Game” as Kipling referred to it, a game that was centered on Afghanistan’s border with India that Britain attempted to keep secure. Britain originally attempted to protect India by controlling Afghanistan—Britain’s so-called forward policy. But after losing two brutal wars with the Afghans (in 1839–42 and 1878–79), the British decided a better course would be to withdraw to the south and allow Afghanistan to be the buffer against Russia’s advance. The new British policy was to allow the ferocious border tribes—particularly the Pashtuns, who were then called Pathans—to defend their own territory. The tribes would thereby provide insurance against a Russian advance into India. In 1893 an agreement was reached between Mortimer Durand of Britain and the emir (king) of Afghanistan to fix the border between Afghanistan and India. Passing through the Pashtun territory, the intent of the Durand Line was to divide the tribes and prevent them from rising in unison.

      Geography

      The area that is now called Afghanistan is a landlocked nation in Central Asia surrounded by six other countries. Its borders were vague in ancient times but gradually became defined, and then shifted to their present lines. As it is with most countries, borders are based on geography and politics. The northern border largely follows the course of the Amu Darya River, which was formerly called the Oxus. In its eastern reaches, the boundary is the tributary known as the Panj River. These rivers separate Afghanistan from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, which were formerly Soviet socialist republics. Russia and Britain created the eastern border in 1873 to separate