'', Times Online, 12 November 2008

EXCERPT: "Two hundred years ago this month, in the middle of the Great Indian Desert that separated British India from the uncharted lands to the northwest, British soldiers encountered Afghan warriors for the very first time. The British force, led by a Scottish diplomat with the splendidly imperial name of Mountstuart Elphinstone, consisted of several hundred near-mutinous sepoy (native Indian) troops, a handful of white officers, 600 camels, and a dozen elephants loaded with gifts. Elphinstone, the first European diplomatic envoy sent to Afghanistan, had been dispatched from Delhi to coax the 'King of Caubul' into an alliance against Napoleon, to explore this terra incognita, and - in the unlikely event that he survived - to report back to London on the 'wild and strange' land beyond the mountains. For a month Elphinstone slogged through the desert wastes, encountering bandits, warring clans and ferocious tribal chiefs off their heads on opium and alcohol who could be spoken to only in the early afternoon, that being the 'interval between sobriety and absolute stupefaction'. For guidance, he had to rely on accounts of Alexander the Great's expedition, written more than 2,000 years earlier."

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See also:
'Hard lessons from Afghanistan', BBC Radio World Service, 12 November 2008
'Afghanistan at the crossroads', AlertNet, 12 November 2008
'Potential famine is a greater threat to progress', Trend News, 12 November 2008
'Afghanistan resumes executions', The Telegraph, 12 November 2008
'Government vows to keep roads open in winter', IRIN News, 11 November 2008

Related posts:
'Karzai admits failure in securing Afghanistan', 29 October 2008
'Afghans to Karzai: You failed us', 22 October 2008
'Beset by war, beleaguered by poverty', 22 August 2008
'How to save Afghanistan', 17 July 2008
'A struggle between war and peace', 3 June 2008