1800-1859 | Afghanistan | Burning towns and cities | Civilians slaughtered | Demolishing urban areas | Looting and plunder | Massacres | Punitive operations

Kabul sacked in an orgy of fire, looting and ‘wholesale butchery’

ByAlisdare Hickson

[ 10 October 1842 ] On 10 October 1842, British troops used explosives and fire to destroy much of the Afghan capital of Kabul, including the Great Bazar and an adjacent mosque. They also burned down an unknown number of domestic dwellings, slaughtering their owners. Only two neighbourhoods, deemed ‘friendly’, were left untouched and the…

1800-1859 | Afghanistan | Burning towns and cities | Civilians slaughtered | Collective punishments | Looting and plunder | Massacres | Punitive operations | Starvation campaigns

29 SEPTEMBER

ByAlisdare Hickson

BRITISH ARMY’S INDISCRIMINATE MASS MURDER OF AFGHANS AT ISTALIF [29 September 1842 ] On 29 September 1842, a punitive expedition, under the command of Major General John McCaskill, entered the Afghan town of Istalif, forty miles north of Kabul. It had been one of the first towns to participate in an anti-British insurgency, which had…

1800-1859 | Afghanistan | Burning villages | Civilians slaughtered | Demolishing urban areas | Massacres | Palestine

28 AUGUST

ByAlisdare Hickson

BRITISH CHAPLAIN SHOCKED BY THE BARBARITY OF HIS OWN ARMY [ 28 August 1842 ] On 28 August 1842, during the advance of a British punitive expedition led by Major General Sir William Nott, the Reverend Isaac Allen recalled the indiscriminate slaughter of Afghan men in a village, deemed to have been responsible for staging…