Afghanistan has always been a difficult country to subdue.
On January 6, 1842, the British began their withdrawal from Kabul. Leaving the city were 4,500 British troops and 12,000 civilians who had followed the British Army to Kabul. The plan was to march to Jalalabad, about 90 miles away.
On the 13th of January, just seven days after the retreat commenced, one man, bloody and torn, mounted on a miserable pony, and pursued by horsemen, was seen riding furiously across the plains to Jalalabad. That was Dr. Brydon, a British Army surgeon, the sole survivor out of 16,500 people. It was believed the Afghans let him live so he could tell the grisly story.
Nothing seems to have changed.
Bob C