Afghanistan is a place of myths. One myth tells us that the British were defeated in their wars against Afghanistan; or, as an American official remarked recently: “The British screwed up there for two hundred years.”

History tells us different. After losing one army in 1842, the British sent in the Army of Retribution which burnt villages, razed the centre of Kabul and hanged a lot of people. The second Afghan war ended in 1880 when another army captured Kabul, hanged more people and burnt more villages.