NP? article: The Afghan King and the Nazis

[Eulenspiegel7646 at aol.com]

In a message dated 12/05/2001 1:18:36 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
yenamand at cs.umn.edu writes:


> Now, in the second world war, all over the british empire, there were
> nationalist factions who tried to get the brits to leave and allied
> themselves with the axis to that end, even though they didn't share the
> greater aims of the axis powers. Given the history of the british in
> ?fghanistan, it doesn't surprise me that the afghan king tried to cozy
> 

The Afghanis were keeping their options open in the First World War as well.  
Read Peter Hopkirk's Like Hidden Fire, a fascinating account of Germany's 
attempt to provoke a jihad against British influence throughout the Middle 
East and South Asia with the help of the Ottoman Emipre.  The Emir in Kabul 
(this is before Afghanistan became a kingdom) welcomed a German expedition 
led by Werner von Hentig that had traveled from Turkish-ruled Iraq across 
Iran on a harrowing journey in the summer of 1915.  The fortuitous exposure 
of a plot to smuggle arms from San Francisco to Bengal led to the failure of 
a venture that would have at least caused Britain to put its campaign in Iraq 
on hold, perhaps changing the course of history.
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