ABSTRACT
The first American to interfere in the internal affairs of Afghanistanwas a Quaker from Pennsylvania with an unmistakeable name, Josiah Harlan. Like Elihu Yale, he had come east to make his fortune; adventure was a bonus. In 1823, undeterred by the absence of any medical training, he enlisted with the Bengal Artillery as an assistant surgeon and went off to fight a war in Burma. In 1826 he headed north, for the small Punjabi town of Ludhiana, attracted by a king without a kingdom. Shah Shuja had been dethroned in Kabul by Dost Mohammad Khan and found refuge with the British, who had learnt the value of pawns on this vast Indian chessboard. (Rivalry for power was literally inbred in Afghanistan. Dost Mohammad, for instance, had seventy two brothers or half-brothers; they did not always keep count of sisters then.) Harlan claims that he disguised himself as a dervish in order to spy for Shah Shuja in Kabul and was rewarded with the title ‘Companion of the Imperial Stirrup’. The honour was less than imperial, but Harlan did go to Kabul, and – clearly a mercenary without prejudices – became an aide to Dost Mohammad, who sent him on a punitive and successful military expedition to Bukhara. When Harlan returned to Kabul in 1839, he heard stories of a great army being sent by the British to depose his paymaster and did what any prudent adventurer would have done, deserted. In 1841 he found his way back from Kabul and retired in the slightly less turbulent city of San Francisco.
