The Year

6th November 1919: Gracious Destiny

170 years ago in 1839 Britain invaded Afghanistan commencing the 1st Anglo Afghan war. 100 years ago, on 6th May 1919 the third Anglo-Afghan war began, which led to the Afghans finally gaining independence and control of their foreign policy. 40 years ago the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan ending that era of independence. 17 years ago the US invaded Afghanistan. In that time the US has suffered 2,734 deaths as compared to an estimated 150,000 Afghan dead- civilians, government forces, and insurgents. The war and the deaths are ongoing… Afghanistan’s 170 year history of major powers intervening/invading in their country is ongoing…

This month’s podcast is about missed opportunities. Allen Dulles, a privileged young American diplomat who later became the most influential director of the CIA, decides to go on a date rather than meet Lenin the night before he is sent to Russia by the Germans to ferment rebellion. Another upper class young American, William Bullitt, actually negotiated the best terms that anyone would ever get from Communist Russia in its 73 years in existence, terms that could have prevented half of the lands of USSR falling under communist rule, but his superiors played politics with his treaty (the deadline for acceptance of which was on 10th April 1919), and the opportunity was missed. Bullitt would have his revenge on his superiors, and would later, as Ambassador to the USSR in the 1930s see at first hand the nightmarish brutality of the darkest days of Communist Russia.

The Spanish Flu didn’t come from Spain, but wartime censorship elsewhere meant that Spain was the only country in Europe openly reporting deaths from the world’s worst ever pandemic virus. At the end of its one year rampage the Spanish Flu had killed 50-100 million people. So where did it really come from? And 100 years on is it still lurking among us?