Outcome of The Third Afghan War

The casualties during this small conflict were not great. Approximately, there were 1,000 Afghan killed in action and 1,751 British and Indian troops. The war ended 29 days after it had starter, in stalemate, and both sides claiming victory. British suffered almost twice casualties than the Afghan and Amir Amanullah was, ultimately, able to secure his strategic political goal, gaining the right to implement Afghanistan´s own foreing policy, independent of Delhi. The war offered Amanullah the opportunity to gain strategic political aims. As a result of the peace treaty, the British ceased the payment of the Afghan subsidy and stopped the arms sales from India to Afghanistan. But, as the British influence declined, the Afghan were able to gain control over their own foreign affairs and emerged as a fully independent state.
The tribesmen benefited greatly from the weapons and ammunition that the Afghan had left behind, and from the influx of manpower in the large number of deserters from the militia that had joined their ranks, so they were able to launch a campaign of resistance against British authority on the North West Frontier that led, finally to a punitive campaign which was, perhaps, the most serious ever fought on the Frontier and in which the British Indian Army faced humiliating defeat.
The campaign in Waziristan, the last act of the Third Afghan War, was the first major occasion on which the British had had to come to grips in the Frontier with the new situation created by the advent on a large scale of the modern, breech-loading, magazine rifle firing smokeless powder. Despite the deployment of the full range of up-to-date military technology on the British side, their early defeats and posterior hard fighting made clear that success would depend clearly upon discipline and individual training. This campaign led also to the intention to construct a network of permanent roads in tribal territory and the creation of an also permanent base in Ladha for a full brigade, changing the Frontier policy that, until that moment and for 70 years, had been one of no interference with the tribes but the occasional punitive expedition.


Afghan Delegation at the British outpost, 1919

The Afghan peace delegates, 1919

British Camp in Haidri Kach, Waziristan 1920