2025/07/09 by Travis Kaiser Weinger · 2 voices
Social Sciences · #Intelligence, Security, War Strategy #Military History and Strategy #Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
paper · doi:10.1080/03086534.2025.2526030
openalex publication_date 2025/07/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14
This paper explores how the colonial intelligence system operated on British India’s north-west frontier during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Coming off of its successes during the famed Great Game of the mid-to-late 1800s, this system had a fearsome reputation. Its failure to warn of the surprise attack that started the Third Anglo-Afghan War in 1919 – the ‘bolt from the blue’ – thus came as a shock. Drawing on contemporary intelligence reporting, government correspondence, memoranda and reports, and the private papers of colonial officials, this paper examines the bureaucracies responsible for frontier intelligence during the time period and the system’s failure in 1919. It argues that those responsible viewed intelligence as a collateral duty, leading to a lack of coordination and intelligence sharing and precluding independent analysis. These flaws proved fatal and precluded British intelligence from delivering either strategic or tactical warning before the outbreak of war.