Edmund Yorke argues that many of the difficulties encountered during British military engagements in Afghanistan over the past 170 years have been caused by politicians' excessive interference in military operations, their failure to provide sufficient resources and their inability to understand the country's complex ethnicity. He also discusses previously unpublished source material that sheds new light on key events of the four Anglo-Afghan wars, and reveals the crucial but underestimated role played by Afghan allies and collaborators.