Panjdeh Incident

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The Panjdeh Incident was a military skirmish which occurred in 1885 when Russian forces seized Afghan territory north of the Oxus River around an oasis at Panjdeh. Competing Russian and British interests in Central and South Asia had for years been the cause of a virtual cold war known euphemistically as The Great Game, and the Panjdeh Incident came close to triggering full scale armed conflict.

An Afghan force was encamped on the west bank of the Kushk River, with a Russian force on the east bank. On 29 March 1885, the leader of the Russian forces, General Komarov, sent an ultimatum demanding their withdrawal. On their refusal the Russians attacked them at 3 a.m. on 30 March and drove them across the Pul-i-Khishti Bridge with a loss of some 600 men. Afghan troops were reported to have been 'wiped out to a man' in their trenches.

However, outright war was averted with diplomacy, and the British Viceroy of India, Lord Dufferin, managed to secure a settlement in which Russia kept the oasis, but relinquished further territories taken in their advance, and promised to respect Afghan territorial integrity in the future.

Following the incident, a commission was established to delineate the northern frontier of Afghanistan. The commission did not have any Afghan involvement, and effectively led to Afghanistan becoming a buffer state between British India and the Russian Empire. British and Russian imperial designs in the region were primarily focused upon India, as that country was extremely lucrative, and Afghanistan was mostly a corridor for colonialism. War between the British Empire and Russian Empire was ultimately averted by World War I.

Reference: R.A.Johnson, 'The Penjdeh Incident, 1885'in Archives: The Journal of the British Records Association, volume XXIV, 100, (April 1999): 28-48.