Khyber Pass is a mountain route whose significance in the account reaches beyond military geography: it is both a corridor through which foreign armies entered Afghanistan and an escape route for people driven from their homes. The history attached to it connects the Second Anglo-Afghan War with the mass displacement caused by the later war against the Russians.

A route into Afghanistan

In November 1878, British forces crossed Khyber Pass, beginning the Second Anglo-Afghan War. Khader recounts that Lord Frederick Roberts came through the pass, captured Kabul, and imposed martial law. His account describes killings and destruction under British rule, establishing the pass as an entry point in a history of invasion and occupation.

The campaign continued toward Kandahar. Prince Ayub Khan raised an army to drive out the British, and at Maiwand his forces defeated a British and Indian column led by Burrows. The British retreated to Kandahar, which Ayub then surrounded. These events show how an advance through the pass opened into a wider conflict across Afghanistan.

A passage of flight

During the later war, Khyber Pass became a route of forced migration in the opposite direction. The account describes three-and-a-half million Afghan refugees moving through the pass toward Peshawar, while another million were exiled in Iran, India, and the Muslim republics of the Soviet Union. The pass therefore appears not only as a military corridor but as part of the geography of mass flight.

Historical and human significance

The two episodes give the pass a double meaning: armies traverse it in campaigns of conquest, while civilians cross it under the pressure of war. The later exodus belongs to a catastrophe measured not only in displacement but also in enormous loss of life and lasting harm to Afghanistan. By placing a major refugee route beside an earlier history of invasion, the account makes Khyber Pass a point where the repeated costs of conflict become visible.