Hungarian Pawns of the Great Game

Role of Hungarian Prisoners of War in the Formation of Modern Afghan Army between the Two World Wars

Abstract

Hungarian soldiers, who had been captured in Russia and worked on the construction of the Turkestan-Siberia railways, escaped to Afghanistan between 1915 and 1919. While Amir Habibullah Khan (1900–1919) imposed strict measures on them, King Amanullah Khan (1919–1929) used their talent and expertise for the modernization of the Afghan army, military training, and building railway. The second wave of former Hungarian prisoners of war was sent by the Tashkent Soviet for assisting with military reforms, mainly training military trainers, engineers, and pilots, and establishing the air force. After the fall of reformer King Amanullah Khan, as a result of very complicated interactions of British and German intelligence, Hungarians assisted with eliminating the bloody chaos, restoring law and order, and ascending Nadir Khan, another branch of the Mohammadzai dynasty, to throne in 1929–1930. Many of these former PoWs later appeared in the modernization of Turkey and Iran.