From the time of Alexander the Great, the road to Indian conquest has led down from the north through the Khyber Pass. To keep the encroaching Russians away from this gateway to their empire, the British built up the buffer state of Afghanistan across the Khyber's mountainous northern approaches. Last week, only nine years after the British turned over the Khyber's defenses to the new and troubled state of Pakistan, the long-feared penetration of Russian military influence into Afghanistan was announced as a fact. In Kabul, Afghanistan's Strongman Mohammed Daoud Khan, who last winter accepted a $100 million economic credit...
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