SARDAR USMAN KHAN SADDOZAI

Pondering the strange “Afghan” and “Pashtun” rulers who spoke and preferred only Persian — and the blood soaked history of these Durrani dynasts, and their creation called “Afghanistan”… brings to mind a notorious Durrani ancestor of my own — Sardar Usman Khan Saddozai (1798–1865), who was the Grand Vizier (Prime Minister) of Shah Shuja-ul Mulk, whom the British tried to install as their puppet king in Kabul. This led to the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1842 and the subsequent death of the King and British military retreat from Kabul. Usman fled to Peshawar after that debacle, where the British set up him and his family. He was my great-great-great grandfather, being a maternal great-grandfather of my Paternal grandmother.