Now there’s an evocative calendar reference! Say “December of ’41,” and the American mind flashes back 60 years to Pearl Harbor and FDR’s “Day of Infamy.” More than 3,000 of our folks died.

By that time, London had endured Hitler’s blitz, but “December of ’41” has another, far more horrific connotation in British memory. That month – one century earlier in 1841 – marked a key and downward phase in Britain’s worst-ever military defeat. Final death toll: in excess of 16,000.

This disaster struck in Afghanistan. Now, in December of 2001, the British are sending troops to Kabul again.

This time their mission is meant to be peaceful, but deviltry lurks in the details. The British soldiers will serve, under their own General John McColl, as lead contingent in the International Security and Assistance Force slated – as of now, but under ongoing discussion – to keep the peace in Kabul (and where else?) once the new Afghan Interim Authority takes power Dec. 22. But how many of them? And accompanied by who else? And for how long? And, exactly, to what purpose?

With these questions unresolved, we can only hope that their task proves – how to put it? – less “complicated” than what Britain undertook in Afghanistan 160 years ago. Then, as now, the aim was to protect and stabilize a new regime. Like the 2001 U.S.-led coalition, British troops had helped to empower a replacement for Afghan leadership deemed – again, how to put it? – too “independent” for super-power taste.

With this crucial difference: Shah Shuja, the British favorite in 1841, was essentially a stooge for the Raj – which Hamid Karzai is not. For our sake as well as for his, Karzai must never be cast in that role. The Afghan people, whatever the century, know and loathe stooges at first glance, and in 1841 they much preferred the British-ousted Dost Mohammed. Today, mercifully, only a few hard-liners around Kandahar still prefer the Taliban and wish that they were back.

All seemed well when the British first invested Kabul and enthroned Shah Shuja in 1839. Bands played, and officers sent for their wives. We haven’t gotten quite that far yet, but the 19th century political-military dynamic must seem recently familiar. In the words of Louis Dupree, most comprehensive of all scholars of Afghanistan, the new ruler was “propped up by British bayonets, supported by British gold, and sustained by British and Indian blood.”

What else is new? Where would Karzai & Co. be today, despite their bravery and commitment, without the US military? Answer: Diaspora. Likewise the northern alliance, otherwise still stuck in their single pre-Oct. 7 province of Badakhshan. (And where – without American intervention – would Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar would now be? Probably downtown Kandahar with weekend hikes to Tora Bora in the company of Pakistani secret service pals. The fact that at the moment we don’t know where these two are should not be held against the Pentagon. Pin that donkey tail on the CIA and its two decade love affair with Pakistan’s ISI.)

Back to the mid-19th century when the puppet Shah Shuja found himself unloved by his subjects. Likewise despised were Shuja’s British puppeteers. Tribes became restive. Tribal leaders defected. Law and order, never solid, fell apart completely. A British intelligence officer, the self-legendary Sir Alexander “Bokhara” Burnes, was murdered in the Kabul bazaar. And then, on December 23, 1841, the chief British political agent, briber, and double-crosser (Sir William McNaughten) was himself double-crossed and slain.

Surrounded, bereft of supplies, and with no hope of rescue from outside, the 16,000-plus British troops, dependents, and camp-followers had no choice but to trust in Afghan assurances of safe passage (!) and to start the frozen 80 mile trek on foot from Kabul to Jalalabad. They did so on January 6, 1842. One week later, one man made it.

(This story is not celebrated in British schoolbooks. Curious readers are directed to three sources: 1. Patrick Macrory’s fine 1966 book “The Fierce Pawns,” published in Britain as “Signal Catastrophe; 2. A Journal of the Disasters in Affghanistan, 1841-42,” written by Lady Florentia Wynche Sale, British officer’s fiesty wife and undaunted hostage of the Afghans for nine months who became known as “The Petticoat Grenadier”; 3. “Remnants of an Army,” a famous painting by Lady Elizabeth Thompson Butler, another formidable female Victorian imperialist, depicting the arrival in Jalalabad of that lone British survivor. He was, by the way, an assistant surgeon named William Brydon. When Dr. Brydon was first spied from the British fortress, one of the garrison remarked in tones of relief, “Don’t worry. Kabul’s fine. Here comes the messenger.”)

It took Great Britain two more Anglo-Afghan Wars – three all told – to get the message: That Afghans, while famously hospitable, don’t much care for armed outsiders on their land. Others, notably the Soviets, got that message the hard way … and learned from it too late.

This time things seem (seem) to be different. For a start, there’s no longer a Great Game between super-powers. America is the only kid on that block, and the Afghans know it. They also know that America and Britain are, as British spooks call our spooks, “cousins,” and won’t risk offending the dominant cousin’s sensibilities. Furthermore, Afghans remember our help against the Soviets and, more recently, against the Taliban. Grateful then, grateful now.

But gratitude gets old when unwanted uniforms hang around. It’s one thing to have a multi-national peace keeping force, however constituted and empowered. It’s quite another to have American Marines and Special Forces – and British Special Forces – still on the ground conducting indefinite combat operations against remnants (that word again) of the Taliban and al-Qaida. What if – the mind boggles – the British combat troops come face-to-face with the British peace keeping troops? Who takes orders from whom? And what about the B-52s? And what about the Afghans?

In particular, what about the new Defense Minister-designate, General Mohammed Qassem Fahim? This erstwhile Tajik warlord took Kabul a month ago, has kept the peace evenly since then, and doesn’t want his prize wimpified by a superfluity of international peace keepers. Hence his demand that their number be kept to 1000. The would-be ex-pat peace keepers (and, quietly, Karzai) fear Tajik hegemony and ask for more outside forces, as many as 5000.

Well, who’s to say? Is or is not the brave new Afghanistan a sovereign state? And if that answer is Yes, can Hamid Karzai (Pushtun) and General Fahim (non-Pushtun) concur on what direction that sovereignty should take?

Getting dizzy? Wearied by pesky detail? In the euphoria of expectations leading to Dec. 22, 2001, many actors in the Afghan drama escape by ignoring the nitty-gritty. So did the British in December of 1841. Fecklessly, they hoped for the best and let things take a sequence of disastrous turns. What happened? One man made it to Jalalabad.

Let’s do better. Let’s all of us – British, Americans, and most of all Afghans – keep our eyes wide open this December. Fear: That Karzai, despite his own determination and integrity, will be made a short-term Western stooge and thus lose Afghan legitimacy … and thus undermine long-term American interests. Hope: That Karzai’s Interim Authority can do its six-month bit towards the re-emergence of Afghanistan as a full and respected member of the international community.

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world.