Why can Afghans win and China can't?

1 Afghanistan can wage a people's war, but China can't.

During the Daoguang period of the Qing Dynasty, military-civilian relations were always tense. According to the report of the Governor of Zhejiang Province, the people were indifferent to the army until the collapse of the Qing army was foreseen, while the refugees were looking forward to foreigners coming in to make trouble. When Sanyuanli fought against Britain, instead of coming forward to help, the Qing army sent officials to intimidate the people to abide by the Guangzhou Peace Treaty, otherwise the compensation would be shared by themselves. Although the Afghan government is softer than the Qing government, it has lost the popular support and the government has lost control of the whole country. The brothers and the tribes held their own meetings to discuss the anti-British plan, and finally a national hero like abal Khan appeared. Therefore, neither the initial muskets and cannons nor the plane bombing in the early 20th century failed to bring the Afghan people to their knees.

The British army mainly attacked China by water, while the vast majority of Afghan areas were mountainous areas.

Britain is good at water warfare and has been hitting Nanjing with strong ships and guns. However, the British are not suitable for mountain warfare. The presence of Afghan guerrillas in the mountains made the enemy dizzy. For example, Britain once controlled Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, but they didn't expect that there would be mountain snipers in Afghanistan. In the end, the British army was frightened and had to give up Kabul.