Afghanistan

by A. Hamilton

(8) The last request is that you should firmly believe, and on this point I will give you every assurance and satisfaction, that the Government of India has no intention of going beyond these limits, which form the present boundaries of the Indian Empire, and that it has no desire to mix itself in any way with the affairs of your country. Written on the 7th of Zu’l-hijjah 1311 H.—A.D. June 12, 1894.

THE ROAD TO LUNDI KHANA, KHYBER PASS

Since nothing whatever had been decided about the Mohmand line, the publication of such a rescript was a most improper and provocative proceeding. The Amir was offended, while the Sipah Salar retaliated by destroying all copies of the proclamation that found their way across the border. No doubt, too, it was a sense of lingering irritation which a little later caused Abdur Rahman to repudiate the Durand Agreement, where it concerned the Mohmand-Bajaur region. Ghulam Haidar made the views of the Amir quite clear at a meeting with Mr. R. Udny and Surgeon-Captain McNabb on August 12, in Jelalabad. The Sipah Salar there rejected entirely the proposed division of the Mohmands, claiming, in place of the Panj-kora-Kunar line, to exercise jurisdiction over them down to the Peshawar valley. Similarly, the Afghan Commander-in-Chief refused to secede an inch of Kafiristan. Troubles also followed in the wake of the Bruce mission. Breaking camp on October 1, and marching viâ the Gomul valley into Southern Waziristan, the laager at Wano was attacked by the Waziris on November 3, with such success that an expedition under Sir William Lockhart was immediately sent against them. In the end the boundary, from the Gomul in the south to the Tochi and the Kurram in the north, was settled, the solution of the Mohmand impasse on April 9, 1895, being due solely to the fact that detailed for duty on the Mohmand-Bajaur section was the most distinguished survey officer of his day—Colonel (now Sir Thomas) Holdich. In no wise rebuffed by the remarkable deficiencies of the Durand Agreement nor the discrepancies of the Udny manifesto, this officer contrived through clever adaptation of available geographical data to evolve something of a border line, although no part of the boundary defined south of the Hindu Kush bore any relation to the frontier laid down by Durand or Udny.

Events in the Mohmand country were not confined to the excitement emanating from the proposed delimitation of the hinterland. During the last five years an Afghan freebooter from Jandol, Umra Khan, had made bold bids for supremacy alternately against the Khan of Jandol and the Mir of Dir, uniting with the one against the other as his interests dictated and opportunity served. Success attended him when, in an attempt to occupy part of the Kunar valley, upon which Abdur Rahman had already cast eyes, he was badly defeated by Ghulam Haidar. In due course he recovered and re-establishing his rule over Dir and Nawagai, he contracted an alliance with Shir Afzal, lately Mehtar of Chitral. At the moment this man was a fugitive; and, as such, a cat’s-paw of the Amir of Afghanistan from whose custody he had been permitted to escape, since Abdur Rahman was proposing to step into his shoes if any conspicuous result attended Umra Khan’s operations in Chitral. Moreover, Ghulam Haidar and Umra Khan had come to terms upon a basis which furnished the Afghan king-maker with supplies, volunteers and ammunition. If the nature of the agreement between Abdur Rahman and Shir Afzal were never entirely disclosed, the character of the understanding between the Sipah Salar of the Amir of Afghanistan and the progressive ruffian from Jandol was soon confirmed. As Ghulam Haidar watched over the welfare of the Udny party in the Lower Kunar valley, the situation shifted early in the New Year of 1895 from the Mohmand country to Chitral. Here the sudden appearance of Umra Khan at the head of a motley force on behalf of Shir Afzal had precipitated a dynastic war. While Umra Khan seized Kala Drosh in Lower Chitral proclaiming Shir Afzal, the British agent in Gilgit, Dr. (now Sir George) Robertson, advancing from that station threw himself into Chitral and set up a cadet of the reigning family as the rightful ruler. Umra Khan, supported by large numbers of well-armed Afghan infantry from the Sipah Salar’s camp at Asmar and plentifully supplied with Kabul breechloaders and ammunition, advanced against Dr. Robertson, inflicting upon him a crushing defeat. The effect of this disaster on British prestige was in a measure effaced by the pluck and determination of the Chitral garrison, before whom, on March 3, 1895, Umra Khan settled himself for a siege. His triumph was short lived, since on April 18, the investment was rudely disturbed by the arrival of Colonel Kelly with 650 men from Gilgit. By then, too, a larger force had taken the field, for General Sir Robert Low, at the head of 15,000 soldiers with 30,000 transport animals and 10,000 followers, had embarked upon a campaign in the Swat-Bajaur-Chitral country.

Through the accidence of these events matters had come to an absolute dead-lock in the Mohmand-Bajaur-Asmar region. The Udny commission had been withdrawn with only a part of its work accomplished, the chief receiving the honour of knighthood for his services. Elsewhere, too, the situation was unsatisfactory. The border tribes, alarmed at the prospect of enforced demarcation, their fears accentuated by the establishment of military posts at Wano, in the Tochi and Kurram valleys, on the Malakand—the key to Swat—at Chakdara where the Panj-kora had been bridged, and on the Samana ridge, trembled for their independence. Moreover the presence of these survey parties was constantly used for the purpose of exploiting tribal sentiment by Ghulam Haidar, who would not have acted as he did without very definite instructions and very acute knowledge of the Amir’s sympathies. Abdur Rahman was thus engaging in a double game. Exercising a potent inimical authority over events in the Chitral crisis, as that affair waned he was at pains to show his amiability towards Great Britain. In April 1895, almost simultaneously with the raising of the Chitral siege, Nasr Ullah left Kabul on his visit to England. He arrived in London in May, leaving for Kabul in the following August, the recipient of a G.C.M.G. and the bearer of a similar honour to his brother Habib Ullah. The real purport of the Mission, to secure authority to open direct relations between Kabul and the India Office as well as with the Viceroy and to establish official representation in London, failed. The Amir of Afghanistan professed to find a slight in the curt refusal of the Imperial Government to accede to his requests, and was in high dudgeon. Nevertheless, there was nothing remarkable in this rejection of the Amir’s petition. Sir Henry Fowler, however, committed a blunder in sanctioning an invitation which led merely to the ventilation of grievances and paved the way for those preposterous claims to independent sovereignty which distinguished the later years of Abdur Rahman’s rule, and, since his demise, have ranked among the many pretensions of Habib Ullah.

By the autumn of 1895 the Chitral imbroglio had been straightened, and the remaining months of the year were occupied with the proceedings of the Pamir Boundary Commission and the doings of the Afghan army in Kafiristan. Here Abdur Rahman had embarked upon a brief campaign, which, after forty days of actual warfare, terminated in the spring of 1896. Aside from these operations, interest in the frontier situation was riveted upon the curious theological studies which Abdur Rahman had been pursuing in Kabul. Expectations were also raised by communications evidently passing between Ghulam Haidar and the principal border fanatics Said Akbar of the Aka Khels, the Sarlor Fakir—the Mad Mullah of the Swat—and the Hadda Mullah. After much labour and while the letters were in exchange, Abdur Rahman had composed a treatise, the Twakim-ud-din, expounding the merits of the jehad or holy war, and the virtues of the ghazi. Satisfied with this work, at the close of 1895, he convened for the Nauroz festival, March 21, 1896, a great convocation of mullahs drawn from all parts of his dominions and the Indo-Afghan borderland as well, at which he dilated upon the essential principles of that doctrine which specially enjoins the extinction of the infidel. It was a dangerous way to secure his recognition as one of the supreme heads of Islam, and obviously antagonistic to the preservation of harmonious relations between the tribesmen and the Government of India. After much earnest exhortation the holy men were dismissed, comforted by many gifts and gracious words. Concerned at the action of the Amir and compelled to notice the conduct of Ghulam Haidar, the Viceroy of India (Earl of Elgin) on May 2, 1896, addressed to Abdur Rahman a remonstrance upon the unfriendly attitude of his frontier officials. The reply from Kabul is best illustrated by the action of some mullahs who had been summoned to the Nauroz festival. At the Id of Pilgrimage, May 25, the title Zia-ul-Millat wa ud-Din, the Light of the Nation and Religion, was offered to Abdur Rahman. When confirmation of this tribute had been received from the whole of Afghanistan the Amir adopted it at a special Durbar on August 24, at the same time appropriating to himself the further dignity of King of Islam.

Save for these occurrences in Kabul, a few riots in the Tochi valley in February, and the conclusion of the work of the Pamir Boundary Commission the year 1896 was undisturbed. Intrigues were afoot, however, and emissaries of the Mahommedan religion, in the shape of bigoted travelling fakirs, were “out” as the perfervid exponents of a Moslem crusade. Early in May 1897, Abdur Rahman received at Kabul with great state a Turkish visitor from Constantinople. A few hours later on the same day the Amir summoned all the mullahs of the city to a private audience. Meanwhile correspondence passed between the leading lights of the Moslem world on both sides of the frontier, and evidences of unrest and disaffection were increasing. With suspicions lulled by eighteen months’ comparative calm, or set at rest by the fact that the Chitral reliefs had been unmolested, the frontier political officers in the Tochi explored routes, made surveys and constructed roads in continuation of the protective works which were begun in the Tochi valley so soon as that area was occupied. The Tochi lies only a little north of Waziristan and so close to Wano that the Waziris were readily roused to avenge themselves by the mullahs when opportunity offered. It came—with the visit of Mr. Gee, the political officer in Tochi, to Maizar, June 10, 1897, when a treacherous attack was made upon the party and 72 casualties inflicted. In spite of the extreme heat of this month retaliatory measures were at once put into execution, General Corrie Bird taking the field with 7000 soldiers, 10,000 transport animals and 3000 followers.

The mullahs were now actively extolling the cause of the jehad to their disciples when the persistent efforts of the Hadda Mullah to excite Mahommedan fanaticism in Swat, Bajaur and Dir were unexpectedly furthered by the appearance in Swat of the Mad Mullah. The companion of the Hadda Mullah in his recent stay in Kabul, he had come direct from the Afghan capital, declaring everywhere that a holy war had been proclaimed. Under the enthusiasm inspired by the eloquence of this restless spirit, the Mad Fakir’s progress through Swat was in the nature of a triumph. Thana had declared itself for him, when on July 26, the fury of the storm broke over Malakand and Chakdara. By August 1, a field force of two brigades under Major-General Sir Bindon Blood arrived at Malakand, where the opposing tribesmen numbered 20,000 men. Meanwhile, the apostles of the movement looked to Kabul for their orders. Letters and proclamations, purporting to describe the Amir’s interest in it, were issued; and, as the tribes rallied to his call, Hadda Mullah, relying upon the kindly offices of Ghulam Haidar and emulating the example of the Mad Fakir, led on August 7, an attack against the British frontier post at Shabkaddar. Unfortunately for Indo-Afghan relations the muster for this affair contained, besides several thousand Mohmands, a large proportion of Afghans from the Kunar valley, the Khugiani country, the Laughman and Jelalabad districts, the Basawal and Hazarnao villages, and soldiers in plain clothes from the Kabul garrison. It was no longer possible for the Government of India to ignore the complicity of the Afghan frontier officials. So pronounced was their sympathy with the rising that Abdur Rahman addressed a firman to the Sipah Salar, containing an expression of his grave displeasure at their misconduct.