I have perused your petitions, all of which were with one object. I now write to you in reply that it is eighteen years since I came to Kabul, and you know yourselves that I went to Rawal Pindi (in April 1885) by the Khyber route. In consideration of my friendship with the British Government I had gone to their country as their guest, and on my way I found many of your tribesmen on both sides of the pass, who made salaams to me. If what you state now is true, why did you not tell me at that time about the matter, so that I might have conferred with H.E. the Viceroy about it? Some years after this when the boundary was being laid down, Sir Mortimer Durand passed through the Khyber and came to Kabul. All the frontier tribesmen knew of this, and saw the Mission with their own eyes. Why did not then your Mullahs, and Maliks, and Elders come to me when Sir Mortimer Durand came with authority to settle the boundary, so that I could have discussed the matter with him? At that time you all remained silent, and silence indicates consent. I do not know on what account now a breach has taken place between you and the English. But after you have fought with them, and displeased them, you inform me.
I have entered into an alliance with the British Government in regard to matters of State, and up to the present time no breach of the agreement has occurred from the side of the British, notwithstanding that they are Christians. We are Moslems and followers of the religion of the Prophet, and also of the four Kalifs of the Prophet. How can we then commit a breach of an agreement? What do you say about the verse in the Koran—Fulfil your promise; to fulfil your promise is the first duty of a Moslem. God, on the day when the first promise was taken, asked all the creatures whether he was their God or not. They said, “Yes, you are our God and our Creator.” Therefore, on the day of the resurrection the first question will be about the observance of agreements. Infidels and Moslems will thus be distinguished by this test. You will thus see that the matter of the agreement is of great importance. I will never, without cause or occasion, swerve from an agreement, because the English, up to the present time, have in no way departed from the line of boundary laid down in the map they have agreed upon with me. Then why should I do so? To do so will be far from justice. I cannot, at the instance of a few interested people, bring ignominy on myself and my people.
What you have done with your own hands you must now carry on your own backs. I have nothing to do with you. You are the best judge of your affairs. Now that you have got into trouble (literally, spoiled the matter) you want me to help you. You have allowed the time when matters might have been ameliorated to slip by. Now I cannot say or do anything. I have sent back from Jelalabad the Maliks you had deputed to me. I gave them each a lungi and ten rupees for their road expenses, and I did not trouble them to come to Kabul.
In spite of the Amir’s attitude towards the Afridi deputation on September 23, and his emphatic denial of the complicity of Ghulam Haidar in his letter to the Viceroy on August 18, evidence of Afghan participation was again unpleasantly prominent, negotiations for peace with certain of the tribal factions being complicated by the acts of the Afghan commander-in-chief. On one occasion, September 1, when the Hadda Mullah had been compelled to disperse an Afghan lashkar by specific orders from the Amir, Ghulam Haidar had sent the fakir encouraging messages, a present of five British rifles, cartridges and a horse. Five weeks later Major Deane, political agent in the Dir-Swat-Chitral country, complained on October 8 that two mule-loads of ammunition sent by Umra Khan from Kabul had passed through Ghulam Haidar’s camp at Asmar; while a few days previously Sir Bindon Blood had reported from Panj-kora, September 28:
The jirga told the native political assistant that the Sipah Salar had encouraged them to attack the troops, promising ammunition as well as compensation in kind for any loss of grain....
Again, when the Mahmunds finally submitted, dreading Kabul reprisals for their surrender they begged to be protected from Abdur Rahman and Ghulam Haidar. Although these were merely the under-currents of the situation as it appeared at the outset of the Tirah campaign in 1897, by the close of those operations in 1898 tribesmen of all denominations of fanatical obstinacy were alluding to the encouragement which they had received from the Sipah Salar and Abdur Rahman. Over the singular propensity for blundering which distinguished the elect in these two years and the protracted misfortunes attending Anglo-Indian arms during the long series of minor wars which concluded with the Tirah, it is permissible at length to draw the veil. In any case, the Tirah, no less a stage in the course of Anglo-Afghan history than were the earlier occurrences, is of fading interest in this little survey; the trend of affairs passes, almost with relief, to consideration of the happier prospect which the advent of a new Viceroy, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, January 1899, inaugurated for India itself and of the more encouraging note introduced into Imperial relations with the spheres beyond its borders.
JAMRUD FORT