Afghanistan

by A. Hamilton

Kushkinski Post station, 306.4 sagenes above sea-level, is 293 versts from Merv. It possesses a fine buffet. The military post, situated near the frontier in the broad valley of the Kushk river, is bounded by the undulating slopes of the Bend Chengurek chain, an off-shoot of the Paropamisus. With the completion of the Murghab railway, Kushkinski Post immediately attained special importance and, in 1900, it was declared a fortress of the fourth rank. The hoisting of the Imperial standard over the walls was carried out in the presence of the late Minister of War, General Kuropatkin. In the early days, before the lines of the fortress had been planned, Kushkinski Post comprised a number of detached works within which the various arms were quartered. At that time, too, the officers’ accommodation, consisting of one-storey buildings roughly constructed out of mud, was in the railway settlement where, pending the completion of the main works, long narrow sheds for the use of the troops had been erected. Now improvement has followed upon preliminary chaos and the men are comfortably housed in cool barracks upon the upper slopes of the adjacent heights. The officers are disposed with equal care and convenience elsewhere. Public buildings likewise have improved upon their original sites. The military hospital, the post and telegraph bureau and the Custom House have taken up locations upon high ground, their positions crowned, if not protected by forts upon the crest of these very useful eminences. Kushkinski Post, therefore, may be said to be a thriving settlement where, if the hours are wearisome and the days charged with ennui, there is always the prospect of a “dust up.”

Attempts have been made from time to time, by officers stationed at Kushkinski Post, to become familiar with the officers in command of the Afghan posts across the frontier. More often these attempts at friendliness have been rebuffed, the Afghan soldiery neither accepting advances from the Russians nor making any overtures themselves. Strained relations exist, as a rule, between military posts on either side of any frontier, although, in regard to the Russo-Afghan frontier, there was an occasion when friendly conditions prevailed between the Russians and the Afghans.[10] At that time the staff of the frontier regiment on guard along the Afghan side of the border had accepted an invitation to the mess at the Russian post. They arrived in due course—appearing in all the full-dress grandeur of second-hand railway uniforms! The officer commanding the detachment exhibited on the collar of his tunic the mystic words “Ticket Collector”; his subordinate, a subaltern, was content with the less exalted label of “Guard.” Out of courtesy to their guests the Russians suppressed their merriment, receiving nevertheless the impression that a portion of the subsidy, granted by the Government of India to the Amir of Afghanistan, was taken out in the castoff uniforms of British public companies. The facts were that the Amir, through his Agent in India, had acquired a large parcel of discarded clothing at one of the annual sales of condemned stores in Northern India.

This exchange of courtesies on the frontier illustrates only the pleasant side of service in this region. More serious incidents occur. Occasionally in the heat of the chase, when parties of Russian officers have crossed the frontier in pursuit of their quarry they have been fired upon by the Afghan patrols or ridden down by Afghan sowars. Sporting trips around Kushkinski Post or in the valleys of the Murghab are infrequent among the Russians, although wild boar abound in the thick patches of reeds which hem in the banks of the rivers; the tufts of grass, the hardy scrub and the patches of bush also afford excellent cover for partridges and pheasants. The scarcity of good water at any distance from the railway is the great drawback to such excursions, since the transport of water is both costly and cumbersome. In cantonments goat-skins of the precious fluid are brought for sale by water-sellers who come round, earning a precarious livelihood by their industry.

This custom, which prevails throughout the East, was once turned to account by an Afghan who was afterwards discovered to be an Hazara sapper from the Kabul garrison. Disguised as a water-seller he spent three weeks at Kushkinski Post, conducting an exhaustive inspection of the works and coming every night and morning to the fort with his supplies of water. Chance, which in Asia plays no less a part in the affairs of man than in Europe, threw across his path a native who had visited Kabul some weeks before with letters from the Governor-General of Turkestan. The Afghan had been deputed by the Amir to attend to the Turkestani. He had met and escorted him to the capital and back again to the western boundary. As the Russian had entered Afghanistan from the Kushkinski Post, along the Hari Rud valley, he was conducted from the capital to the frontier by the route he had first followed. At the frontier he had dismissed his Afghan attendant, who promptly proceeded to disguise himself as a water-carrier and to obtain admission to the station. Here he busied himself daily until, meeting of a sudden his late charge, recognition upon the part of the Russian subject was immediate and the spy was arrested in the act of escaping from the precincts of the fort. Suspicion as to the man’s identity became assured when a packet of notes was found, wrapped in a rubber sheath, at the bottom of the goat-skin water-bag.

Until the advent of the railway the colony at Kushkinski Post apart from the garrison, comprised a few Armenian and Persian traders. With the prolongation of the line from Merv the civilian population began to increase rapidly. There is, of course, no hotel in the station; although the officers of the garrison have established a small military club wherein they mess together and where, when the bi-weekly trains bring the supply of ice, there is usually an animated gathering of desolated humanity. At the present time there are in Kushkinski Post 123 buildings, of which some thirty odd belong to private persons. Apart from the garrison the civil population numbers fifty people.

NATIVE WATER-SELLERS

Kushkinski Post station consists of a handsome, spacious structure in the white stone which is brought from quarries in the basin of the Kushk. The railway buildings include a depôt with workshops, eight bungalows for the heads of the staff and special quarters for the employés. There are also large barracks for the 6th Company of the 1st Trans-Caspian Railway Battalion, who are not included in the field state of the post. All buildings are lighted by electricity and the workshops are furnished with electric motors, while the water is drawn from springs on Gumesli mountain.

Kushk region is malarial in consequence of the marshy nature of the surrounding country. For some years past measures have been undertaken with a view to draining the swamps and regulating the running of the streams. By these means it has been hoped to render more healthy the general environment of the station, including the fortress works, Kushkinski village and the district lying between the Afghan frontier post of Kara Teppe and the Russian Alexeieffski and Poltavski villages.