Under the absolute Amir

by Frank A. Martin

The Kabul Kotwali office is built alongside the dome of the Arak bazar, the newest bazar in the city, which is close to the Arak palace, and where the best goods in Kabul are to be obtained. There are, besides the chief Kotwali office, several Kotwali (police) stations in the different streets in Kabul, and other police stations, which are principally for the purpose of stopping runaways, and to collect the custom duties on all goods entering the country, are placed along all the chief roads right up to the borders of neighbouring states, and in this way the police are able to keep a check on all persons leaving or entering the country. In Kabul itself all custom duties are collected by a special department appointed for that purpose. In each police station is a guard of seven Kotwali sepoys (policemen), including the havildar or sergeant, who is supposed to be a man who can write but very often cannot, and so has a friend or relation among the men with him who writes all reports. There are other officers higher in rank than the havildar, and all of them, officers and sepoys (police), follow the usual custom of the country in taking advantage of their position, in order to abstract money or goods from all the people they are brought into official contact with, and to invent excuses to do so in other cases. It is a common occurrence for a person caught in the act of committing an offence against the law to bribe the Kotwali sepoys to let him go free, and any of the sepoys will do this, provided there are no witnesses who can give information to a higher officer and so make trouble.

The policemen are themselves the greatest thieves in Kabul, and take anything they can get, great or small; but they become most indignant when they see others stealing, considering it, perhaps, an encroachment on their privileges. In going along the bazar a policeman will take a handful of grain or fruit from a shop as he passes and eat it, and the shopkeeper must say nothing. If a shopkeeper should make a fuss over anything a policeman does in that way, it is more than probable that a case will be trumped up against him very shortly afterwards, and if there is nothing else to accuse him of, he is accused of giving short weight, and as there are few correctly made sets of metal weights in Kabul, those there are being made and used in the Government workshops and stores, the shopkeepers have to take stones of different sizes, and after matching them against the Government weights use them for weighing out the articles they deal in. These stones are therefore readily changed by the policeman for others lying on the street, when taking a shopkeeper through the bazars to the Kotwal for trial, and when such convincing evidence is forthcoming, the shopkeeper is of course heavily fined, and for the future treats a Kotwali sepoy with every respect. In most of the robberies committed in Kabul, some of the Kotwali sepoys are concerned, their duties as policemen enabling them to mark the most likely shop or house, and also to obtain correct information of the movements of the people in them.

The Kotwali guards at the different stations are supposed to be changed every two weeks; but when on guard at those places which give little work for them, or where they can more readily add to their income, they endeavour to be kept on there, and those who possess the favour of the Kotwal, manage to do this at times. These sepoys are the men employed by the Kotwal in the carrying out of executions and punishments, and those who happen to be on guard at the time are appointed for the work. Some of the younger sepoys are very sick after assisting in some horrible punishment, but use hardens them, and after a time they become callous to suffering in others, in some cases even to the extent of gloating over the death or tortures they are ordered to inflict on some miserable wretch.

Outside the city are also soldier guards from various regiments, but these are mostly posted about Arak and the new part of the city. Both these guards and the Kotwali guards have, in the present Amir’s time, been much increased, so that in some places one is challenged every hundred yards or so at night. Kotwali stations have also been lately placed on all roads about four miles out of the city to prevent any one leaving without a road pass, so that no one can now travel even five or six miles out into the country without permission. At times, on distant stations, the Kotwali sepoy on guard is attacked and killed at night for the sake of his rifle, and the body of one of them who was killed at Baber (which is only two miles south of the city), was hacked to pieces, possibly because he made a good fight for his life and injured some of his assailants.

The prisons in Kabul are not buildings erected for that purpose, but any house belonging to the Government which is suitably situated is used as a prison, and continues in such use. Strong bars are fixed across the windows to prevent the escape of those who are confined there, and the outer door is made strong and padlocked, and has a guard of Kotwali sepoys stationed inside it. The space at disposal in such houses is very inadequate to the number of prisoners; but that is not regarded at all by the authorities, who would laugh at the idea of properly housing such animals as prisoners, nor do they insist on the prisons being kept clean, or in any way healthy. There is absolutely no thought of sanitation, and the prisoners are herded together in a house that has perhaps been used as a prison for twenty or thirty years, and never cleaned. Consequently, typhus and other diseases are common among prisoners, and typhus alone will very often sweep off seventy to eighty per cent. of the men confined there, and the wonder is that all do not die.

A man who was in prison for some years described it to me. He and his father and some other relations were chained together, and so brought from a distance to Kabul, charged with some political offence, and put in prison there. It is very seldom that prisoners charged with such offences are tried at once, if at all, so they lay in prison for some years, and had no hope of ever getting out, for their relations and friends feared to bring the matter to the notice of the Amir in case they should themselves incur his displeasure. The room they were confined in was a small one, and they, with the other prisoners, were about thirty in number, and, when lying down at night, there was only sufficient space for them to lie in rows, side by side. Sanitary arrangements there were none, and at length typhus broke out, and one after another succumbed to it, his father and some of his brothers and cousins being carried out for burial among others. He himself was ill with the fever for weeks, but recovered, and when the disease at last stopped, there were only five of them left out of the original number. Other prisoners were, however, brought in, and the room was packed again very shortly, and some of these got the fever from time to time and died.

At that time also, a number of prisoners were being secretly disposed of, and almost every night a man would be called from their number, and going away with his jailers, was never heard of again. This made the rest of them live in terror, for no man knew but what his turn might come the next night. Eventually the strain was too much for them, and they determined on revolt and escape, as death in trying to escape was no worse than sitting and waiting for it to come to them. So one night, about three o’clock, when the guard was known to be lax and most of the soldiers asleep, they got out of the room and made their way to the gate. Here the man on guard saw them and fired, dropping one man, but before he could reload, a huge Afghan who led the prisoners, took him across his knee and broke his back, and then seized the rifle and bayonet. The rest of the guard were roused by the noise, and a short fight ensued, and several of the guard being killed, the others fled; but some of the prisoners also suffered during the struggle. The door of the prison was now unguarded, and the prisoners escaped, but the guards who had run away had warned others, and they had not gone far along the streets before these were upon them, both in front and behind, and after a struggle they were overpowered and taken back to the prison. For this several were hanged, the big Afghan among them, and the rest had such heavy chains put on them that they could hardly move. It was not until several years had elapsed that the man who told me the foregoing was released; but eventually his friends brought his case to the notice of the Amir, and as there was no proof against him, and the governor who had imprisoned him had been hanged, he was released, but his health was shattered, and he died a few years later.

The food given by Government to the prisoners is bread, two nans (flat loaves weighing about half a pound each) being given daily, one in the morning and one at night. This is far from sufficient, and if a prisoner has no friends or relations to send him either food or money, he is in a bad way. Towards each other, however, the prisoners, and all the poor people generally, are very good, and a man who has food to eat, however little, will offer some of it to another who has none. Prisoners have leg-irons fastened round their ankles to hamper their movements and render any attempt at escape more difficult, but the hands, except in case of a man being taken to execution or as a special punishment, are free. In all cases prisoners are treated by their guards with great severity, and the prisoner who does not do at once as he is ordered, gets the butt-end of a rifle in the small of his back as a reminder. From what I have seen I should imagine that a street dog’s life is a happy one compared to theirs.

Of all the prisons, the worst and most dreaded is the old well in Bala Hisar. This is an old well which has been excavated through rock, with the bottom part widened out to some fifteen or twenty feet in diameter, and having over the mouth of the well a hut, in which a guard of sepoys is kept. In this underground hole men are imprisoned for life for very heinous offences (in the eyes of the authorities), and live and die there, the bodies of the dead being left where they lie together with the living. There are no sanitary arrangements of course, for none but prisoners are lowered down, and those who are put down stop there. Food (bread and water) is lowered by a rope once a day to those below, but there are few whose minds or health do not give way in a short time, and most of the men imprisoned very soon end their days by dashing themselves against the rock, until they become unconscious and die, for the solitude and horror of it all drives them mad. The bottom of the well is dark, and the only light which penetrates is from the mouth above, and no sound from the outer world can reach those imprisoned there, while the stench and foulness of the atmosphere is horrible, and is itself sufficient to cause death. There is a man, however, who is said to have been there for fifteen years or more, but he is quite mad, and unconscious of his surroundings. When the Amir died, the present ruler gave orders that those in the well should be taken out, and brought before him. There were three who were alive, and their appearance was not prepossessing, for their faces had a dead, white look, and their eyes seemed to be blind in the daylight, while their hair and beards were long and matted, and the hair falling over their faces gave them a wild, animal look, which their finger-nails increased, for they were long and more like talons. The Amir ordered the men to be released, but some three weeks after again ordered them to be taken back to the well, the representations of others having convinced him that his father’s action in so imprisoning them was just.