Under the absolute Amir

by Frank A. Martin

Running away was not always punished with blinding, as was exemplified in the case of five Kafri boys. These boys, who were part of the regiment formed of the prisoners brought from Kafristan after that country was taken by the Amir, tried to get away to India, for Kabul and enforced Mohammedanism were little liked by them; but they were caught while doing so and brought back. As a punishment the Amir ordered the Kafri regiment to be paraded and the boys bayoneted in front of their fellows. There had been a good deal of dissatisfaction among the Kafris, and the Amir probably deemed a severe example necessary.

One form of execution, but which is very rarely used, is to bend the tops of two young trees towards each other and fasten them to the ground. The person to be executed is tied, one leg and arm to one tree, and the other leg and arm to the other tree, and, when all is ready, the ropes binding the trees down are cut simultaneously, and the body of the person tied to them is disrupted.

There are three common methods of execution in use—blowing from guns, hanging, and bayoneting.

The latter is mostly done in the prisons at night, when those to be executed are taken by guards to some secluded spot, such as the rased portion of Bala Hisar, and there bayoneted, their bodies being afterwards thrown into an old well or ditch close by, and earth thrown over them.

When a person is ordered to be blown from a gun, he is taken to the one which is fired daily to announce the hour of midday, and is fixed on a small hill close to the Sherpur cantonment. He is there tied to the gun in such a manner that his back is against the muzzle, and on the explosion of the charge the greater part of his body is blown into pieces. Blowing from guns is a punishment intended to strike terror into the hearts of others, but it is no doubt a preferable death to other forms of execution, inasmuch as it is sudden. Men who rob or swindle Government funds are served this way, and the Amin-Nizam, or paymaster to the army, is sometimes the central figure on these occasions, also highway robbers and spies frequently end their days by being scattered from the gun.

For hanging the ordinary gallows is used, i.e. there is no drop given to break the neck, the man being hauled up by means of a pulley and hanged till he dies of strangulation. Two gallows are used, one T-shaped, and very high, is for a man who is hanged and left hanging until the following day; the body being left on the gallows as a warning to others. The other is a frame similar to the frame of a table with the top planking removed, the legs being fixed in the ground, and each side of the square so formed, has three or four wooden pulleys depending from it, over which the ropes pass for hauling the body up. It sometimes happens that several have to be executed at one time and this gallows was made large enough to take sixteen persons together. Those who are condemned to be hanged are not blindfolded at the time of execution; their arms are tied to the body by a rope which passes over the arms above the elbows, and their legs are secured above the ankles. While a man is being hanged, his forearms work up and down, one after the other, struggling to break the cords and get at the rope round his neck, until he becomes unconscious, and it is a rather gruesome sight to watch his fruitless struggles to relieve the agony of strangulation. On one occasion a burly Afghan who was being hanged managed to break the rope binding his arms, and then clutching the rope, above his neck, pulled himself up and let go again, probably with the intention of ending the torture by breaking his neck; but the rope broke instead, and the man fell to the ground, and lay partly unconscious at the foot of the gallows for twenty minutes or so, while another rope was being brought from the bazar, and when that arrived, he was again strung up, and the execution completed. On another occasion when a man was being hanged the rope broke three times, and each time a new rope had to be brought from the bazar. When the third rope broke, those standing by said it was a sign from God that the man was innocent and should not be hanged, and the officer in charge of the execution despatched a messenger to the Amir with the particulars of the case, and asked if the man was to be reprieved; but the Amir’s message came back that the man must be hanged as ordered, so they had no alternative but to pull the man up for the fourth time and hang him until he was dead.

The lesser punishments for offences committed, besides those already mentioned, vary according to the caprice or humour of the Amir. In some cases noses are cut off, beards are plucked out, men are made to stand for several days and nights without moving. Snuff is rubbed into the eyes, and in different other ways they are made to feel the Amir’s displeasure. Any butcher who was convicted of giving short weight was, by Amir Shere Ali’s orders, nailed by the ear to the door of his shop.

In one case, where false witnesses were produced before the Amir, and were detected, the emissaries of the man who engaged these witnesses at a certain price each to give false evidence were ordered to be hanged by the heels in the Arak bazar from sunrise to sunset for eight days; but the men had friends, and the power of money is great, so the police sepoys allowed them to rest with their chests on the ground and legs up in the air until some officer was seen approaching, when they were hauled clear of the ground until he had passed, and were then lowered again, but even with all this indulgence, the men fainted several times. The strange part of the sentence lay in the punishment of the man who wanted, and paid for, the false witnesses, for he was fined only. No man knows the mind of the Amir, they say in Kabul, and it would be interesting to know by what process of reasoning the chief offender was considered less guilty than those who did his bidding.

Another punishment, which was also a huge joke in the court for many months, was that of a slave boy who had asked the Amir several times to give him a wife, until at last the Amir said, “Yes.” It was a usual thing for the Amir to give a slave girl from his harem for a favourite slave boy to marry. The marriage of this boy was celebrated in the usual way; a large khirgah or bamboo tent was fixed in the palace garden for the use of the newly married couple on the night of the ceremony, and all passed off with the firing of guns and feasting, as is usual. When at last the bridegroom hurried to the tent to see his bride for the first time face to face (the bride is never seen by the bridegroom until after the marriage ceremony is over), he found the tent in darkness, but passed in. Shortly afterwards he rushed out yelling, and fled to the Amir’s presence, saying that a great calamity had befallen him, and that it was a shaitan and not a woman he had married. It transpired that the Amir, to punish the boy’s importunity, had secretly ordered another of his slave boys to be dressed up and put in the place of a girl during the ceremony.