The importance of this incident of the Afghan occupation of Penj-deh has been a good deal exaggerated by Russian partisans, who claim that the “debateable” land reserved for the adjudication of the commissioners was thus first invaded by the Afghans; but in reality, as will be presently explained in detail, no question had ever been raised in the country as to Penj-deh being outside the jurisdiction of Herat, previous to M. Lessar’s visit in March 1884, and the Cabul commander at Bala Murgháb, in ignorance of the appointment of a commission in Europe to consider any such question, naturally and properly supposed that he was merely carrying out an arrangement of internal police in strengthening his northern outpost. As it afterwards turned out, however, Russia attached the greatest importance to this obscure position of Penj-deh. Colonel Alikhanoff, indeed, always preferring action to negotiation, made an attempt to seize it with a detachment from Merv a few months after its occupation by the Afghans, and only desisted when he found that he must fight for its possession. There have been since repeated demonstrations of attack from the northward, and at the present moment it is the point where a collision between Russians and Afghans is most to be apprehended, the Saryks of Yolatan under Russian orders holding Púl-i-Khishti on the Kushk river, while the Saryks of Penj-deh under Afghan orders hold the neighboring position of Ak Tepeh, within half a mile’s distance, at the junction of the Kushk and Murgháb, and peace being only kept between the rival parties by the presence of our assistant commissioner, Colonel Ridgeway, who has been directed by Sir P. Lumsden to watch the frontier with an escort of fifty lancers, as long as he can with safety remain.
It must now be noted, that while local proceedings of this grave character have been taking place on the Murgháb, diplomacy in Europe has not been idle. When Russia decided not to send her commissioner to the frontier pending our acceptance of the new principles which were to govern the negotiation, she proposed for our consideration a zone of arbitration within the limits of which the boundary line was to be drawn. Negotiations on this subject are still proceeding, but no definite arrangement has been yet arrived at.
It must be patent to all the world that if Russia were pursuing a really honest policy, and were not striving to make a bargain especially favorable to her own interests, she would leave the delimitation commission to decide, according to evidence obtained on the spot, what was meant in the arrangement of 1872-3 by drawing a distinction between the Afghan hilly district and the Turcoman desert, as well as what extent of territory ought to be fairly included within “the dependencies of Herat.” On these points, which constitute the real difficulties of the situation, I now propose to make a few general remarks, repeating the arguments in favor of the Afghan claims which I have already submitted to the public in another place.[2]
Firstly, then, in regard to what is meant by the dependencies of Herat, the district between the Murgháb and Heri-rúd is known by the name of Badgheis, not, as has been fancifully suggested, from any traditional connection with the mythical Bacchus, but rather, as is stated in the Bundehesh, that curious repository of ancient Aryan legends from the tribe of Vad-keshan, who were probably a subdivision of the Hiyátheleh or Ephthalities, and who, according to Beladheri, were first established in the district, in direct dependency on Herat, by the Sassanian king Firoz in the fifth century A.D. Badgheis, from its rich and abundant pasturage and its sylvan character, soon became the favorite appanage of Herat, and the two names have been bracketed in all history and geography ever since, the Lord of the Eastern Marches being called, under the Sassanians, the Marzabán of Herat and Badgheis, and the district in question having followed the fate of the capital in all subsequent revolutions. The geographers, Istakhrí, Ibn Haucal, Mokadassi, Edrisi, and their followers to the time of the Mongol conquest, all describe Badgheis as the most valuable portion of the Herat territory. Although indifferently supplied with running streams, and being thus deficient in irrigated lands, particularly in the northern part of the district, it was on the whole well peopled, wells and kahrízes (or underground aqueducts) supplying the wants of the inhabitants. Again, in the southern and eastern portions of Badgheis, including the northern slopes of the Paropamisus range and the valley of the Kushk river, the natural beauties of the district became proverbial. The author of the Heft Aklím describes this part of Badgheis as a flower-garden of delights, and adds that it contains a thousand valleys full of trees and streams, each of which would abundantly supply an army not only with encamping ground but with grass and water, and fuel and fodder, and all the necessaries of life. He also alludes to the strong hill forts in the Kaitú range, Naraitú and others, of which our officers have lately seen the remains, and thus illustrates the famous passage in the Bundehesh which records that “Afrasiáb of Tur (the eponym of the Hiyátheleh) used Bakesir of Badgheis (Baghshúrde of the Arabs; now called Kileh Maúr) as a stronghold and made his residence within it, and a myriad towns and villages were erected on its pleasant and prosperous territory,” The geographers enumerate some ten or twelve considerable towns, which continued to flourish till the time of the Suffaveans, the capital being Dehistán (probably modern Gulran or Gurlan), which must have been founded by the Dahæ when they accompanied the kindred tribe of Tokhari or Hiyátheleh in their original immigration.
The boundaries of Badgheis seem to have fluctuated according to the power of the neighboring states, and it is not always easy to verify the notices of the geographers, owing to the disappearance of the old names. Still, it is important to note that Hafiz Abrú, who was a minister of Herat under Shah Rúkh, states categorically that Badgheis was bounded on the west by the Persian districts of Jam and Serakhs, thus proving that, at any rate at that period, the district extended northward up to the confines of the desert. To the east Badgheis was frequently made to include Merv-er-Rúd (Ak Tepeh), Penj-deh, Baghshúr (Kileh Maúr), Baún or Bavan (Kara Tepeh), and the entire valley of the Kushk river, while to the south it was separated from the plain of Herat, as at present, by a range of hills (now called Barkhút), the prolongation of the great Paropamisus. Such being the concurrent testimony of all writers as to the configuration of the country in antiquity, and Badgheis being so intimately connected with Herat as is the Campagna with Rome, it is difficult to understand on what grounds it can now be excluded from Afghan territory as indicated in the memorandum of 1872. The argument that neither Dost Mohammed Khan, nor Shir Ali Khan, nor even Abdur Rahman Khan until quite lately, exercised any effective jurisdiction in the district, or held it in military subjection, is certainly of no value; for this condition of recent possession, which at one time did really govern the distribution, was specially excluded from consideration in determining claims to Afghan nationality by Prince Gortchakoff’s letter of the 19th of December, 1872; and it would be a monstrous aggravation of the original outrage if the Turcomans, who had rendered Badgheis uninhabitable for fifty years, were, in virtue of their forcible interruption of Afghan government, to become themselves the legal owners of the country.
With regard again to the claims of Russia to inherit through the Saryk Turcomans, a portion of whom have lately become her subjects, the pretension is still more preposterous, since her outposts were not within 500 miles of the disputed territory when in 1872 the dependencies of Herat were adjudged to Afghanistan. It must be acknowledged that Badgheis has for the last fifty years been swept and harried by the Turcoman raiders till not a vestige of habitation has been left in the district. The land, especially along the Heri-rúd, is utterly desolate; but who will pretend that violence and outrage of this exceptional character has obliterated the rights of Herat to resume possession of the country on the re-establishment of order and security? In real truth Herat has never abandoned her hold de jure upon Badgheis. The towers along the southern hills, which Macgregor remarked in 1875, were intended to protect the immediate plain of Herat from the further incursions of the Tekkeh savages, who suddenly swept down like a hurricane from the north whenever an opportunity offered, not to serve as landmarks for the Afghan territorial border; they were strictly works of internal defence, and as such have no analogy with the line of border towers along the course of the Heri-rúd, which at an earlier period had been erected by Kilich Khan, an officer of Shah Zamán’s, with a view to resist invasion from Persia, and the ruins of which are still to be seen in a scattered line, extending from Kohsán to Garmáb in the vicinity of Púl-i-Khatún. Practically, and in so far as the safety of Herat is concerned, it can make no great difference if the Russian outposts are stationed at Púl-i-Khatún, or Zulficár, or at Kohsán. Herat would be equally open to attack from any of these points, and must rely for protection on its own means of defence; but it must be remembered that this is not a mere strategical question: on the contrary we are dealing with the rights and property of an independent sovereign as the guardian of his interests, and have no sort of authority to override the one or alienate the other on grounds of geographical or political convenience. Badgheis is unquestionably Afghan territory. Rescripts are still extant, addressed to the inhabitants by the Suddozye kings of Cabul. In 1873 Shir Ali Khan specifically named Badgheis, in his negotiations with Lord Northbrook, as an Afghan district which was likely to be overrun by the Turcomans if these tribes were expelled from Merv by the Russian arms. Again, in the famous memorandum of 1872, I have a certain knowledge that the phrase, “dependency of Herat,” was specially intended to cover Badgheis, and finally the assessment of the district is actually borne on the Herat register at the present day.
And now with regard to the other point at issue between Russia and ourselves—the dependency of Penj-deh, which, being situated on the Murgháb, just before the river issues from the hills, should belong geographically to Afghanistan, and which, moreover, is at least forty miles south of a direct line drawn from Serakhs to Khoja Seleh on the Oxus—a brief summary of its history would seem to be required. In antiquity Penj-deh was a mere suburb of the great city of Merver-Rúd, now marked by the ruins of Ak-tepeh. Formed, according to the geographer Yacút, of five separate villages (whence the name) on the river Murgháb, which had been gradually consolidated into a single township under Malik Shah, it was at the time of Yacút’s visit, in A.H. 617, one of the most flourishing places in Khorassan. Shortly afterwards it was ruined by the Mongols, and a second time it was devastated by Timour, but under his successors, and especially during the reigns of Shah Rúkh and Sultan Hussein Mirza, it again rose to a state of great prosperity, and ever since, except during some brief intervals of foreign dominion, it has remained in close dependency on Herat. When Ahmed Shah Abdalli, on the death of Nadir in 1747, established the kingdom of Cabul, the Kushk and Murgháb valleys were held by Eymák tribes, Hazárehs, Fírozkohís, and Jamshídís, who cultivated the lower lands along the rivers and pastured their flocks over the downs of Badgheis, unmixed with either Afghans or Turcomans, but paying revenue to Herat in common with all the other tribes who inhabited the ranges of the Paropamisus.
The earliest Turcoman intruders into the valley were Ersári, from the Oxus. These nomads first appeared in about 1825, and were shortly followed by Salors from Yolatan, and somewhat later by detached parties of Saryks from Merv, all the new visitors, however, acknowledging the jurisdiction of the local Jamshídí or Hazáreh chief, and paying their dues to the Afghan ruler of Herat. In 1858 a further dislocation occurred; the Ersáris, who never liked the Murgháb, returned to the Oxus, while the Salors and Saryks, retreating before the Tekkehs of Merv, took their places at Penj-deh. Later still the Salors crossed over to the Heri-rúd, leaving the Saryks alone in possession of the lands on the Murgháb and Kushk, where they remain in the same condition of squatters on Afghan lands to the present day. During all this long period, that is from the first appearance of the Ersáris at Penj-deh, an annual tax has been levied on the Turcoman cultivators and shepherds, either by the local Eymák chiefs—lords of the soil, and themselves accountable to Herat—or by an officer specially deputed for the purpose by the Afghan Governor of Herat. The names of the naibs, or deputy governors, who have thus acted in command of the district are all well known, and in many cases the individuals are still living to attest their employment at Penj-deh under the Afghans. In fact, no question was ever raised as to the Afghan right to Penj-deh, or as to the political condition of the Saryks, until after the Russian occupation of Merv. The Saryks were Turcoman tribesmen renting Afghan lands, and during their tenancy accounted as Afghan subjects, precisely as other divisions of the great Turcoman community who were settled temporarily in Persia, in Khiva, and in Bokhara, during their sojourn paid tribute to, and acknowledged the jurisdiction of, those States. If the Saryks of their own free will desired to quit their Afghan lands at Penj-deh and in Badgheis and migrate to their former pastures, which have passed under the rule of Russia, the Afghans could not properly interfere to prevent them; nor, indeed, with a view to avoiding friction on the frontier, is it at all clear that an arrangement of this nature might not be to the advantage of the Herat Government. But it was wholly indefensible that Russia, on the broad principle of ethnographical unity, should, as she recently did, demand as a right the registration of the Saryks as Russian subjects, and should require the transfer of the lands which they occupied to Russian jurisdiction. A frontier, too, is now boldly claimed, assigning to Russia Penj-deh, with all the adjacent lands on the Murgháb and Kuskh, and troops are moved up the river from Merv to support the claim, at the imminent risk of provoking collision and thus initiating war.
It remains now to consider the prospect before us in regard to this momentous alternative of peace or war. To those who, like myself, have watched the cautious and consistent proceedings of Russia in Central Asia since the close of the Crimean war, with a growing presentiment of evil, but still not without a certain admiration of such determined policy and a warm approval in many cases of the results, the immediate future presents no special features of mystery or alarm. The occupation of Merv and the incorporation in the Russian Empire of the vast hordes who roam the steppes from the Caspian to the Oxus was but the crowning act of a long series of costly but tentative enterprises, all leading up to the same much-desired consummation. The threshold of India was reached. Russian Turcomania was now conterminous with British Afghanistan, and it only remained to give effect to the situation in the manner most conducive to Russian interests. It must be understood, then, that in all the recent discussions between London and St. Petersburg regarding lines of frontier, work of the Commission, relations with the tribes, &c., Russia, in prosecution of those interests, has been guided by three distinct considerations, all aiming at the strengthening of her position in view to future pressure upon England. Firstly, she requires the best strategical base available for immediate demonstration against Herat. As far as actual attack is concerned, her power would be as formidable if launched from Serakhs or Merv as if she had already advanced half-way to Herat and were encamped at Zulficár and Chemen-i-bíd; but in respect to a passive but continued pressure, no doubt her best position would be on the northern skirts of the hills which divide Badgheis from Herat, and in full command of the upper valley of the Kushk. Hence her desire to possess a boundary line from Zulficár on the Heri-rúd by Chemen-i-bíd to Meruchek on the Murgháb, and hence the persistency with which she clings to this line, even at the risk of actual conflict. Secondly, she requires the full command of the Murgháb and Kushk valleys, not only because the most direct, and by far the most commodious, road to Herat from her northern base, the Caspian and Askabad, leads by Merv and Penj-deh, but also because Penj-deh dominates the communication between Herat and Afghan Turkestan, and would be thus of the greatest strategical importance in the event of war between Russia and Cabul. Hence the insistence with which she clings to Penj-deh and the boldness she has shown in enveloping the place with her troops, hoping, as it would seem, to redeem Alikhanoff’s former failure to obtain peaceful possession by now provoking a disturbance between the Saryks and Afghans which shall justify her own forcible interposition. And, thirdly, in regard to the Saryks of Penj-deh, it should be clearly understood that it is not the tribesmen that Russia principally cares about, but the lands which they occupy. She is tempting them, no doubt, to declare in her favor by every means in her power, and she ostentatiously displays before them the bait that she has now occupied Badgheis as far as Ak Robát, and thus commands the Salt Lake and the pastures which they have hitherto enjoyed as Afghan tenants; but if the Afghans were to resume occupation of Badgheis, and the Saryks were to offer, nevertheless, to migrate to Merv or the Tejend, it is doubtful whether she would receive them. The whole controversy, indeed, may be regarded as a sham, or at best a means to an end, the possession of Penj-deh being the real object aimed at, on account of its affording such a convenient basis for threatening, or even for attacking, Herat.
The measures which Russia has taken to carry out the above objects are of a very grave significance. Although it is known that we have already recognised the validity of the Afghan claim to Badgheis and Penj-deh, and are, moreover, pledged to support by our arms the Amir of Cabul, Abdur Rahman Khan, in the event of an unprovoked aggression on his territory by a foreign enemy, she has, on the mere ground apparently that she contests his claim to these districts, advanced her troops as far as Zulficár, Ak Robát, and Púl-i-Khishti. She has, in fact, as matters stand at present, superseded the work of the commission. She has arbitrarily drawn up a line of frontier deciding all the moot points of jurisdiction in her own favor; and by her military dispositions she has given evidence that she intends to uphold this territorial distribution by force of arms. We have in the meantime done all that was possible with honor to avert hostilities. We have refused to abandon the hope of a settlement of the frontier dispute through the agency of the delimitation commission, and we have in various ways stretched conciliation to the utmost, merely requiring that no further advance shall be made into the debateable land by the pickets or patrols on either side, pending negotiation. Although no formal arrangement to this effect has been agreed to, orders have been issued to the Russian commanders on the spot, and a sort of truce of a very temporary character has been thus established; but what is to be the outcome of this strained position of affairs? The truce cannot be prolonged indefinitely, and in the meantime any chance collision between Cossack and Afghan patrols may set the whole country in a blaze, for considerable reinforcements are said to be marching on Penj-deh both from Merv and from Herat, and there is much exasperation of feeling upon either side.