Chronic Troubles in Afghanistan after Zaman Shah
The removal of Zaman Shah was followed by a period of chronic troubles and disorder in the kingdom of Afghanistan. His brother, Mahmud Shah, the next ruler (1800-1803), became a puppet in the hands of the Barakzai chief, Fateh Khan, and proved himself utterly incompetent to suppress disorders in Kabul. In 1803 Shuja Mirza, a grandson of Ahmad Shah Durrani, seized the throne of Kabul. But Shah Shuja also proved himself incapable of establishing an efficient rule. “His resources were limited, and his qualities were of too negative a character to render him equal to the demands of such stirring times. He wanted judgment; and above all, he wanted money.” By the middle of the year 1809, he was defeated by the Barakzais, the partisans of Mahmud Shah, who was thus restored to the throne of Afghanistan. After some fruitless attempts “to splinter up his broken fortune” Shah Shuja reached Ludhiana in 1816 to remain there under British protection like his brother, Zaman Shah. Mahmud Shah, a tool in the hands of the Barakzais, gradually grew impatient of their control, and caused their leader, Fateh Khan, to be killed most cruelly in 1818. This made the Barakzais furious, and they in the course of a few years brought under their control the whole country of Afghanistan, except Herat, where Mahmud Shah and his son, Kamran, found refuge and acknowledged the suzerainty of Persia. Kamran continued to hold Herat after the death of Mahmud in 1829.
Dost Muhammad
In the meanwhile, Dost Muhammad, an able member of the Barakzai clan, had made himself king of Kabul in 1826 and had been proclaimed Amir with all the necessary formalities. More courageous and active than his contemporaries, Dost Muhammad frustrated an attempt of Shah Shuja to regain Kabul in 1833 with the support of Ranjit; but about the same time Peshawar was captured by the Sikhs owing to the support they received from Dost Muhammad’s brother, Sultan Muhammad Khan. In fact, Dost Muhammad’s position was beset with dangers on all sides. ” On the north there were revolts in Balkh; on the south one of his brothers was holding out against him at Kandahar; on the east he was harassed by Ranjit Singh at Peshawar with Shah Shuja and the British Government in the background; on the west there was Mahmud Shah and Kamran at Herat, with Persia plotting behind and Russia lurking in the distance.” All this naturally made Dost Muhammad eager for friendship with the English. Thus after the arrival of Lord Auckland (1836-1842), as the Governor-General of India in March, 1836, Dost Muhammad sent him a congratulatory letter in the month of May and sought British help against the Sikhs and Persia. But the Governor-General declared the unwillingness of the British Government to interfere in the affairs of other States. To put diplomatic pressure on the British Government, the Amir of Afghanistan made overtures to Persia and Russia.
The course of European politics exercised at this time, as it had done before, since the middle of the eighteenth century, a profound influence on the history of Asia. From the early years of the nineteenth century, Russia was actuated by designs of expansion in the East, for which she concluded the Treaty of Gulistan with Persia in 1813. For the time being England succeeded in detaching Persia from her friendship with Russia, and signed the Treaty of Teheran with the former on the 25th November, 1814, according to which “all alliances between Persia and European nations hostile to Great Britain were made null and void, and all European armies were to be prevented from entering Persia, if hostile to Great Britain “. But in the course of a few years, the new Shah of Persia, Muhammad Mirza, son of ‘Abbas Mirza, who had died in the autumn of 1833, turned out to be a friend of Russia, and Russian influence became predominant at the Persian court. Russia, “making a cat’s-paw of Persia”, instigated the Shah to besiege Herat (November, 1837, to September, 1838), which occupied a position of strategic importance from the standpoint of the interests of the British Indian Empire. “Near Herat,” writes Sir T. H. Holdich, “there exists the only break in the otherwise continuous and formidable wall of mountains which traverse Asia from the Bering Strait to the Caspian Sea. Near Herat it is possible to pass from the Russian outposts to India without encountering any formidable altitude–and this is possible nowhere else.” The heroic defence of the Afghans, aided by the courageous efforts of a young British officer, Eldred Pottinger, who was then travelling in Afghanistan, baffled the Persian attempt on Herat. It served, however, to deepen the ever-increasing British anxiety about Russian ambitions in Asia.
The first Anglo-Afghan War
It would undoubtedly have been difficult for Russia to realise her Asiatic ambitions from distant Moscow, and to advance on the frontier of the British Indian Empire by traversing the frowning plateau of Afghanistan and then by defeating the trained army of the the Punjab, whose ruler was a British ally. Nevertheless the movements of Russia alarmed British statesmen. They largely influenced Lord William Bentinck’s policy towards the Amirs of Sind and created much uneasiness in the mind of Lord Auckland, especially when the Amir of Afghanistan, annoyed with the English for their refusal of help against the Sikhs, had begun negotiations with Persia and Russia. This ” Russophobia ” also deeply stirred the Whig Cabinet of Lord Melbourne in England. The enterprising Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, saw in Russian designs “imminent peril to the security and tranquillity ” of the Indian Empire, and goaded on the Government of India to take effective steps to checkmate them. The Secret Committee of the Court of Directors wrote to the Governor-General on the 25th June, 1836, to “judge as to what steps it may be proper and desirable . . . to take to watch more closely, than has hitherto been attempted, the progress of events in Afghanistan and to counteract the progress of Russian influence in a quarter which, from its proximity to our Indian possessions, could not fail, if it were once established, to act injuriously on the system of our alliances and possibly to interfere even with the tranquillity of our own territory. The mode of dealing with this very important question, whether by despatching a confidential agent to Dost Muhammad of Kabul merely to watch the progress of events, or to enter into relations with this chief, either of a political or merely, in the first instance, of a commercial character, we confide to your discretion, as well as the adoption of any other measures that may appear to you desirable in order to counteract Russian advances in that quarter, should you be satisfied from the information received from your agents on the frontier, or hereafter from Mr. McNeill, on his arrival in Persia, that the time has arrived at which it would be right for you to interfere decidedly in the affairs of Afghanistan. Such an interference would doubtless be requisite, either to prevent the extension of Persian dominion in that quarter, or to raise a timely barrier against the impending encroachments of Russian influence”.
n the strength of this despatch, the Governor-General sent Alexander Burnes from Bombay to Kabul in November, 1936, under the pretence of a commercial mission, but in reality, as Burnes himself says, “to see into affairs and judge of what was to be done hereafter”. Burnes reached Kabul on the 20th September, 1837 Dost Muhammad, who obviously preferred the friendship of the English to that of the Russians, expressed his willingness to accept British overtures, provided the British Government agreed to put pressure on Ranjit Singh to restore Peshawar to him. Burnes also recommended an alliance with the Amir. But Lord Auckland and his two secretaries, William Macnaghten and John Colvin, turned a deaf ear to his suggestion. The hope of an Anglo-Afghan alliance was thus destroyed, and Burnes’ mission having failed, he left Kabul on the 26th April, 1838. Disappointed in securing British friendship, the Amir naturally sought Perso-Russian alliance, and the Russian envoy, Viktevitch, who had been hitherto treated “in a scurvy and discouraging manner”, was received by him with much favour.
Lord Auckland, who had so recently pleaded the doctrine of non-intervention in the affairs of other States when Dost Muhammad solicited British help in the recovery of Peshawar from the Sikhs now felt no scruple in taking steps to depose Dost Muhammad and to restore the exiled Shah Shuja, to the throne of Kabul with the help of Ranjit Singh. To carry this resolve into effect, he sent Macnaghten, Secretary to the Government, to Lahore, and a Tripartite Treaty was signed between Shah Shuja, Ranjit Singh and the English on the 26th June, 1838. A war of the English with Afghanistan was a logical outcome of this step. On the lst October, 1838, the Governor-General issued from Simla a manifesto by way of an official justification of the intended war in which, as Herbert Edwardes writes, “the views and conduct of Dost Muhammad were misrepresented with a hardihood which a Russian statesman might have envied”. “Lies were heaped upon lies” in the Simla manifesto. The Governor-General’s remark about Dost Muhammad’s “unprovoked attack upon our ancient ally” has been aptly compared by Totter “for truthfulness with the wolf’s complaint in the fable against the lamb”.
