Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (103 page)

‘Scenes from the line of march of a Bengal Regiment.’ This Victorian precursor of the strip cartoon probably shows the Army of the Indus heading through Sindh and approaching Afghanistan.

Entrance to the Bolan Pass, from Dadur. In spring
1839
a
12
,
000
-strong British-Indian force, the Army of the Indus under Sir John Keane, forced the Bolan Pass and captured Kandahar. The invasion aimed to replace Dost Mohammad with Shah Shuja, who was considered to be more pro-British.

As they navigated the narrow passes of Baluchistan, the Army of the Indus was vulnerable to ambush by the Baluchis, who hid in the ravines; skirmishes and sniping attacks were common. ‘It was the mouth of hell,’ remembered the sepoy Sita Ram. ‘The Baluchis now began to harass us by night attacks and drove off long strings of our camels. They murdered everyone whenever they had the opportunity and rolled large boulders down the mountain sides.’

‘The Storming of Ghuznee.’ After forcing the Bolan Pass and capturing Kandahar, the Army of the Indus advanced on the formidable fortified walls of Ghazni, protected by thick, sixty-foot-high walls, a major problem for the British who had left their heavy artillery in Kandahar. Mohan Lal Kashmiri, Burnes’s invaluable intelligence chief, discovered that one of the gates was not bricked up and could be stormed if taken by surprise.

In April
1839
, the Army of the Indus captured the city of Kandahar without a fight. Here Shah Shuja held a durbar within sight of the dome of the tomb of his grandfather, Ahmad Shah Abdali.

‘The Durbar-Khaneh of Shah Shoojah-ool-Moolk at Kabul.’ After the seizure of Ghazni, Dost Mohammad fled Kabul and Shuja was re-installed as Shah in August
1839
. This Mughal-style reception hall in the Bala Hisar was where he would hold his durbars, and where he irritated his nobles and his British officers by making them stand for hours. As the British officer-turned-artist, Lockyer Willis Hart, noted: ‘This form and ceremony, so hateful to the Affghans, was the King’s foible, and sometimes carried to an absurd extent.’

The Kabul Bazaar during the British occupation.

The women of Kabul were to prove irresistible to the occupying British troops – with disastrous results.

‘The retinue of Shah Shooja-ool-Moolk’. This image includes Mohammad Shah Ghilzai, Akbar Khan’s father-in-law (
on the left
) who was bought over by the Anglo-Sadozai regime and was awarded with the fearsome ceremonial title of Chief Executioner. He would become one of the leading rebels and more than anyone else was responsible for the
1842
massacre of the retreating British garrison in the high Ghilzai passes.

Rattray’s sketch of the rows of tents during the early days of the occupation before the building of the cantonments. The rock of the Bala Hisar rises to the rear left of the picture.

Amir Dost Mohammad surrenders to the British envoy Sir William Hay Macnaghten in November
1840
. Macnaghten and his aides were out riding in the valley of Qila-Qazi near Kabul when the surrender occurred.