Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (4 page)

Maharajah Ranjit Singh (1780–1839):
The brilliant and wily Sikh ruler, who created a powerful, well-organised and well-ruled Sikh kingdom in the Punjab. In 1797 he had helped Shah Zaman save some cannon lost in the mud of the River Jhelum during the chaos of the Afghan retreat, and he was given charge of much of the Punjab, although he was only nineteen years old.
In the years that followed, Ranjit Singh slowly prised the lucrative eastern provinces of the Durrani Empire from his former overlord and took his place as the dominant power in the Punjab. In 1813 he seized the Koh-i-Nur from Shah Shuja and put the Shah under house arrest, but the latter succeeded in escaping the following year. During negotiations with Sir William Macnaghten in 1838, he outmanoeuvred the British and managed to turn what was planned as a Sikh expedition into Afghanistan in British interests into a British invasion in Sikh interests. He died in 1839, with the British midway through their invasion of the lands of his great enemy, Dost Mohammad.

Mohan Lal Kashmiri (1812–77):
Mohan Lal was Burnes’s invaluable munshi (secretary) and closest adviser. His father had been a munshi on the Elphinstone mission twenty years earlier, and on his return had chosen to make Mohan Lal one of the first boys in north India to be educated according to the English curriculum in the new Delhi College. Clever, ambitious and fluent in English, Urdu, Kashmiri and Persian, Mohan Lal had accompanied Burnes on his trip to Bukhara, after which he worked for some time as an ‘intelligencer’ for Wade in Kandahar. Burnes relied on and trusted Mohan Lal completely, and took him with him during the 1839 invasion as his intelligence chief. His failure to listen to Mohan Lal’s warnings about an imminent uprising led directly to Burnes’s death. During the uprising, Mohan Lal took out large loans in his own name for the benefit of Macnaghten during the siege, and again in 1842 borrowed more money to secure the release of hostages. He was never repaid the 79,496 rupees he calculated he was owed; as a result he was dogged by debt for the rest of his life. In pursuit of justice, he travelled to Britain where between attempts to lobby the Company directors he also visited Scotland, where he delivered Burnes’s journals to his family in Montrose. While in Britain he published in English a memoir of his Central Asian travels with Burnes and an enormous 900-page, two-volume biography of Dost Mohammad. He even had an audience with Queen Victoria. But the Afghan War haunted his life and effectively ended his career.

The Sadozais

The Barakzais

Acknowledgements

There may be easier places to research a history book than Afghanistan and Pakistan, but few which provide more unexpected diversion in the course of hunting down texts, letters and manuscripts. On the way, I have amassed a huge debt to a number of friends who kept me safe and sane while gathering the raw material for this book.

In Afghanistan: Rory Stewart put me up in his Kabul fort where I was beautifully looked after by everyone at Turquoise Mountain – Shoshana Coburn Clark, Thalia Kennedy and Will and Lucy Beharel. Siri Trang Khalsa took me on a weekend trip to explore Istalif and Charikar; she also linked me up with Watan in Kandahar. Mitch Crites provided reassuring company and sage advice about what was and wasn’t possible, as did Paul Smith at the British Council.

It is not every day you find a Chief of Secret Police who has closely read your work, and I am grateful to Amrullah Saleh of the NSD, President Karzai’s then security chief, both for his fearsome critique of
The Last Mughal
(in his view Zafar, a despicable weakling, lacked patriotic zeal and deserved no sympathy) and more particularly for connecting me with Anwar Khan Jagdalak, under whose protection I was able to trace the route of the retreat. Anwar Khan put his own life at risk to show me his home village – I remain forever in his debt.

I also remain hugely indebted to Najibulla Razaq who came with me to Jagdalak, Jalalabad and Herat. He was a fund of calm guidance when confronted with unexpected Afghan situations. I’ll never forget how on my first trip, when we touched down together at Herat, we found that the old 1950s airport terminal was locked, as the man who had the key to the building had gone off for noon prayers. This followed a check-in at which I had been given a boarding pass marked ‘Kabul – Riyadh’ and when I pointed out that I was going to Herat, the airline official had replied that it didn’t matter, ‘they’ll let you on the plane anyway’. When an old tractor arrived and dumped our bags at the edge of the apron, in the absence of trolleys, Najibulla quickly found two little boys with wheelbarrows who carried our bags to the line of shrapnel-marked cars which acted as the Herat taxi fleet. Najibulla was also an excellent guide to the Herat Museum of the Jihad: a collection of objects left behind by the various foreigners who have foolishly tried to conquer Afghanistan, ranging from British cannon from the First Afghan War through to Russian tanks, jets and helicopter gunships. It won’t be long, one can be certain, before a few shot-up American Humvees and British Land-Rovers are added to the collection. 

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Special Representative, took me on his farewell picnic to the Panjshir, where under the willows by the side of a river, we had an oddly English lunch in the drizzle, with rugs and cucumber sandwiches and plastic cups of Chardonnay. If you ignored his ever-alert phalanx of bodyguards, their walkie-talkies crackling and assault rifles primed, as well as the litter of wrecked Soviet APCs and downed helicopter gunships, it could almost have been the Cotswolds. There Sherard briefed me on the political situation and its parallels with the First Afghan War. He also passed on detailed security advice and provided me with a tiny high-tech satellite tracking gizmo in case I got kidnapped on my way to Gandamak: if I pressed a panic button it would reveal my location and record a few seconds of audio in which I was supposed to identify my would-be captors. I took it with me, and was glad to be able to return it unused.

Brigadier General Simon Levey gave me a very helpful satellite map of the route of the retreat. Jayant Prasad and Gautam Mukhopadhaya were both wonderfully hospitable at the Indian Embassy. Saad Mohseni and Thomas Ruttig both provided useful advice and contacts across Afghanistan. I owe a lot to other friends made in Kabul including Jon Lee Anderson, Jon Boone, Hayat Ullah Habibi, Eckart Schiewek and Summer Coish.

Dr Ashraf Ghani, an erudite historian as well as former Finance Minister, gave me invaluable help with Persian and Afghan sources, while Jawan Shir Rasikh took me to the Kabul book bazaar at Jowy Sheer where we found many of them. Andy Miller of UNESCO helped get me access to the Bala Hisar and helped steer us both clear of Soviet era minefields as we explored it. Sayed Makdoum Rahin and Dr Omar Sultan got me into the Kabul archives and Ghulam Sakhi Munir helped me once inside. The fabulous Philip Marquis of the French Archaeological Mission DAFA provided access to his brilliant library as well as Gallic good cheer, Camembert and the best claret in Afghanistan.

Jolyon Leslie was generous with his learning and experience and helped me get into Timur’s tomb and the citadel in Herat, both of which he has beautifully restored for the Aga Khan, marshalling for the purpose more workmen than usually toil in biblical epics into moving quantities of soil and so revealing the fabulous Timurid tile decoration which had lain hidden for centuries. During this restoration Jolyon had to remove dead Soviet cannon and anti-aircraft emplacements, as well as a massive Soviet booby trap left as a farewell present to Herat: a network of live shells connected to an old tank battery at the top of a thirteenth-century hexagonal tower: bastions first built to defend Herat from the Mongol hordes were still being used to defend the Russians from the Mujehedin little more than two decades ago.

The warm and fearless Nancy Hatch Dupree walked me around the site of the Kabul cantonments and the hill of Bibi Mahru and helped in a thousand other ways. At the age of eighty-four she continues to commute between her homes in Kabul and Peshawar, sometimes driving herself down the Khyber Pass, sometimes by Red Cross flights: ‘I am their only frequent flyer,’ she told me when I bumped into her in Kabul airport recently. One of my fondest memories of my first research trip to Kabul was taking Nancy out to dinner at the Gandamak Lodge. In the middle of the entrée bursts of automatic gunfire were let off immediately outside whereupon all the hardened hacks abandoned their meals and dived under the tables. Only Nancy continued unfazed, announcing from her seat, ‘I think I’ll just finish my chips.’

I was looked after in Kandahar by Hazrat Nur Karzai, guided (over the telephone) by Alex Strick von Linschoten and (in the flesh) by Habib Zahori, and generously given shelter and guarded by Mark Acton, William Jeaves and Dave Brown of Watan Risk Management at their Watan Villa: who would guess that a house full of ex-Scots Guardsmen living in such tense conditions could remain teetotal for weeks at time? But I am very grateful: Kandahar is no place to visit without a little assistance.

In Pakistan: Mohsin and Zahra Hamid had me to stay while I researched in Lahore and provided diverting entertainment and delicious Punjabi khana in the evenings. I should especially thank Mohsin’s father for giving over his study for my camp bed. While in Lahore Fakir Aijazuddin, Ali Sethi, Sohaib Husayn Sherzai and Mr Abbas of the Punjab Archives were generous with advice and getting me access to documents and new Persian and Urdu sources. Farrukh Hussein helped me find Mubarak Haveli and told me about the taikhana through which his ancestor had helped Shah Shuja escape from his house arrest.

In India: my neighbour Jean-Marie Lafont instructed me on Sikh history and the role of the French generals of the Fauj-i-Khas; Michael Axworthy tutored me on the Qajars; and James Astill shared invaluable Afghan contacts. The great Professor B. N. Goswamy in Chandigarh found some remarkable images and went out of his way to send me .jpgs and help get permissions. Reza Hosseini with huge generosity told me about his important find in the National Archives, a Persian manuscript copy of the
Muharaba Kabul wa Qandahar
,
and even more sweetly brought me a copy of the Kanpur published edition of 1851. Lucy Davison of Banyan ably organised logistics for a research trip following the route of Shah Shuja’s disastrous 1816 attempt to invade Kashmir over the high passes of the Pir Panjal range.

In the UK: David Loyn, James Ferguson, Phil Goodwin and my cousin Anthony Fitzherbert all gave advice on how to find my way around modern Afghanistan. Charles Allen, John Keay, Ben Macintyre, Bill Woodburn and Saul David were invaluable in sharing their knowledge of Afghanistan’s past history and enabled me to track down new sources. Farrukh Husain of Silk Road Books sent me parcel after parcel of Victorian accounts of the war. Peter and Kath Hopkirk, whose epic work on the Great Game first introduced me – and many of my generation – to the First Afghan War, helped with Alexander Burnes, as did his engaging new biographer, Craig Murray, whose forthcoming work looks set to be an important re-evaluation of this most intriguing figure. Sarah Wallington and Maryam Philpott tracked down invaluable sources in the British Library while Pip Dodd in the National Army Museum, Sue Stronge at the V&A and John Falconer in the British Library went out of their way to give me access to their artworks. I have the happiest memories of an afternoon with Elizabeth Errington going over the pick of Charles Masson’s lovingly boxed and minutely catalogued Afghan finds in the store rooms of the British Museum.

In Moscow Dr Alexander Morrison and Olga Berard successfully hunted down the lost intelligence reports of Ivan Vitkevitch for me. A number of scholars helped me tackle the Persian and Urdu sources: Bruce Wannell came to stay in a tent in my Delhi garden for several weeks to work with me on the
Waqi’at-i-Shah Shuja
, the
Muharaba-i Kabul y Qandahar
, and the
Naway Ma’arek
. Aliyah Naqvi took a break from her dissertation on the court of Akbar to help me with a different Akbar and helped tackle Maulana Hamid Kashmiri’s
Akbarnama
. Tommy Wide worked on the
Jangnama
and the ‘
Ayn al-Waqayi
,
as well as helping double-check the identities of the different Sadozai graves in and around Timur’s Tomb. Danish Husain and his mother, Professor Syeda Bilqis Fatema Husaini, worked together on the
Tarikh-i-Sultani
and the
Letters
of Aminullah Khan Logari. I am especially grateful to Robert McChesney for generously sending me his translation of the
Siraj ul-Tawarikh.