Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (40 page)

that in the city of Kabul he was assailed night & day by mullahs and others who represented the present state of things as anything but a Mahommedan Kingdom and asked him that if the Shah was of the same opinion a rebellion or insurrection was easily raised against the British. Of course, said His Majesty, I have endeavoured to correct the erroneous opinions of these men by assuring them that the English and I are as two hearts in one body. Yet I cannot hope to get them to think so when in the capital the troops are not my own and their movements take place without my knowledge . . . H.M. observed that it was a plain fiction to call the officers and men whom the Gov. Genl. had placed at his disposal as his own, that none of the officers ever came near him, or even acted as his, and it was no wonder therefore that his subjects increasingly considered him a puppet (‘a moolee’, or radish, was the word he used) & that he had no honour in his own country . . .
82

It was around this time that the more perceptive of the British in Afghanistan began to realise the very delicate nature of their position and the fragility of the regime they had installed. Abraham Roberts began to worry about the extended lines of communication, the much reduced size of the British garrison, and the way that small pockets of troops were left in key urban areas where they were vulnerable to insurrection. He was soon writing to Auckland to express his anxieties about the ‘numerous Corps being spread over the Country, free from all Military control, and managed by the Political Department and with so little judgement and without any Military experience’.
83
Meanwhile, General Nott in Kandahar blamed Macnaghten and his political advisers. ‘They drink their claret, draw large salaries, go about with a rabble at their heels,’ he complained to his daughters.

All are well paid by John Bull, or rather by the oppressed cultivators of the land in Hindustan. The Calcutta treasury is drained of its rupees, and
good natured
Lord Auckland approves and confirms all. In the meantime all goes wrong here. We are hated by the people . . . Thus it is to employ men selected by patronage. The conduct of one thousand and one Politicals has ruined our cause, and bared the throat of every European in this country to the sword and knife of the revengeful Affghan, and unless several regiments be quickly sent, not a man will be left to note the fall of his comrades. Nothing but force will ever make them submit to the hated Shah.
84

Even the usually optimistic Burnes began to be anxious. ‘There is no two days fixity of purpose,’ he complained privately to his friend Jacob, ‘no plan of the future policy, external or internal, on which you can depend a week. The bit-by-bit system prevails. Nothing comprehensive is looked to . . . and I, for one, begin to think that Wade [who had retired back in Ludhiana] will be the luckiest of all of us, as he will be away from the breakdown; for unless a new leaf is turned, break down we shall.’
85

The first signs of concerted armed resistance took place in May 1840 when a column marching from Kandahar towards Ghazni was attacked by 2,000 Ghilzai horsemen. The Ghilzai were quickly driven off, leaving 200 dead behind them, but they learned the lesson that a frontal attack in flat open country was not the way to tackle the British. Then, in mid-August, less than a year after Shah Shuja had entered Kabul in triumph, news arrived in the capital of exactly what the British had most dreaded. Dost Mohammad had been sprung from his Bukhara dungeon. ‘The English in Kabul were resting in the arms of pleasure and sloth’, wrote Mirza ‘Ata, ‘when the news arrived that Amir Dost Mohammad Khan had escaped from Bukhara, helped by a private merchant who had bribed the watch appointed to guard the Amir – the sum was said to be some 10,000 Rupees’.

Reports began to arrive that the Amir had returned to northern Afghanistan and raised the flag of holy war. In late August the troops of the small British outpost at Saighan on the frontier of the territory of the Mir Wali of Kunduz, where the valley drops to the northern plains, were forced to fall back twenty miles to a more defensible position in Bamiyan. Worse still, a contingent of Shah Shuja’s troops sent to attack the Amir mutinied and joined the rebellion. Around the same time, news came that a quite separate rebellion had broken out in Kohistan only a few hours’ journey north of Kabul, where the Tajiks felt that the Shah had failed to reward them properly for their help in taking Kabul in 1839 and had betrayed all the promises that had been made to them.
w

It had taken just a year for the Afghans to rise in revolution. But the jihad against the British had now begun.

It is the epic poets who give the fullest account of the Amir’s escape from Bukhara. Maulana Hamid Kashmiri tells of how a celebrated Kabul merchant, Khan Kabir, arrived in Bukhara with his caravan and heard that the Amir had been thrown into a pit. Grateful to Dost Mohammad for favours when he was in power,

He put his heart and soul into achieving the Amir’s release

Night and day he searched for a way out

For the Amir’s assistance, he opened the hand of generosity

And scattered gold so that the Amir’s jailer became his prisoner

So bound was the warder by the Amir’s noose

He endeavoured to serve him like a slave bought with gold

When the Amir knew that the gate was open

He found an opportunity one night, and hastened to escape
86

Akbar Khan, who escaped at the same time, was quickly recaptured before he had managed to leave the city, but his father succeeded in getting away. With the help of Khan Kabir, Dost Mohammad adopted the disguise of a Sufi fakir, just as Shah Shuja had done when escaping from Ranjit Singh in Lahore thirty years earlier. Initially the Amir took the wrong route, and in his panic killed the horse he had been given, riding it to its death over barren mountains. Just as he was wandering lost and alone in the high-altitude desert and about to give up hope, he was picked up by a camel caravan heading for Balkh. ‘The Amir was provided with a camel bearing baskets on both sides,’ wrote Mohan Lal, who later became Dost Mohammad’s first biographer,

and in one of these baskets, the Amir placed himself under the pretence of indisposition. In Chiraghchi [where he had been surrounded and captured the previous year] the servants of the Bukhara government, being previously informed of the escape of the Amir from the city, suspected his being in the caravan. They examined every camel basket, but could not discover him, since he had cunningly coloured his silver beard with ink, which he found by himself for the occasion, and the informer was punished by the officers for bringing them into ridicule with a false report.
87

For the next few weeks, the Amir kept with the caravan but, as he had no money, lived only on what he could beg. The Afghan oral tradition is full of stories of the Amir’s trials and sufferings on his travels, some of which Fayz Mohammad gathered into his history. ‘At Shahr-i Sabz, the Amir dismounted before a ramshackle hostel for dervishes,’ he recorded. Here a few men were sitting around drinking tea with milk.

The Amir was very hungry and with an eye to perhaps getting some tea from them, he sat down near the door of the hostel. But those inconsiderate people, who call themselves qalandars [holy fools] but certainly did not have the character of holy men, said not a word to him, and offered him nothing. With stomach still empty, he then went into the city and asked for a certain merchant named Mullah Kabir who was from Kabul and had a family there in Shahr-i Sabz . . . When he saw the Amir, Mullah Kabir kissed his hand and escorted him to his house. As they entered the house, the mullah was overcome with compassion at seeing the Amir dressed as a dervish and wept. He put himself at the Amir’s disposal and did everything it was in his power to do.

After he had rested, the Amir despatched Mullah Kabir to the Governor of Shahr-i Sabz to tell him of his arrival.

As soon as he heard the news, the governor came to Mullah Kabir’s house and showed the Amir the highest regard, moving him into the royal guesthouse. After performing the duties of host, he spoke about the ignominious behaviour of the Amir of Bukhara and offered to send an army there to exact revenge. Dost Mohammad thanked him for the offer, but asked him instead to provide 700 horsemen to accompany him across the Oxus. The governor agreed, prepared the necessary supplies and equipment and assigned 700 troopers as escort.
88

From this point, the Amir’s fortunes began to improve. He crossed the Oxus and made his way safely to Balkh. On the way, as he passed through the villages of northern Afghanistan, he realised that the mood had changed while he had been in prison and that disillusion with the Anglo-Sadozai regime was now widespread. ‘Along the road he questioned travellers,’ wrote Maulana Kashmiri in the
Akbarnama
, seeking news from Kabul and Bukhara.

One day he saw amongst the wayfarers

A young man who had set out from Kabul

He asked him: ‘What is the state of affairs in the land of Kabul?

What do they say of the Shah and the Firangi chiefs?

What plans have they for war and peace?

And what of the Khans? Are they as before . . . ?’

The young man said: ‘O mighty ruler of good fortune!

Shuja is not that Shuja of yore, his mind is not the same as before

Like Kings he has a seat upon the throne

But he does not rule the land nor have his hand upon the treasury

Secretly, he is in anguish, his soul exhausted

Less than a watchman, such a king is he.’
89

The Amir eventually made his way to his former host, the Mir Wali at Khamard, where he found his son Afzal Khan waiting for him. Here the Uzbek leader again offered to help him – the Mir Wali had owed his power and position entirely to Dost Mohammad’s patronage – but also brought him bad news. The Amir’s brother, Nawab Jabar Khan, had despaired of the Amir ever freeing himself from his prison and had just surrendered himself to the British authorities, along with the Amir’s harem. Undaunted, the Amir decided he had no option but to fight, and again publicly declared a jihad on the Firangis. For the Afghan poets this was a heroic moment:

He girded his loins to battle the enemy

And sought out his scattered army

Of men and blade-wielding battalions

He gathered five hundred horsemen

In Kabul
Laat Jangi
Macnaghten heard the news

That the forces of the brave Amir were drawing near

Loins girded and belt tightened for battle

With Uzbek battalions he was coming to war

Laat Jangi
, Macnaghten, Lord of War, commanded
Daaktar
[Dr Percival Lord]

To take forty thousand, with forty commanders

Like a savage tiger, they gave chase

Intent on hunting the brave lion

Roaring and full of passion, they came forth

Driving towards Bamiyan
90

Dost Mohammad now had at his disposal a small force of under a thousand Uzbek horsemen. Advancing southwards, he managed to drive away the British sepoys of the first British outpost he came across. Shortly afterwards, the Afghan force at Bamiyan under Saleh Mohammad deserted and joined the Amir’s army.

Reports of the growing crisis quickly reached Kabul. ‘The news put fear into the hearts of the English soldiers,’ wrote Mirza ‘Ata, ‘and even more so into the heart of the King. He was so alarmed by news of the approach of the Amir that he could not sleep, but rather went out at night into the Royal Garden in the lower part of the Bala Hisar, and had a tunnel opened beneath his throne-platform as an escape route.’ Whether this was true or not, many British officers sent their families to take shelter in the Bala Hisar, along with their baggage and possessions, while Macnaghten initially refused to send reinforcements to Bamiyan, saying they could not be spared from Kabul. He then sent a series of jittery and paranoid despatches to Simla. ‘The Afghans are gunpowder,’ he wrote, ‘and the Dost is a lighted match . . . We are surrounded by spies.’
91

But, for all their fears, the cavalry force the Amir had mustered was still insufficient to meet a disciplined Company army in open battle. When British reinforcements were finally sent up to Bamiyan under William Dennie, the two sides met on Friday 18 September. Dost Mohammad had possession of the chain of forts that commanded the entrance of the valley and drew up his horsemen in the centre. He sent his son Afzal Khan to command one wing crowning the heights to the left, while the Mir Wali took the high ground on the opposite side of the valley.
92
But, as the Afghans were still learning to their cost, it was always an error to concentrate their troops in a plain when the British were armed with modern cannon. The British horse artillery was able to mow down the charging Afghan cavalry long before they were able to reach the guns: