Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (63 page)

What Auckland did not understand was that the regime which he had set up in Kabul was actually by no means finished.

The British had always ignored and underestimated Shah Shuja, and now, with both Burnes and Macnaghten dead and the frozen corpses of their Kabul army feeding the vultures of the snow-clogged Ghilzai passes, Shuja himself remained safe and secure behind the high walls of the Bala Hisar. Indeed, now that his British allies were no more, the Shah’s personal popularity was visibly increasing among the people and chiefs of Kabul. Without Macnaghten to give him bad advice, Shuja – as resolute as ever in the face of catastrophe – was able to demonstrate his deftness at handling Afghan tribal politics.

He now played on the jealousy felt by the two remaining original rebel leaders – Aminullah Khan Logari and Nawab Zaman Khan Barakzai – towards the recently arrived Akbar Khan, who had taken the leadership of the rebellion only after they had already defeated the British. He opened negotiations and within a few days – while Akbar was far from Kabul, first escorting his British prisoners of war to a secure fortress in Laghman, then returning to besiege Jalalabad – the Shah had managed to knit together a new alliance which he hoped would keep him in power and leave Akbar Khan isolated.

The two men Shuja reached out to brought very different assets to the table. As Akbar Khan’s uncle, Nawab Zaman Khan was a senior claimant to the Barakzai succession, and controlled the valuable asset of all the British sick and wounded left in Kabul; but he had few financial or intellectual resources and little military ability. The elderly but still canny Naib Aminullah Khan Logari, in contrast, had made a fortune through trade which he had recently augmented with the large sums he managed to extract from the Hindu bankers of Kabul on the basis of the bills given to him by the retreating British as part of their surrender. He used this to recruit a force of sepoys as well as pay his own tribesmen from Logar. He also had the prestige of being one of the two military leaders responsible for so comprehensively crushing the British in Kabul. But being neither a Sadozai nor a Barakzai, and of relatively humble origins, he was apparently unable to come to power without the support of one or other of the two leading clans. By allying with Nawab Zaman Khan and Shah Shuja he was able to gain the support of both.
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Naib Aminullah had always been a confirmed Sadozai loyalist, while Nawab Zaman Khan detested his charismatic cousin Akbar with all the embittered passion that the ambitiously mediocre sometimes feel towards those of genuine talent. The alliance looked durable as it gave something to all three of the parties involved and each brought something to it that the others needed.

According to his biographer Mohammad Husain Herati, Shuja had planned the whole strategy with flawless precision. ‘The Barakzai propaganda that His Majesty had become indistinguishable from the English invaders had taken root among great and small alike,’ he wrote.

In order to counter this, and following advice that the only way out of the present rebellion which threatened to destroy the monarchy was to conciliate the good graces of Aminullah Khan Logari, His Majesty decided to send his favourite and most gifted son Prince Shahpur to the house of Aminullah. He also promised a gift of 200,000 rupees to Nawab Zaman Khan Barakzai. So it was that Aminullah and most of the other Khans now came to support His Majesty, saying that the Nawab had been elected Amir while it seemed that His Majesty was subservient to foreign and infidel interests, but now that he had regained his independence, and was once again a true Muslim monarch, there was no need for an Amir, and Zaman Khan would have to be content with the post of Wazir which was a powerful enough position. Akbar Khan was not party to this new alliance.

To give formal shape to these agreements, on 17 January 1842  Shuja’s son Prince Shahpur, Aminullah Khan Logari and Zaman Khan Barakzai attended court at the Bala Hisar fort, ‘together with their banners and their horsemen and those of the khans of the Durranis, the Ghilzais, the Farsi-speakers of Kohistan and Kabul, to greet His Majesty and receive his orders’. Herati added, ‘From then on, the same ritual was observed every morning and evening, and His Majesty kept these newly co-opted rebels busy with promises of position, stipends and monetary rewards. Meanwhile he wrote to George MacGregor and the British commanders in Jalalabad that the situation was finally coming under control.’
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By the end of the first week of February, despite all the disasters of the previous three months, it was becoming increasingly clear that the apparent victory of Akbar Khan was by no means a forgone conclusion, and that Shuja still had everything to play for. Indeed, in one of the strange revivals of fortune which marked Shuja’s life, he was now arguably in more direct control of his ancestral lands than he had been at any other point in his reign. Seeing the way the winds were blowing, many of the remaining Durrani and Qizilbash chiefs now cast their lot with the Shah and one by one began coming to his durbar to offer their allegiance and beg his forgiveness. ‘As the new alliances grew firm,’ wrote Maulana Kashmiri, ‘the Shah held court and granted audience to all the Khans.’

He elevated all the high lords even higher

And showered his benevolence upon the soldiery

Kabul became free of violence and sedition

Governance was once again the business of the Shah

But he did not accord Akbar a place

The hatred in his heart had not grown cold . . .
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The situation was still delicate. Shuja did not yet dare leave the Bala Hisar, and he remained dependent on the support of his two new allies, especially the muscle of Aminullah Khan. According to Mirza ‘Ata, the Shah remained a little ‘suspicious, as these two Kabul chiefs had once been partisans of Amir Dost Mohammad Khan: could they be plotting to take his life? And now the English were said to be approaching again, and could well attempt to re-conquer Khurasan. Shuja was between a rock and a hard place. Nevertheless the King had at that time some 10,000 troops, 12 cannons, uncountable treasures, and plentiful stocks of gun-powder.’
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These figures were probably optimistic. But for all his problems, the Shah’s prospects were now brighter than they had been for months.
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On 7 February, Shuja wrote in his own hand a heartfelt message to ‘my beloved son’ Prince Timur who was with General Nott in Kandahar. Mohan Lal Kashmiri, who had remained in Kabul and so escaped the massacre, promised to get the letter through to the British garrison there using his network of spies and runners. Shuja opened by writing of his acceptance of the incomprehensible workings of divine will represented by fate, and of the shame and sadness he felt at what had taken place. ‘Here we have had a repetition of those scenes which the people of this place have so often enacted,’ he wrote. ‘I frequently warned the English of what was coming – but they paid no regard to me. Fate has decreed that those scenes which I had hoped never to see again should take place. The people of Kabul sounded a war cry against Unbelievers and even withdrew themselves from me, saying, the Shah is with the English.’ He then explained to his son that he had been forced to dissimulate in order to survive: ‘I told them: “What can the English be to me? They certainly treated me with kindness, and I was a long time a guest of the nation – but what else?” This even was unworthy of me – may God shield me from the shame I feel [for disowning my friends]. If, by the blessing of God, I should ever see you again, I will unfold to you the secrets of my heart. It was my fate to act as I have done.’

He then went on to tell Prince Timur of his hopes. ‘Do not grieve,’ he wrote, ‘a better state of things is now in progress. Be happy and contented – we shall still attain the objects of which we have been disappointed and I shall keep a careful eye upon you. I cannot send you the particulars as I could wish, for the road is full of danger. There is much to communicate – if matters should turn out happily, and according to my heart’s desire, you will know all very soon!’
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By now, with the rebel Afghan leadership still fractured and disunited, Shuja’s letters were showing his increasing confidence. To MacGregor in Jalalabad he wrote urging a rapid British advance on Kabul – ‘Not a cat belonging to you shall be injured,’ he promised – before returning to his old theme of the faithlessness of the Barakzais. He particularly decried the respect that he imagined the British were still paying to his old enemy, Amir Dost Mohammad. ‘I cannot think that you are possessed of a proper sense of honor,’ he lectured MacGregor.

After all that has happened, why do Dost Mahommed and his family remain there in luxury? What has been your treatment of that dog, and what return have you received from this faithless one, Mahommed Akbar? Dost Mahommed and his wives and his children, in revenge for the sahibs who have fallen in this country, should be seen wandering in destitution through the bazaars and streets of Hindustan. May God accomplish this wish of my heart! If Akbar ever falls into my power what treatment shall he receive!
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One reason the British did not take revenge on Dost Mohammad in the manner suggested by Shuja was the very large number of prisoners of war now held by Akbar Khan.

Some were the wounded who had been left behind in Kabul; some had been given over as hostages by treaty; others had surrendered or been captured and dragged from the caves and villages where they had taken shelter. In all, around 120 Europeans had now been rounded up, of whom Akbar had collected some forty, including Lady Macnaghten and her cat (though the parakeet does not seem to have survived the retreat from Kabul), the widowed Mrs Trevor and the formidable Lady Sale and her pregnant and bereaved daughter Alexandrina.

The first few days had been the worst, as Akbar’s prisoners were escorted through the snowbound passes and held in dirty mountain-top forts and remote tower houses. For several days amid ‘bitterly cold’ winds the hostages had had to ride over the bloody and mutilated corpses of their comrades. Occasionally they recognised close friends, such as when Mackenzie saw the remains of James ‘Gentleman Jim’ Skinner lying among a pile of corpses near Jagdalak, and had to ask permission to stop and dig him a shallow grave. They also passed small knots of their ‘naked, wounded and frostbitten’ sepoys ‘huddled together . . . Alas! We could do nothing for these poor wretches, none of whom survived the next few days.’
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It is difficult to assess whether the captive British officers could actually have done much more to save their sepoys, but rumours were soon making their way down the passes to India that the British officer class had saved their own skins while abandoning their men to slavery and death.

One fort refused to admit the prisoners, ‘stating that we were Kafirs’, and forced them to take shelter in ‘a wretched cowshed’.
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They forded several branches of the freezing Panjshir River ‘which was not only deep but exceedingly rapid’. During one of these crossings they were ambushed by ‘a body of Afghan plunderers who attacked all those who remained on the bank . . . Many in despair threw themselves into the river and were drowned.’
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This was followed by the ascent of a steep pass, ‘where I found it requisite to hold tight on by the mane’, wrote Lady Sale, ‘lest the saddle and I should slip off together’. At the top they then got caught in the middle of an inter-tribal blood feud, but after the volleys they had just experienced in the Khord Kabul this seemed almost trivial in its violence, at least to Lady Sale: ‘A few jezails were fired; there was great talking and noise; and then it was over.’ Soon even the smallest pleasures seemed to the hostages wild extremes of luxury. ‘We enjoyed washing our faces very much,’ wrote Lady Sale one morning, and ‘had a grand breakfast of dal and radishes’.
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Once they arrived at the fortress of Akbar Khan’s father-in-law, however, conditions improved. In all the Afghan accounts, and in several of the Indian Muslim ones too, Akbar Khan’s kindness to his prisoners is regarded as exemplary and in the epic poems he is depicted as a paragon of chivalry, a sort of Afghan Saladin, which is still how he is remembered in Kabul today. Munshi Abdul Karim’s account is typical. ‘When Commander Akbar’s guests had somewhat recovered,’ he wrote,

and were able once again to stand and move their frozen limbs, the Commander returned to the Fort to pay them a courtesy visit.

The hostages all stood in line, trembling and fearful, to express their gratitude. Commander Akbar comforted them, and, showing great respect to General Elphinstone and the Minister’s widow, offered them sable-lined cloaks of cloth-of-gold, which he himself draped around their shoulders. He gave each of them a warm sheep-skin poshteen and with tears in his eyes, said ‘No-one can foretell, no-one can alter the decrees of fate and Divine will! The old men of Kabul in my army tell me that such extremes of snow and ice have not been seen in these parts in living memory. Have no fear – I will protect you and send you to the warmer clime of Laghman to rest and recover, until the sun enters the house of Pisces, the snows melt and the road to Hindustan will once again be open.’ Commander Akbar’s exemplary behaviour, fine manners, personal modesty, and solicitous care won the universal admiration of his guests, who swore lifelong gratitude. Once the hostage guests had reached Laghman, spacious apartments were set aside for the ladies, with serving girls in attendance. Food too was generously provided: grains and meat, the fat sheeps’ tails, chickens, eggs, as well as all kinds of dried and fresh fruits.
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