Read Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan Online

Authors: William Dalrymple

Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (95 page)

BOOK: Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan

8.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

^rThe land appears to be much drier today – the ‘Dasht which stretches from Spin Boldak at the foot of the mountains south of Kandahar is now a virtual desert with only a little spring grazing and the dwarf oaks confined to the mountain slopes. But the descriptions left by members of the Army of the Indus reveal a greener landscape, as do the place names: Chaman, the present-day border post between Pakistan and Afghanistan in these parts, means ‘meadow’ in Persian.

^sThe Haji in fact had a point. The Hajigak Pass is extremely formidable even in daytime and during summer. Moreover he had especially good reason to be cautious as the pass was controlled by Hazaras whom Haji Khan had suppressed some years earlier and who would no doubt have seized the opportunity to take revenge on their former persecutor.

^tThis was rather rich coming from Dost Mohammad, who had in his time killed several of his enemies after pledging them safe conduct, notably the Mirs of Tagab, Kohistan and Deh Kundi.

^uThe Russian attack on Khiva ended as disastrously as the British retreat from Kabul would do, with Perovsky losing half his camels and nearly half his men to the blizzards of the Central Asian winter. It put back Russian ambitions on the steppe for a generation: Khiva would not fall to Russian arms until 1872, just as a British army did not return to Afghanistan for almost forty years. See Alexander Morrison,
Twin Imperial Disasters: The Invasion of Khiva and Afghanistan in the Russian and British Official Mind, 1839–1842
(forthcoming).

^vThe child born to the Warburtons went on to become Colonel Sir Robert Warburton, who put his mixed heritage and bilingualism to good use when he commanded the Frontier Force in the Khyber between 1879 and 1898, where he founded the Khyber Rifles. See Robert Warburton,
Eighteen Years in the Khyber, 1879–1898
,
London, 1909.

^wWade had encouraged the Kohistanis to rise up and had promised their pirs, Mir Masjidi and his brother Mir Haji, inducements of 500 tomans a year if they did so. The money was never paid. So the Tajik rebellion was led by the same members of the ‘ulema who had just removed Shah Shuja’s name from Friday Prayers in Kabul.

^xThe arrival of the US-led coalition in Kabul in 2002 had a similar effect, leading in a few months to a ten-fold hike in house prices.

^yThere were two recent precedents for the use of the language of the jihad in the region: Shuja’s grandfather Ahmad Shah Durrani had adopted the jihad as a justification for his invasion of the Punjab, as had Dost Mohammad when he attempted to recapture Peshawar from Ranjit Singh.

^zCharles Rattray was the brother of the artist James Rattray who went on to produce some of the most celebrated lithographs of the war.

^aaThe barracks still stand, a short distance from the US Air Force base of Bagram.

^bbOne of the tasks of the Ghilzai had been to supply grain and forage to the cantonment. When Macnaghten cut their subsidy they retaliated by refusing to supply provisions.

^ccThe village and its shrine are still there, above the airport road, overlooking the large Kabul ISAF base and the heavily sandbagged American Embassy compound.

^ddIt would have been far better for the retreating army to have travelled at night when the snow would have been frozen, and the Ghilzai unable to shoot with any accuracy: the Afghan Mujehedin, travelling in the same terrain in the 1980s always travelled at night for these very reasons. But this was an army untrained and ill-equipped for either mountain or winter warfare.

^eeThe army could have taken the far less dangerous route through the Lautaband Pass. Why they did not do this remains a mystery. In the second Afghan War this was the route used by the British army thus bypassing the terrible Khord Kabul and Tezin Passes where most of the killing took place.

^ffIn reality the Jabbar Khel and Kharoti Ghilzai who patrolled these passes would not have felt any compunction about disobeying the Barakzai chiefs whom the Ghilzais despised almost as much as they hated the Sadozai. Macnaghten had reneged on their payments and now they wanted to get their own back.

^ggBritish women below officer class were left to fend for themselves. According to the tribesmen I talked to in these passes, a great number ended up in local harems, while the less desirable ones were sold as slaves.

^hhIt was Khatri traders from Multan and Shikarpur who dominated the Central Asian trade between Bukhara and Sindh. See Arup Banerji,
Old Routes: North Indian Nomads and Bankers in Afghan, Uzbek and Russian Lands
, New Delhi, 2011, p. 2.

ⁱⁱWhen the writers Nancy and Louis Dupree visited Gandamak in the 1970s they found bones, fragments of Victorian weaponry and military equipment still lying in the scree above the village.

^jjThese opinions should not be especially surprising or taken as examples of Stockholm Syndrome. British attitudes towards the Afghans have traditionally been both positive and admiring. Mountstuart Elphinstone thought the Afghans resembled Scottish Highlanders (see the excellent analysis of this in Ben Hopkins,
The Making of Modern Afghanistan
, London, 2008), and in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century British officers identified with the Afghans and saw their frontier fighting in terms of school playing-field athletics – attitudes which seeped into Kipling’s writing. This idea of the ‘noble Pashtun’ is still alive and well among British forces in Afghanistan in the most recent occupation who tend to view the Afghans as ‘natural fighters’. For an especially kitsch example of this trope, see the Sylvester Stallone movie
Rambo III
(1988).

^kkThese women may have been water carriers (saqau), a traditional role for Pashtun women during battle.

^llThe same tactics were used by the Taliban against the orchards and vineyards of the Shomali Plain when they finally lost patience with the mainly Tajik villages of Parwan in the 1990s.

^mmHis body was eventually removed by Pollock and reburied in Park Street cemetery in Calcutta, not far from the tomb erected for whatever remains Lady Macnaghten had managed to retrieve of her husband.

ⁿⁿThe Qizilbash had been instrumental in the negotiations to free the hostages and had provided the necessary bribe which secured their release.

^ooThe Edens did however make an enduring name for themselves in New Zealand where the then capital was named after George, while the present cricket ground is named Eden Park. Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister at the time, got his name on the map of Australia instead.

^ppMullah Omar is a distant relative of the first Afghan ruler of Southern Afghanistan, Mir Waiz Hotaki.

^qqThe International Security Assistance Force, established by the United Nations in 2001 and taken over by NATO in 2003.

Bibliography

1. Manuscript Sources in European Languages

Oriental and India Office Collections, British Library (Formerly India Office Library), London

Mss Eur A52 Major General Sir Herbert Edwardes Letter

Mss Eur A186 Lady Sale Letter

Mss Eur B14 Forster Papers

and Mss Eur K115

Mss Eur B191 Auckland Letters

Mss Eur B198 Viscount Howick Letter

Mss Eur B234 William Wilberforce Bird Letter

Mss Eur B330 Outram Journal

Mss Eur B415 Robert Sale Letter

Mss Eur C70 Beresford Journals

Mss Eur C181 Douglas Letters

Mss Eur C260 Captain Henry Fleming Letters

Mss Eur C529 General Sir Arthur Borton Letters

Mss Eur C573 Collister, unpublished book, ‘Hostage in Afghanistan’

Mss Eur C634 Herries Letters

Mss Eur C703 Anderson Captivity Diary

Mss Eur C814 Lieutenant George Mein Papers

Mss Eur D160 Webb, ‘Reminiscences of a Hostage at Cabul, 1841–42’ (of Colonel E. A. H. Webb, compiled by his son Lieutenant Colonel E. A. H. Webb)

Mss Eur D484 Anonymous Diary, ‘March from Quettah’

Mss Eur D552 Auckland Letters

Mss Eur D634 Hutchinson Family Papers, including Mss ‘Journal of the Campaign in Afghanistan, a manuscript account of the First Afghan War compiled from letters of Captain Codrington, Bengal Army, by his widow’

Mss Eur D645 Kabul Relief Fund, Bombay Committee

Mss Eur D649 Besant Letters

Mss Eur D649 and D1118 Jasper Nicholls Letters

Mss Eur D937 Thomas Nicholl Papers

Mss Eur E161–70, Masson Correspondence

Mss Eur E195

Mss Eur E262 Carter Journal

Mss Eur E342 Hogg Collection

Mss Eur E359 Colvin Collection, including ‘Diaries of John Russell Colvin’

Mss Eur F88–9 Elphinstone Papers, including ‘Blue Book on the Disaster in Afghanistan, 1843’

Mss EurF128/196 Edward Strachey papers

Mss Eur F171 Werge Thomas Collection, including Shakespear/Todd letters and ‘James Abbott’s March from Candahar to Herat’

Mss Eur F213 Broughton Collection, including ‘Memorandum regarding the Treaty of Lahore between Ranjit Singh, Shah Shuja, and the British Govt’

Mss Eur F33 Macnaghten Papers

Mss Eur F439 Pollock Papers, including ‘Report on the Destruction of the Covered Bazaar, Cabul, 1842, Reports of Atrocities in Jelalabad, Vindication of the Conduct of Captain T. P. Walsh’, and Mohan Lal/Shakespear Correspondence

Mss Eur Photo Eur 057 Dennie Letters

Mss Eur Photo Eur 353 Nott Letters

Mss Eur Photo Eur 452 East India Company Letters

IOR, Secret and Political, Correspondence Relating to Persia and Afghanistan, 1839–42

L/PS/5

IOR, Secret and Political, Correspondence Relating to Persia and Afghanistan, 1834–39

L/PS/20

F/4/1466Extract Fort William Political Consultations

F/4/1466Boards Collections

IOR/P/BRN/SEC/372, Bengal Secret Consultations

IOR/P/BEN/SEC/380

IOR/HM/534–45 (esp. Papers Connected with Sale’s Brigade in Afghanistan