To justify his plan, Auckland issued the Simla Manifesto in October
1838, setting forth the necessary reasons for British intervention in
Afghanistan. The manifesto stated that in order to insure the welfare of
India, the British must have a trustworthy ally on India's western
frontier. The British pretense that their troops were merely supporting
Shuja's small army in retaking what was once his throne fooled no one.
Although the Simla Manifesto stated that British troops would be
withdrawn as soon as Shuja was installed in Kabul, Shuja's rule depended
entirely on British arms to suppress rebellion and on British funds to
buy the support of tribal chiefs. The British denied that they were
invading Afghanistan, instead claiming they were merely supporting its
legitimate Shuja government "against foreign interference and factious
opposition."
From the British point of view, the First Anglo-Afghan
War (1838-42) (often called "Auckland's Folly") was an unmitigated
disaster, despite the ease with which Dost Mohammad was deposed and
Shuja enthroned. An army of British and Indian troops set out from the
Punjab in December 1838 and reached Quetta by late March 1839. A month
later, the British took Qandahar without a battle. In July, after a
two-month delay in Qandahar, the British attacked the fortress of Ghazni,
overlooking a plain leading to India, and achieved a decisive victory
over Dost Mohammad's troops led by one of his sons. Dost Mohammad fled
with his loyal followers across the passes to Bamian, and ultimately to
Bukhara. In August 1839, after almost thirty years, Shuja was again
enthroned in Kabul. Some British troops returned to India, but it soon
became clear that Shuja's rule could only be maintained with the
presence of British forces. After he unsuccessfully attacked the British
and their Afghan protégé, Dost Mohammad surrendered to them and was
exiled in India in late 1840.
By October 1841, however, disaffected Afghan tribes were flocking to
support Dost Mohammad's son, Mohammad Akbar, in Bamian. On January 1,
1842, their presence no longer wanted, an agreement was reached that
provided for the safe exodus of the British garrison and its dependents
from Afghanistan. Five days later, the retreat began, and as they
struggled through the snowbound passes, the British were attacked by
Ghilzai warriors. Although Dr. W. Brydon is frequently mentioned as the
only survivor of the march to Jalalabad--out of a column of more than
16,000 (consisting of about 4,500 military personnel, both British and
Indian, along with as many as 12,000 camp followers) who undertook the
retreat--a few more survived as prisoners and hostages. His British
protectors gone, Shuja remained in power only a few months before being
assassinated in April 1842.
The complete destruction of the garrison prompted brutal retaliation
by the British against the Afghans and touched off yet another power
struggle for dominance of Afghanistan. In the fall of 1842, British
forces from Qandahar and Peshawar entered Kabul just long enough to
rescue the few British prisoners and burn the Great Bazaar. Although the
foreign invasion provided the Afghan tribes with a temporary sense of
unity they had previously lacked, the loss of life and property was
followed by a bitter resentment of foreign influence.
The Russians advanced steadily southward toward Afghanistan in the
three decades after the First Anglo-Afghan War. In 1842 the Russian
border was on the other side of the Aral Sea from Afghanistan, but five
short years later the tsar's outposts had moved to the lower reaches of
the Amu Darya. By 1865 Tashkent had been formally annexed, as was
Samarkand three years later. A peace treaty in 1868 with Amir Muzaffar
al-Din, the ruler of Bukhara, virtually stripped him of his
independence. Russian control now extended as far as the northern bank
of the Amu Darya.
The Second Anglo-Afghan War
After months of chaos in Kabul, Mohammad Akbar secured local control and
in April 1843 his father, Dost Mohammad, returned to the throne in
Afghanistan. During the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848-49), his last effort
to take Peshawar failed.
By 1854 the British wanted to resume
relations with Dost Mohammad, whom they had essentially ignored in the
intervening twelve years. The 1855 Treaty of Peshawar reopened
diplomatic relations, proclaimed respect for each side's territorial
integrity, and pledged both sides as friends of each other's friends and
enemies of each other's enemies.
In 1857 an addendum to the 1855 treaty permitted a British military
mission to become a presence in Qandahar (but not to Kabul) during a
conflict with the Iranians, who had attacked Herat in 1856. In 1863 Dost
Mohammad retook Herat with British acquiescence. A few months later,
Dost Mohammad died. Sher Ali, his third son, and proclaimed successor,
failed to recapture Kabul from his older brother, Mohammad Afzal (whose
troops were led by his son, Abdur Rahman) until 1868, after which Abdur
Rahman retreated across the Amu Darya and bided his time.
In the years immediately following the First Anglo-Afghan War, and
especially after the 1857 uprising against the British (known as the
Sepoy Rebellion) in India, Liberal Party governments in London took a
political view of Afghanistan as a buffer state. By the time Sher Ali
had established control in Kabul in 1868, he found the British ready to
support his regime with arms and funds, but nothing more. From then on,
relations between the Afghan ruler and Britain deteriorated steadily
over the next ten years. The Afghan ruler was worried about the
southward encroachment of Russia, which by 1873 had taken over the lands
of the khan, or ruler, of Khiva. Sher Ali sent an envoy seeking British
advice and support. The previous year, however, the British had signed
an agreement with the Russians in which the latter agreed to respect the
northern boundaries of Afghanistan and to view the territories of the
Afghan amir as outside their sphere of influence. The British, however,
refused to give any assurances to the disappointed Sher Ali.
After tension between Russia and Britain in Europe ended with the
June 1878 Congress of Berlin, Russia turned its attention to Central
Asia. That same summer, Russia sent an uninvited diplomatic mission to
Kabul. Sher Ali tried, but failed, to keep them out. Russian envoys
arrived in Kabul on July 22, 1878 and on August 14, the British demanded
that Sher Ali accept their mission.
The amir not only refused to receive a British mission but threatened
to stop it if it were dispatched. Lord Lytton, the viceroy, called Sher
Ali's bluff and ordered a diplomatic mission to set out for Kabul on
November 21, 1878. The mission was turned back as it approached the
eastern entrance of the Khyber Pass, thus triggering the Second
Anglo-Afghan War. A British force of about 40,000 fighting men were
distributed into military columns which penetrated Afghanistan at three
different points. An alarmed Sher Ali attempted to appeal in person to
the tsar for assistance, but unable to do so, he returned to
Mazar-e-Sharif, where he died the following February.
With British forces occupying much of the country, Sher Ali's son and
successor, Yaqub, signed the Treaty of Gandamak in May 1879 to prevent a
British invasion of the rest of the country. According to this agreement
and in return for an annual subsidy and vague assurances of assistance
in case of foreign aggression, Yaqub relinquished control of Afghan
foreign affairs to the British. British representatives were installed
in Kabul and other locations, British control was extended to the Khyber
and Michni passes, and the Afghanistan ceded various frontier areas to
Britain. An Afghan uprising opposed to the Treaty of Gandamak was foiled
in October 1879. A noted historian, W. Kerr Fraser-Tytler, suggests that
Yaqub abdicated because he did not wish to suffer the same fate that
befell Shah Shuja following the first war. ABDUR RAHMAN KHAN, "THE IRON
AMIR," 1880-1901
Consolidation of the Modern State
As far as British interests were
concerned, Abdur Rahman answered their prayers: a forceful, intelligent
leader capable of welding his divided people into a state; and he was
willing to accept limitations to his power imposed by British control of
his country's foreign affairs and the British buffer state policy. His
twenty-one-year reign was marked by efforts to modernize and establish
control of the kingdom, whose boundaries were delineated by the two
empires bordering it. Abdur Rahman turned his considerable energies to
what evolved into the creation of the modern state of Afghanistan.
He achieved this consolidation of Afghanistan in three ways. He
suppressed various rebellions and followed up his victories with harsh
punishment, execution, and deportation. He broke the stronghold of
Pashtun tribes by forcibly transplanting them. He transplanted his most
powerful Pashtun enemies, the Ghilzai, and other tribes from southern
and south-central Afghanistan to areas north of the Hindu Kush with
predominantly non-Pashtun populations. Finally, he created a system of
provincial governorates different from old tribal boundaries. Provincial
governors had a great deal of power in local matters, and an army was
placed at their disposal to enforce tax collection and suppress dissent.
Abdur Rahman kept a close eye on these governors, however, by creating
an effective intelligence system. During his reign, tribal organization
began to erode as provincial government officials allowed land to change
hands outside the traditional clan and tribal limits.
