Lawrence was exceptionally level-headed when it came to the question of how to handle Russia’s Asian ambitions. As Viceroy between 1863 and 1869, he adopted the policy of what he called ‘masterly inactivity’ in the regions beyond India’s frontiers. Combining experience and commonsense, he argued that it was military and political folly to imagine that India was best defended by an invasion of Afghanistan. Memories of the last incursion into their country had created a passionate loathing for Britain which would make it impossible for an Anglo-Indian army to hold the Kabul–Kandahar line which, the generals insisted, was the only way to repel a Russian attack. Lines of communication would be dangerously extended in a hostile region where service was unpopular with Sikh and Hindu troops. If Russia chose to occupy her Asian back yard, so be it. She would, Lawrence believed, be a welcome neighbour whose presence would bring civilisation to the region and keep the lid down on its endemic Islamic extremism. As for alleged schemes for the invasion of India, Lawrence was sceptical: it would prove an enterprise more hazardous and debilitating for the Russians than the British. Furthermore, Lawrence suspected that such plans were no more than the bluster of a handful of ultra-nationalist journalists and generals whose rhetoric was ignored by the Czar’s ministers. There was nothing to fear and the Russians had nothing to hide. During 1862–63 and at the request of the Indian Survey Department, one of its officers, Colonel J. T. Walker, was sent to St Petersburg for data needed to compile a map of Central Asia. He was warmly received by ministers and geographers who gave him every assistance and, when the map was published in 1866, the Russians forwarded amendments.14
Colonel Walker’s new map no doubt helped British officials and officers trace the path of the Russian armies which undertook the piecemeal conquest of Central Asia between 1865 and 1885. There were many parallels between these campaigns and those conducted by the British in India. The men-on-the-spot disregarded orders from distant St Petersburg and pressed ahead, justifying themselves with the excuse that they were stabilising a frontier. As in India, the forces employed were comparatively small, well-disciplined, armed with the most up-to-date weaponry, and irresistible. After a few one-sided engagements, their adversaries were left with the choice of annihilation or submission. The khans of Bukhara and Kokand chose the latter and were permitted to rule as Russian puppets. The toughest and most persistent resistance came from below and took the form of jihadic uprisings; there were four in Kokand between 1873 and 1916, and all were crushed in the khan’s name by Russian troops.15 The new régime promised not to tamper with Muslim customs, but Russian governors, like their equivalents in India, soon faced trouble from deeply conservative and devout communities. There were riots during the Tashkent cholera epidemic of 1892 after Russian doctors insisted on the examination of Muslim women, an incident which mirrored the disturbances in Bombay five years later.
Russia’s frontier wars attracted many adventurers with a nose for personal profit. E. O’Donovan, a British war correspondent attached to the Russian army in Turkmenistan between 1879 and 1881, discovered many former Circassian and Caucasian brigands among the irregular forces. There were promises of advancement for the rank-and-file conscripts. On the eve of one sortie, General Lazarev recited tales of past glories to the men of his former regiment, pointed to the stars on his uniform, reminded his listeners that he had once been an NCO and pledged promotion for those who performed their duty well. He was cheered and afterwards vodka was distributed.16 In the wake of the soldiers came Russian peasant settlers from over-crowded and under-productive lands in the west; by 1911 these irodtsky (aliens) totalled 1.54 million.17 Tension between them and the four to five million indigenous inhabitants was inevitable, and clashes were frequent.
In the hope that they might mislead the suspicious British, the Russians took steps to disguise the reality of power by claiming that the former Muslim states were dependencies rather than conquered provinces. No one was fooled: a War Office report of 1882 noted that the Khan of Bukhara’s army now wore Russian uniforms and was commanded by Russian officers.18 The flow of settlers added to the impression that, to all intents and purposes, the region was as much a part of the Russian empire as, say, Poland or Latvia. Obviously, Russian expansion disturbed those in London and Calcutta already predisposed to believe that Russia would not be satisified with an eventual frontier on the Oxus or the Pamirs. But there was nothing to indicate that the campaigns in Central Asia were a preliminary to more ambitious enterprises which, if allowed to proceed, would endanger India. Indeed, the Russians went to considerable diplomatic lengths to dispel suspicions that their activities were a threat to India. Nor was this window-dressing. A secret agent sent by the Maharaja of Kashmir to Tashkent in 1865 was sent packing by the authorities there with an emphatic denial that Russia was considering an invasion of India, and the same treatment was given to another emissary five years later.19 Neither mission was known to the Indian government.
The era of ‘masterly inactivity’ and tolerance of Russia’s Central Asian ambitions ended in the winter of 1877–78. It was terminated by the crisis in Europe which followed Russia’s armed intervention in favour of assorted Balkan nationalists who had rebelled against Turkish rule. What Russian nationalists hailed as a war of liberation was interpreted by Disraeli’s government as a flagrant attempt to infiltrate south-eastern Europe and possibly seize the Straits. Opinion in Britain was bitterly divided: Conservatives favoured propping up Turkey for the traditional reason of Indian security, while Liberals and Radicals, led by Gladstone, backed Russia as the champion of maltreated and misgoverned peoples fighting for their freedom. Realpolitik gained ground over sentiment at the beginning of 1878, when Russian forces approached the northern shores of the Bosphorus and came within sight of Constantinople’s skyline. They also saw the battleships of the Mediterranean fleet, ordered to the Straits by Disraeli as a token of Britain’s determination to defend Turkey.
War seemed imminent, and in April orders were sent from London to Calcutta for Indian reinforcements to be shipped to Malta in all haste. The response was heartening. Lytton informed London that ‘all the best fighting elements in our native army in every part of India’ were clamouring for a chance to fight against Russia.20 Many of these ardent volunteers – Pathans, Baluchis, and Afridis – were Muslims, for whom Turkey was the chief guardian of Islam and whose ruler, the sultan, was also the hereditary khalifa, successor to the Prophet and spiritual leader of all Sunni Muslims. For them the forthcoming war was a jihad. Russia now faced not only a possible holy war but an alliance between Britain and Austria which, as in 1854–55, was unwilling to permit a Russian sphere of influence extending across the Balkans to the Adriatic. Given the combination of powers ranged against her, and the heavy losses of men and treasure incurred during the recent Turkish war, Russia was forced to back down and accept political defeat at the Congress of Berlin in July 1878.
In an attempt to stave off the inevitable, the Russian government played a Maskirovka move designed to weaken British resolve and secure more favourable terms at the conference table. India was the intended target of this feint. At the outset of the war and in anticipation of British hostility, General Mikhail Skobelev had proposed a limited advance to Kabul. Its occupation would be temporary for, he argued, ‘our presence can only be justified by the urge towards contributing to the solution of the Eastern Question in our favour, otherwise the game is not worth the candle and expenditure in Turkestan would be a waste’. In January 1878, with an exhausted Russian army checkmated outside Constantinople, General Kryjhanovsky, the governor of Orenburg, suggested a diversionary expedition into Persia. The War Ministry rejected this plan because funds were short and all available troops had to be concentrated in the Near East to face a possible Anglo-Austrian counter-offensive. The only alternative left was a small-scale demonstration on the Oxus and a well-publicised political mission to Kabul.21 During May General von Kaufman mobilised his entire force of 20,000 men and declared that he was
ready to establish a Russian sphere of influence over Afghanistan. One of his more indiscreet officers boasted: ‘Now we march to India and drive out the English.’22 At the same time, General Leonid Stoletov rode to Kabul, brushing aside Afghan protests, and delivered the Czar’s terms to the amir, Sher Ali. He was too late; the Berlin agreement was signed in July and he was immediately recalled to St Petersburg.
Von Kaufman’s sabre-rattling on the Oxus and Stoletov’s brief appearance at Kabul had far-reaching repercussions. As predicted, they created consternation in Calcutta, where Lytton was already considering ways to bring Afghanistan more closely into Britain’s orbit. He was also perturbed by what he imagined to be a decline in Britain’s standing throughout India. These preoccupations made him susceptible to the advice of two advocates of the Forward policy: the up-and-coming General Roberts, Quartermaster-General of the Indian army with responsibility for intelligence and operational planning, and Major Louis Cavignari, the deputy commissioner at Peshawar. They presented the Viceroy with the means to show Sher Ali that Britain and not Russia was the paramount power in the region and, at the same time, restore British prestige. The formula was simple: an outraged Calcutta would send an agent to Kabul with powers to negotiate the terms of future Anglo-Afghan relations and if, unlike Stoletov, he was rebuffed, the big stick would be wielded. In August General Sir Neville Chamberlain (the inventor of snooker) was ordered to Kabul on a mission to secure a partial surrender of Afghan sovereignty. As expected, Sher Ali refused permission for the commissioner and his escort to enter his country, fearing with good reason that Chamberlain would demand a partial surrender of Afghan sovereignty. An ultimatum followed which expired in November, by which time preparations for war were well advanced. Once the fighting had begun there were rumours that the Russians had become involved and had taken Kabul and Herat.23
In many respects the second Afghan war resembled the first. The most striking similarity was the hubris which infected proconsuls and commanders. It was less excusable in 1878 since Lytton, his advisers and generals should have been aware of what had happened to their predecessors and why. Superior weaponry naturally engendered self-confidence. The past forty years had witnessed a revolution in military technology, which had opened a vast gap between the Anglo-Indian and Afghan armies. British troops were armed with the breech-loading Martini-Henry rifle, Indian with the obsolescent Snider, another breech-loader. Both were accurate to over 1,000 yards and fired soft-nosed bullets, which inflicted hideous wounds. There were also rifled cannon, which fired shells at ranges of over 5,000 yards against which no Afghan mountain fort could stand. A few British units were equipped with the new Gatling machine-guns, which fired 600 rounds a minute for up to a mile, although they proved a disappointment. The pair deployed during the battle of Charasiah jammed like the one in Sir Henry Newbolt’s poem after a few seconds.24 Communications between units were facilitated and speeded up by field-telegraph lines and, when the sun shined, heliographs which flashed messages from hillside to hillside. Despite a number of Snider rifles scattered among the tribesmen, the Afghans still relied on their traditional muzzle-loading jezails. As in 1838, the Afghans initially proved incapable of concerted resistance, confirming the official belief that they were an instinctively anarchic race riven by feuds. In Roberts’s words, for the past sixty years, ‘Disintegration had been the normal condition of Afghanistan.’25 Dividing and ruling it seemed to present few difficulties.
The objectives of both wars were also similar. Afghanistan was to be transformed from a neutral buffer state into a British satellite, with an amir firmly under the thumb of the British resident in Kabul. In 1878 this arrangement ideally fitted the plans advocated by apostles of the ‘Forward Policy’, for it would guarantee free access to those two pivots upon which India’s defences would ultimately rest: Kandahar and Kabul. The nonmilitary mind, undisturbed by nightmares of Cossack hordes riding down Afghan passes, was sceptical. Disraeli’s Cabinet was apprehensive and urged Lytton not to get too deeply entangled in Afghan politics and to keep annexations to a minium. The Liberal opposition denounced the war as immoral; the lives, property and freedom of the Afghan people were being sacrificed merely to prepare for a war which might never occur. Gladstone, for whom politics was a series of moral choices, condemned the war as an example of reckless aggression unworthy of a high-principled, Christian nation. His pulpit oratory and appeals to the national conscience touched the right chord, both in his Midlothian campaign during the autumn of 1879 and in the general election which swept the Liberals to power the following spring.
Public unease about the war was aroused by the press. War correspondents cabled home disquieting reports of atrocities which provoked questions in the Commons. Maurice Macpherson of the Standard, attached to General Roberts’s Kurram Valley column, described the burning of villages, the killing of captives and an occasion when the general had ordered Indian cavalrymen to take no prisoners. Roberts considered him an ‘unmitigated cad’ whose stories were distortions, and ordered his expulsion from Afghanistan at the beginning of February 1879.26 It was probably a popular decision with the army. Gilbert Elliot, the future Lord Minto, then attached to Roberts’s staff, expressed a widespread exasperation when he wrote to his mother: ‘I long to encamp the British public in a place like Ali Khey for a night with Gladstone, Chamberlain, Dilke [both Radical MPs] and a few others on outpost duty.’ Soon after, he complained about the way in which the newspapers were swaying public opinion from one emotional peak to another. The British public ‘is the most sensational ass I know. Capable either of preaching humanity towards brutes like these people here, or losing their head and going into lightstrikes when the savage gives them the worst of it.’27
The opening stage of the campaign gave cause for celebration and, in Calcutta, sighs of relief. The one-armed Mutiny veteran General Sir Sam Browne VC (designer of the belt which took his name) forced the Khyber Pass by taking Ali Musjid on 21 November 1878. A month later, Roberts’s column won the battle of Peiwar Kotal. The way to Kabul was opened and Sher Ali prepared to flee to Turkmenistan, but was refused entry by the Russians who had enough on their plate with frontier-pacification operations and had no wish to antagonise Britain. He died in February 1879, leaving the British free to play kingmaker. With their support, Sher Ali’s elder son, Yakub Khan, became amir and in May he signed the treaty of Gandamak. Under its terms, he accepted Cavignari as resident in Kabul and an annual subvention of £60,000 in return for which the British were given control over the Khyber Pass and allowed to annex various frontier districts. Henceforward, Russian influence would be totally excluded from Afghanistan, for its foreign policy was to be decided in Calcutta. In the next few months, nearly all the captains and their armies returned to their cantonments in India, leaving Cavignari and his small escort in the residency in Kabul. On 5 September he and his guards were killed after the building had been stormed by a mob largely made up of unpaid and mutinous soldiers.
Like Sir Alexander Burnes over thirty years before, Cavignari had been the victim of his own over-confidence. Both men mistook endemic Afghan disorder for a lack of national feeling and failed to appreciate the depth of hatred felt against the alien, infidel power which had usurped the government. Lytton’s policy was in shreds and it was imperative that British prestige was restored swiftly and decisively. Roberts was ordered to take command of the only substantial force left in Afghanistan, the Kurram Valley force, and lead it to Kabul. Once there, in accordance with Lytton’s instructions, ‘Your objects should be to strike terror and strike it swiftly and deeply; but to avoid a “Reign of Terror”.’28 Those implicated in what Lytton called a ‘national crime’ were to be ‘promptly executed in the manner most likely to impress the population’. Roberts followed his orders with the utmost zeal; sweeping aside Afghan resistance at Charasiah on 6 October, he occupied Kabul after a fortnight’s fighting at the end of December. There were punitive demolitions of public buildings, and eighty-seven men co
nvicted by drum-head courts-martial of involvement in the attack on the residency were publicly hanged.
Roberts was now master of Afghanistan, or at least those parts of it which could be reached by British troops. Kipling’s self-effacing but highly efficient General ‘Bobs’ was a short, pugnacious careerist officer with a reputation for kindliness towards his men (‘Bobs your uncle’) and deep affection for the Indian soldier. Gilbert Elliot found him ‘full of go’ and he appears to have tolerated heavy drinking among his staff officers.29 As military ruler of Afghanistan for the first six months of 1880, Roberts ruthlessly applied martial law and stoutly defended himself against charges of inhumanity. Tough measures were the only way to hold down a people who detested their new overlords:
In addition to the natural hatred which every Afghan feels towards a foreign invader, there is a strong underlying current of fanaticism which, unless promptly checked, becomes at times, and especially against a Christian enemy, uncontrollable.30
The same might have been written by a Russian general a hundred or so years after. For the time being, Roberts’s task was to hold the lid down on popular passion by punitive campaigns. The season for these began in the spring, and so his soldiers relaxed in their cantonments; the Illustrated London News’s war artist sent home lively sketches of a tug of war between an elephant and various British and Indian soldiers and a race between native dhooly (palanquin) bearers.31
Raj Page 47