Sikunder Burnes
Page 48
The British government in India was crippled by the costs of the occupation. Meantime, the civil arm continued to implement the commercial policy on which Burnes had worked so hard. The port facilities at Karachi were substantially improved and a regular steamship service opened on the Indus, while all transit fees were abolished. Burnes’ trade fair on the Indus was established at Sukkur in January 1841, and did show promise in attracting merchants from the Lohani migration. The Company fondly anticipated strong tea sales to Central Asia, and a supply of raw wool for export to Britain.14
But it was far from convinced that the maintenance of Shuja was necessary for trade, and the Secret Committee had an acutely accurate perception of the situation in Afghanistan. On 31 December 1840 John Stuart Mill wrote to Auckland that the current system was impossible. Either the British must withdraw from Afghanistan or greatly increase their occupying force. Anything else was to invite disaster. Two days later he sent a follow-up to say that news just received of the surrender of Dost Mohammed in no way changed this opinion.15
Charles Masson had been arrested when he had arrived at Quetta bearing messages from the Kelatis. Historians have been unanimous in condemning his arrest as unjust. I suspect they are wrong. Durand confirms that Captain Bean, political officer at Quetta, suspected Masson of being a Russian agent, based on a report from James Outram that he had intercepted messages from an anonymous Russian agent in Kelat, together with ‘incriminating reports’ about Masson which Bean had received from Loveday. These included information that Masson was translating for the Kelati forces the despatches captured from British qasids transiting the Bolan pass.16 Bean did not believe Masson that he had been released with messages while Loveday was detained. On 10 October 1840 Macnaghten confirmed Masson’s arrest.17
Burnes, of course, was with Macnaghten in Kabul. Macnaghten would have consulted him about Masson’s arrest. But we also know that this was just after the penny had dropped with Burnes, as he had sent Lord proof that Masson had been deceiving them in Kabul about his knowledge of Witkiewicz’ identity. Burnes had also received further apparently conclusive information from Jabbar Khan, who now told him that during the negotiations in Kabul, Masson had been holding his own communications with the Emir, which had helped thwart British efforts.18
After the war Loveday, Macnaghten, Lord and Burnes were all dead. Official record is there none.
A curious feature concerning Masson’s detention and connection with Loveday and the Kelat insurrection is that, nowhere is it mentioned, neither in the official records, nor books concerning Baluchistan at this period.19
Loveday’s reports to Bean, along with the latter’s account of the reason for detention and the official correspondence where Macnaghten sanctioned the detention, had all disappeared from the files before 1929. Some quotations from Bean’s account appear in the Asiatic Register of May 1841, but in the context of a lengthy refutation from Masson. Subsequent correspondence between Mountstuart Elphinstone and David Burnes refers to Leech not believing Masson’s story.20
Masson stated that Loveday was a psychotic maniac who executed needlessly and set his dogs on people, once killing a man, thus helping spark the war to reinstate Nassir Khan.21 Yet Loveday had donated a costly bed-covering of his own to shroud the forsaken body of Mehrab Khan;22 that does not square with Masson’s portrayal. Lal states that Masson’s account of Loveday does not coincide with what he himself witnessed, nor with accounts of local witnesses.23 He also says he saw no dog with Loveday.24
There is no corroboration that Masson was taken prisoner and released to bear messages. The evidence from Kabul indicates that Bean was right; Masson may have been not only a deserter, but a double-agent and traitor.25 On 22 April 1845 Mohan Lal in London wrote to John McNeill trying to ascertain whether ‘the grateful Masson’ had held communications with Nesselrode, Simonicz and Dost Mohammed.
Masson’s only biographer, Gordon Whitteridge, rejects the allegations categorically – but all his footnotes on the subject reference only Masson’s own account. Sir Gordon was a Foreign Office man educated at Cambridge in the 1930s, and thus congenitally unable to recognise a Russian spy.
General Nott continued to take effective military action against uprisings breaking out around his Kandahar command. Macnaghten had asked for Nott to be replaced, as he found him too outspoken, but Auckland refused. Macnaghten did not need permission to remove Robert Leech on the grounds that his accounts were overdue for expenses incurred when preparing the way for the initial march of the army. Leech was replaced by Henry Rawlinson; Burnes commiserated with his friend. The Burnes, Lord, Leech team was now gone.
Shahzada Timur had been sent as Governor to the Dourani capital, Kandahar, and initially the Douranis were enthusiastic about the return of one of their own. This quickly waned as it became clear that the British had the first say in governing, and the second lay with old exiles from Shuja’s Ludhiana days. Timur proved vicious and rapacious. He beheaded three Ghilzai chiefs who came in under truce.26 The elite of Kandahar did not gain the influence they hoped. They were also much affected by the creation of the janbaz and abolition of their levies and privileges. They began again to plot resistance and by January 1841 Henry Rawlinson was convinced Shuja was conniving with them. Macnaghten dismissed Rawlinson’s evidence. Timur was replaced by his brother Sagdar Jang, but the latter’s open homosexuality estranged him from the British, particularly as he conducted relationships with young British soldiers. One, alleging that he had been drugged with opium and raped by Sagdar, committed suicide.27
The Ghilzais rose against the British construction of a fort at Kelat-i-Ghilzai, a key position between Kandahar and Gazhni. A strong force under Colonel Wymer was sent out from Kandahar and defeated the Ghilzais in a major engagement on 9 May 1841, in which hard fighting lasted all day and evening.
For the Douranis Akhtar Khan was in the field with 6,000 men. On 3 July at Girishk, Akhtar was checked by Captain Woodburn in a fierce battle with no clear victor. In both Wymer’s and Woodburn’s actions, the artillery was vital to British success. There were almost no British soldiers involved other than officers. The Indian and Afghan forces under British command performed extremely creditably.
The janbaz performed effectively at Khawind on 17 August, when Akhtar Khan was decisively defeated by Major Griffin. Sagdar Jang charged with the janbaz. Considering all the actions of the First Afghan War as a whole, it is not the case that HM regiments or Company European regiments – to be blunt, white troops – fought better for the British than their Indian, Gurkha or Afghan counterparts, despite that being (still) the common portrayal in British histories.
The most important single factor in determining the fate of the British in the field was the presence or absence of artillery. Time and again the use of shells – balls which exploded in the air above their target and scattered deadly fragments over a twenty-yard radius – demoralised the Afghan forces, particularly cavalry. Where artillery was absent, the loss of firepower and range was crucially debilitating to British forces. The Afghan jezzail had twice the range of the standard British musket, and also outranged the Company force’s small number of rifles. British military technology was seventy years out of date. One young officer observed:
It is astonishing at what range the fire from their long heavy jezzails is effective. Our men were continually struck with the Afghan bullets, when we could reach the enemy with nothing under a six-pounder. Our muskets were useless when playing at long bowls. The fact is, our muskets are about as bad specimens of fire-arms as can be manufactured. The triggers are so stiff, that pulling them completely destroys any aim […] and, when the machine does go off, the recoil […] [can] knock a man backwards. Again, the ball is so much smaller than the bore of the barrell that accuracy in its flight, at any considerable distance is impossible. The clumsy flint locks, also, are constantly missing fire.28
The musket was not supposed to be individually accurate; its purpose was to pour a volley
into the massed ranks of an enemy formation at close quarters. The Afghans had more sense than to fight that way, and there are few examples of engagements in this war in which musketry volleys took substantial effect.
General Nott at Kandahar, despite larger and more persistent resistance to deal with than did the British command at Kabul, was more militarily successful. He ensured that the field forces he sent out were large enough for the purpose and well balanced between infantry, cavalry and artillery, even at the expense of leaving Kandahar itself exposed. By contrast the Kabul command appeared more concerned to keep a large force in cantonments, and the field forces were often neither well balanced nor strong.
Nott viewed the position of the British as entirely false, writing:
The conduct of the thousand and one politicals in the country has ruined our cause, and bared the throat of every European in this country to the sword and knife of the revengeful Afghan and bloody Belooch, and unless several regiments be quickly sent not a man will be left to note the fate of his comrades.
At the same time and reviewing precisely the same events, Macnaghten wrote:
These people are perfect children, and must be treated as such. If we put our naughty boy in the corner the rest will be terrified. We have taken their plaything, power, out of the hands of the Douranee chiefs, and they are pouting a good deal in consequence.29
Nott was not alone in his presentiment of the annihilation of the British force. On 7 July 1841 Major Hamlet Wade, Sale’s senior staff officer and not a fanciful man, despite his first name, noted in his diary his famous premonition:
Sir Robert Sale inspected the 44th this morning. The colours of the regiment are very ragged, and when they passed in review I was suddenly startled by what I took to be a large funeral procession. What put such a thing in my head I know not, as I was thinking of very different subjects. I cannot help recording this, it made such an impression.
Of course, many such forebodings have been recorded elsewhere with no relevant result, and are thus ignored. Nonetheless Wade’s entry has an evocative power and can still cause a frisson. He had a strong subconscious fear about the British position in Afghanistan.
In Herat, Todd was outraged by the conduct of the Herati government in precisely the same ways that I as Envoy was 160 years later by the government of neighbouring Uzbekistan. Here Todd is writing to Macnaghten of Yar Mohammed’s use of torture to extract money from wealthy citizens:
The commonest method being by roasting or boiling or baking over a slow fire. The horrible ingenuities practised on these occasions are too disgusting […] The wretch, writhing in agony, gradually disgorged his wealth and learned before he died that his wives and daughters had been sold to the Turkomans, or divided among the sweepers and doorkeepers of his murderers. Of two recent victims one was half roasted and then cut into very small pieces, the other parboiled and afterwards baked.30
Compare my description of a victim of the Uzbek regime in 2002:
The victim had died of immersion in boiling liquid. It was immersion rather than splashing because there was a clear tidemark around the upper torso and upper arms, with 100 per cent scalding underneath. Before he was boiled to death, his fingernails had been ripped out and he had been severely beaten around the face. Reading the dispassionate language of the pathology report, I was struck with a cold horror.31
Todd was an active Christian32 and his conscience could not allow him to carry out his instruction to support Yar Mahommed. He was also aware that the vizier and Kamran were progressing discussions with Persia over an anti-British alliance, and encouraging Douranis to rise in Kandahar. On instructions from Auckland, Todd cut the massive payments being handed over to the vizier, and in consequence was expelled from Herat on 9 February 1841. He was blamed by Macnaghten and Auckland for the breakdown in relations, and suffered the devastating blow of being ignominiously dismissed from the Political Department.
Burnes was open in his warm support for Todd – something that increased Auckland’s resentment of Burnes. Perhaps Alex was pricked by his failure to follow his conscience over Dost Mohammed’s deposition.
In Herat Todd had opened correspondence with the Khan of Khiva, who had sent a representative to meet him. Under direct military threat from Russia, a British alliance held some attractions for the Khan. He had also heard that the British were lavishing much money on the rulers of Herat. Lieutenant Abbott was despatched by Todd to Khiva, where he was informed smilingly by the Khan that the last two supposed Englishmen had been executed as Russian spies.33 This spread of British activity all seemed to Yar Mohammed in Herat to encircle him. He was in correspondence with the Emir of Bokhara, warning him of British ambitions; this was a factor in Nasrullah’s treatment of Stoddart.
At Kelat-i-Ghilzai the British were building a fort to command this key point between Kandahar and Ghazni. The surrounding tribes were outraged and continually harassed the occupiers. The political officer in charge, Lieutenant Lynch, was deemed to have unnecessarily exacerbated the situation when he directed a force to reduce a local fort, which became a bloody affair. Lynch’s action in marrying the daughter of a local chief increased hostility. Burnes investigated and concluded Lynch had behaved unwisely but not badly, in difficult circumstances. Burnes’ letter to him was kindly:
‘I am […] altogether opposed to any fighting in this country, and I consider that we shall never settle Afghanistan at the point of a bayonet […] As regards the Ghilzyes, immense allowance ought to be made for them; they were till within three generations the Kings of Afghanistan’: of Lynch’s attack on the fort, Burnes rebuked mildly, ‘[H]ad I been by, I would have said ‘Build Khelat-i-Ghilzye, and pardon all kinds of insolence, for those who win may laugh.’34 Lynch was dismissed by Auckland anyway.
Burnes and Auckland were unaware that Lynch had deliberately provoked the violence. On 27 December 1840 Lynch had written to Macnaghten:
I hope you will now approve of my adopting a new system, for the conciliatory one will not work in the Tokey land for the future. We can easily get themselves to commit themselves, and in lieu of their present pay give them a few more rounds of canister from Anderson’s guns.35
Eldred Pottinger, now political officer at Charikar, found the whole population of Kohistan hostile; unsurprising following Burnes’ and Sale’s depredations the previous autumn. In May 1841 he reported alarmedly to Macnaghten, suggesting that his single Gurkha regiment and one troop of artillery was an inadequate garrison. Macnaghten dismissed his report as due to inexperience. Eldred also identified the centralising efforts of the new wazir, Usman Khan, as part of the problem. Usman had sacked the Governor and given the position to his own twelve-year-old son.36
The notional regime in Kabul was the Company’s longstanding ‘subsidiary alliance’ system, where a client ruler paid the Company a subsidy to cover the costs of the Company troops in his dominions ‘protecting’ him from internal and external enemies, and from any thoughts of his own. But Burnes stated the most essential point – bereft of the revenues of Peshawar, Kashmir and Herat, Shuja’s administration never raised more than £220,000 annually – about 6 per cent of the costs of occupation.
The Afghan monarchy placated its powerful nobles in a number of ways, the most important the grant of land revenues in return for the feudal obligation to provide armed horsemen for military service. In fact the quality of mounts, equipment and personnel given to the crown had steadily declined and the annual muster had become farcical, while the rents the nobles received remained valuable. Under the British occupation Captain R S Trevor was put in command of the feudal horse, totalling some 7,000 men, and explained it this way:
We must not look on the Irregular Cavalry merely as a military body, in that light 3 regiments may annihilate it tomorrow, but as an instrument which enables H.M.’s principal subjects to appropriate the greater part of his revenues without making any return […] its destruction would certainly be considered an invasion of private property.37
The British administrators wished to replace the feudal levies with two bodies of regular cavalry, the janbaz and the hazirbaz, and gradually abolish the payments to the nobility for it. This struck directly at both the financial and political interests of the tribal chiefs. A king with his own independent military could much more effectively impose his views on his nobles.
Even where traditional forms of government were retained, the imbalance brought by British aid to the royal authority caused problems. Revenue had always been raised by quartering troops on a district to extract it. The system had been tempered by the ability of tribes to resist if demands became too onerous. With British troops to squash any rebellions, the system was out of balance, as Burnes saw: ‘Such a system must clearly alienate all the people of this country from Shah Shoojah and from us, and the force we give him ensures what, if left to himself, he could not otherwise command.’38
But the real problem was simply lack of revenue. Only about 8 per cent of the land area was cultivable, and raising taxes from nomadic pastoralists was difficult.39 Without Peshawar, Kashmir and Herat – or the regular plunder of Indian wealth on which the system of Ahmed Shah Dourani had depended40 – it could not be a viable economy. On 1 April 1841 Alexander wrote a clearsighted analysis to his father in Montrose:
We had no sooner got Dost Mahomed Khan into our power than Herat breaks with us, and the Punjab becomes a scene of strife. Out of both contingencies we might extract good […] we may restore the lost wings of Afghanistan, Herat and Peshawur, to Shah Shoojah, and thus enable him to support himself, free us from the expense of Afghanistan, and what would be better, withdraw our regular army within the Indus, leaving Caubul as an outpost.41