by Craig Murray
On 3 October 1841 at Quetta, a peace treaty was signed with Nassir Khan. The British finally recognised him as Khan of Kelat and agreed to restore almost all his territories. However he was to be nominally tributary to Shah Shuja, and to host a subsidiary force, while the British were to control his foreign relations and establish a Resident at Kelat. To cement the deal the British handed over their former puppet Nawaz Khan, to be gruesomely murdered.
Alex and William were joined on 7 October by Captain George Broadfoot, William’s elder brother, now in charge of Broadfoot’s sappers. They sat up debating and drinking, until ‘near daylight’.12 George had been in the city smithies that day, overseeing the manufacture of tools; he was perturbed to find all furnaces engaged in arms manufacture, but Alex assured him this was a normal preparation for the annual Lohani migration. They argued policy: George thought more stringent military action was needed, while Alex thought resistance could be discouraged with a display of confidence. George believed Burnes thought him a ‘military pedant’.
Burnes loudly denounced the retrenchments which had caused the Ghilzai revolt, and said he had not been consulted, but believed the rising ‘a tempest in a teapot’. George Broadfoot thought it much more dangerous, and believed Burnes was ‘much shaken as to his own convictions’. Above all, ‘Burnes was very anxious for the Envoy’s departure, and thought he would easily quell the disturbances which had risen, and reign in his stead.’ Broadfoot ‘thought both Burnes and Macnaghten grievously wrong […] though Burnes would have managed the bad system better than Macnaghten’.
While they argued, another Scottish officer, Captain Gray, also got no sleep. He was dashing from cover to cover along a goat path high above the Khoord Kabul pass, as jezzail fire splashed around him. Gray with a small sepoy escort was heading back to India, convoyed by 400 Afghans under one of Burnes’ contacts, Azim Khan. Surrounded by the Ghilzais, the party was pinned down. A Ghilzai messenger offered Azim Rs3,000 for Gray, dead or alive. Azim had rather waited till nightfall and then broken clear, up into the hills where Gray, dressed as an Afghan, was now scrambling through the Ghilzai pickets in the dark. Gray (who escaped) was carrying papers from Burnes to India, and in the morning he sent back to Burnes a scribbled note, warning that the Ghilzais were out and the passes blocked, and that ‘all Afghanistan were determined to […] murder or drive out any Feringhee […] that the whole country, and Cabul itself, was ready to break out […]’
Alex, Charlie, George and William had been joined by Hamlet Wade for breakfast. Burnes read out the message and immediately sent it on to Macnaghten, who took no action.13
The British command structure in Afghanistan had become dysfunctional. George Broadfoot had been ordered to take 100 sappers and join a military force under Colonel Monteith to punish the Ghilzai tribes around Tezin, where Gray had just been attacked. The sappers were needed to destroy the Tezin forts. Monteith was then to continue to Jalalabad and quit Afghanistan through the Khyber pass. At Jalalabad he would be joined by Sale and Macnaghten, the force being split to ease supply. Broadfoot requested some basic information on the forts and whether resistance was expected.
Broadfoot visited Monteith, who ‘complained bitterly’ about his superiors, saying that expedition commanders were kept routinely ‘in the dark’ and his orders merely told him to proceed to Jalalabad. Broadfoot then called on General Elphinstone himself, who was so ill that getting out of bed required half an hour to recover. Elphinstone said he had no idea about Monteith’s expedition, and wrote to Macnaghten requesting intelligence on the enemy’s strength, sending Broadfoot with the note. Macnaghten was annoyed, and sent Broadfoot back with a curt reply that Elphinstone ‘expected him to turn prophet’. The courtly Elphinstone was ‘much pained’ by the tone. He made Broadfoot outline the problem again, as he had forgotten everything, then sent him back to Macnaghten.
This time Macnaghten was ‘peevish’. He said intelligence was needed from Usman Khan, and Broadfoot must wait. Eventually a messenger from the wazir stated that the forts and rebels were weak and they were about to abandon Tezin. Macnaghten said that Monteith was ordered to Butkhak ‘as a demonstration’ which would ‘terrify the rebels’, who would surrender, then Monteith would go on to Jalalabad.
Broadfoot asked what would happen if they did not surrender. Macnaghten said that then Monteith would remain at Butkhak until reinforced by the large punitive expedition which had been sent out to Zurmut. And if Monteith were attacked, asked Broadfoot. Macnaghten now
became angry, said these were his orders, and the enemy were contemptible, the Eastern Ghilzis most cowardly of Afghans (a foolish notion he and Burnes had); that as for me and my sappers, twenty men with pickaxes were enough; it was a peaceable march to Jalalabad, and all that we were wanted for was to pick stones from under the gun wheels.
Macnaghten said Broadfoot must return to Elphinstone for orders. Broadfoot did so yet again. While there, Elphinstone received a note from Macnaghten ‘ordering Monteith’s immediate march’ but ‘declining all responsibility’. Broadfoot noted, ‘The General was lost and perplexed, though he entirely agreed in the objections as to the move, yet he did not feel himself at liberty to prevent it.’
Elphinstone told Broadfoot he must decide what men and equipment he needed, but insisted on a written memorandum confirming these were Broadfoot’s responsibility. Then suddenly Elphinstone rallied and sent Broad-foot to tell Macnaghten the Monteith expedition was a mistake. Macnaghten now accused Broadfoot of cowardice: ‘He lost his temper […] and said if I thought Col. Monteith’s movement likely to bring on an attack, I need not go, there were others.’
Broadfoot made a low bow and left. He returned once-more to bed-ridden Elphinstone, who seemed glad to have company:
He […] told me once more how he had been tormented by Macnaghten […] reduced, to use his own words, from the General to the Lord Lieutenant’s head constable. He asked me to see him before I moved, but he said, ‘If anything occur […] for God’s sake clear the passes quickly, that I may get away. For […] I am unfit for it, done up body and mind, and I have told Lord Auckland so.’ This he repeated two or three times, adding that he doubted very much if he ever would see home, even if he did get away.
So de facto control of the army lay firmly with the unqualified civilian Macnaghten. Elphinstone plainly should have been relieved of command by his officers. By early October 1841 the British command structure in Kabul was absolutely dysfunctional.14
On the 9th, Monteith marched to Butkhak and encamped with the 35th NI, a squadron of the 5th Cavalry, two guns and Broadfoot’s sappers. The Ghilzais launched a determined night attack, which was beaten off by disciplined fire, but the British were now surrounded by a much larger force. Monteith, an excellent soldier, had been sent out with a force woefully inadequate, and the lack of effective action was crucial in giving momentum to the gathering of Ghilzai tribes.15
Bob Sale, with the Queen’s 13th Light Infantry, came to reinforce Monteith on the 11th, and the next day the force battled its way into the Khoord Kabul. The Ghilzais fired from the heights and retired when pursued; Sale was injured as usual and Dennie took command. The pass was forced with only six killed and thirty-five wounded. Monteith remained in the pass while Sale and the 13th returned to Butkhak. Captain Macgregor joined Monteith as political officer and attempted to negotiate with the Ghilzais.
There followed a week of desultory fighting. On 20 October the litter-bound Sale again advanced into the Khoord Kabul to rejoin Monteith with the 13th Foot plus the 37th NI, a troop of the 2nd Cavalry, the rest of Broad-foot’s sappers, the Shah’s mountain train of artillery and 200 Jezalchais under Jan Fishan Khan. This amounted to 2,000 men, and there were over 3,000 baggage cattle.
The Ghilzais now agreed a settlement with Macgregor, who had ridden alone into the dark mountains to meet them. The deal was the return of their subsidies for the reopening of the passes. Macnaghten had intended Sale’s force to attack rather than treat.
But the Ghilzais delivered provisions to Sale as agreed, and on 26 October he moved forward towards Jalalabad with the bulk of the force. He left the 37th NI under Major Griffiths with three mountain guns and a detachment of sappers to hold Tezin and keep the pass clear for Elphinstone and Macnaghten, who were expected shortly with a further small force, to join the return to India.
At Jagdalak the main body of the force pressed on through the intimidating pass without waiting for the rearguard, which suffered heavy losses of men and baggage. Once through, they passed country controlled by the two British-officered Shah’s regiments and irregular horse stationed at Gandamak. These Afghan levies, under Captain Burn, held out stubbornly after Sale passed, eventually making a fighting evacuation to Jalalabad. Again, Afghan troops in British service performed admirably. Likewise Sale’s communications through the Khyber to India were kept intact by Mackeson with his corps of Yusufzais at Ali Musjid.
Meanwhile Burnes tried to convince Macnaghten that rebellion was brewing in Kabul itself. On 13 October Captain Henry Drummond came to see Burnes with vital intelligence from a Ghilzai friend. A number of senior chiefs in the capital were actively conspiring to enter rebellion in collaboration with the Ghilzais. They had sworn alliance, and fixed their seals to the Koran as a holy bond. Drummond had seen a consignment of powder and shot on its way to fuel the rebellion. His information coincided with intelligence reaching Mohan Lal from other sources. Lal believed he could obtain the Koran containing the seals. Burnes made a full report to Macnaghten – who advised him to do nothing.16
What was Macnaghten thinking? Possibly he did not wish to bring matters to a head. Such evidence would necessitate the chiefs’ execution, which could itself spark an uprising. The British intelligence effort had become submerged in a welter of untrustworthy informants and forged documents. It was not even known whether widespread evidence that Shuja himself was inciting anti-British resistance was genuine or forged.
Macnaghten, continuing to hope that the rising discontent was a minor squall, had retreated into a psychological bubble that refused to admit bad news. Perhaps he was simply desperate to get out, and away to Sans Pareil. Macnaghten’s secretary, Colin Mackenzie, was an unmitigated admirer, yet ‘when Mackenzie reported to him that Akbar Khan had arrived at Bamian, he refused to believe it, though the merchant who brought the news had seen him with his own eyes’. Lady Sale wrote that Macnaghten ‘is trying to deceive himself into an assurance that the country is in a quiescent state’.17
Burnes wrote in his diary on 16 October about the stress of still not knowing if he was to take over:
Will they venture, after all that has been promised, and all that I have done, to pass over me? I doubt it much […] I have been asking myself if I am altogether so well fitted for the supreme control here as I am disposed to believe. I sometimes think not, but I have never found myself fail in power when unshackled. On one point I am, however, fully convinced; I am not fit for the second place. In it my irritation would mar all business, and in supersession there is evidently no recourse but England. I wish this doubt were resolved, for anxiety is painful.18
On 21 October Macnaghten, believing Sale was about to overcome the Ghilzais, had written a private letter revealing his fondness of Alexander Burnes:
I do not think I can get away from this before the 1st prox. The storm will speedily subside; but there will be a heaving of the billows for some time, and I should like to see everything right and tight before I quit the helm. Burnes is naturally in an agony of suspense about the succession to me. I think and hope he will get it. I know of no-one so fit for the office […]19
Alex did not share his colleagues’ contempt for the Afghans and their asymmetrical warfare. On 23 October he wrote, ‘I have often wondered at the hatred of the officers towards the Affghans […] they are blamed because they fight at night, when in fact the poor wretches are at any other time unable to cope with disciplined armies; it was the same as the Scotch highlanders pursued a century since.’20
The next morning, George Lawrence joined Burnes for breakfast, and ‘found him in high spirits at the prospect of […] exercising at last the supreme authority in the country’.21 On 29 October Macnaghten wrote to Bombay that he would be quitting Kabul on 2 November on the way to take up his post.
On 31 October 1831 it was the twentieth anniversary of Alexander’s arrival in India as a sixteen- year-old cadet. He was superstitiously convinced that this auspicious day would decide his future. That morning he wrote in his diary:
Ay! What will this day bring forth? […] It will make or mar me, I suppose. Before the sun sets, I shall know whether I go to Europe, or succeed Macnaghten.22
But the sun set with no news. The next day Burnes reflected on all the criticism he had endured over Afghanistan. His last diary entry read, ‘I grow very tired of praise, and I suppose I shall get tired of censure in time.’23
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Death in Kabul
Burnes was receiving a steady stream of intelligence about increased activity by resistance groups, and his intelligence operation had penetrated most of these. In a letter to the Rev. Piggott of St Columba’s Church in Bombay, he noted, ‘although the Afghan is less fierce in his bigotry than other Asiatics, I yet perceive from all their intercepted correspondence when caballing against us that their war cry is “jihad” or religion […]’1 It says a great deal about Burnes that in this same letter he agrees to Piggott’s request to send him some specimens from the Hindu Kush for the Natural History Society.
The Akbarnama of Kashmiri tells what happened next:
When night fell, all the Khans of Kabul came together
At the House of Abdullah Khan Achakzai to sit and confer
Now the remedy is in our hands, said they
The bow is ready and the arrow is in our hands […]
Dying by the sword on the battlefield
Is better than living in the prisons of Firang
Like the very devil, all evil is the work of Burnes
Concealed, he goes about whispering to every soul
So this very night Mohammad Shah Khan Ghilzai must go forth
With his tribesmen, brave and fierce
They will ignite the fire of battle
And throw brimstone upon the flames
They will sit hidden between the mountain valleys
And seize all the traders and travellers upon the roads
So the Shah may send forth his army to make war
Then, when the army leaves, we will deal with Burnes […]2
Ten years earlier Arthur Connolly had crossed the lands of the ringleader, Abdullah Khan Achakzai, a notorious character:
Abdoolah Khan was a man-eater, who was not guided by a single just principle; who […] evidently being altogether without religion, ought to be treated worse than a kaufir […] Some of his modes of torture were described, which were quite painful to think about. The lightest of his ‘tender mercies’ were […] laying a man on his back and then placing weights upon his belly until money or life was squeezed out of him […]
Abdoolah Khan […] [had] as bad a name as could well be given to a man; his countrymen said that he must have been suckled by a devil.3
Conolly was told many stories of Abdullah’s depradations against his own people, ten years before his actions against the British.4 Still earlier, Mountstuart Elphinstone in 1816 wrote, ‘The tribes most addicted to rapine in the West are the Atuchkye branch.’5
Abdullah had a particular grudge against Burnes. Firstly, Burnes had supported Kabul tradesmen recovering debts from Abdullah. Then one of his favourite slave-girls had eloped with a British officer. Abdullah appealed to Burnes, who asked the officer to return the girl, which he refused. When Abdullah returned to Burnes’ house to follow up, Burnes threw him out angrily.
There are factors which should not be ignored. All sources agree the girl was an escaping slave. Abdullah was a well-attested sadist. When Abdullah first approached Burnes,
he was courteously received, and Burnes appears to have tried to help him. It was only after speaking to the officer concerned that Burnes’ attitude to Abdullah changed. What had he learnt?
Mohan Lal details three other instances of Afghan noblemen appealing to Burnes for assistance in recovering women from British officers and being rebuffed. Lal’s view appears justified that in some cases Burnes was prejudiced in favour of the British officers: ‘it was the partiality of Sir Alexander Burnes to his friends which made him obnoxious to dislike, and wounded the feelings of the chiefs, who formerly looked upon him as their old friend’.6 There is no evidence that British sexual use of Afghan women fuelled popular discontent to the point of uprising. There is evidence it turned certain key Afghan nobles. Burnes was a focus of this discontent because he was seen as condoning and shielding the perpetrators.
George Gleig, as a regimental chaplain, was in a good position to know:
The Afghans are as open to jealousy as Orientals in general, and treating their wives often rudely, the latter could not but be pleased with the attention that the Feringhees showed them […] our young countrymen did not always bear in mind that the domestic habits of any people ought to be sacred in the eyes of strangers. And hence arose, by degrees, distrust, alienation, and hostility, for which it were unfair to deny that there might be some cause.7
But there always is a lot of sex in military occupation, and it does not automatically cause an effective uprising. Bengal Surgeon-General Atkinson says there was much procured complicity from Afghan husbands, and doubtless this was sometimes true as well.8