by Craig Murray
There can be no mitigation. Macnaghten’s behaviour had for weeks been delusional; he had refused to take on board evidence from Burnes, Drummond, Pottinger, Lal, Mackenzie, Rawlinson and many others that national resistance had broken out. Now at the crisis, Macnaghten simply wished it away, with fatal consequences. His insistence on permission from Shuja before doing anything was ludicrous. Elphinstone was broken. Brigadier Shelton on Siyah Sang heard firing at 7am but did nothing for hours.
The total British forces at Kabul that morning were four regiments of infantry, one regiment of cavalry and three rissalahs of irregular cavalry, three companies of sappers, two batteries of field artillery and one of horse artillery plus various British officered bodies of the Shah’s contingent. The initial attack against Burnes consisted of under 100 men.
Colin Mackenzie was convinced that Shuja had been secretly conspiring with the rebels. The leaders of the attack, Aminulla Khan Logari and Abdullah Khan Achakzai, were Saduzai loyalists whose allegiance to Shuja continued after Burnes’ death. By sending troops to try to rescue Burnes, Shuja apparently did more than anybody else to help. But this was initiated by Usman Khan, and Shuja called off their efforts just when they appeared on the point of success.
Then there is Mohan Lal’s witness of Fatth appearing to be fighting with the assailants. Mackeson was to take a deposition from Munshi Mohammed Bakhsh, an eye-witness from Shuja’s administration who testified that Shuja had incited the attack and sent Fatth Shah to join in. Bakhsh stated that Shuja had realised that Burnes would now be in charge, and would not continue Macnaghten’s policies. This detail lends credibility to Bakhsh’s account. Bakhsh also said that Shuja expected to win either way, as if the attack failed it would rid him of some troublesome nobles who led it.36 That Shuja was playing all sides seems probable. But soldiers with Fatth Shah testified that the rescue attempt had been genuine.
Macnaghten attempted justification in an official despatch found uncompleted on his desk after his own death. This said blandly, ‘Before Brigadier Shelton could reach the Bala Hissar, the town had attained such a state of ferment that it was deemed impracticable to send aid to Sir Alexander Burnes’ residence […]’37 But this ignores the failure to send aid from the cantonment, the delay in sending orders to Shelton and the wait for the Shah’s permission.
Broadfoot is convincing as to why Burnes was attacked, listing six reasons. He was an easy target unprotected in the city; the symbolic blow would encourage general rebellion; he was hated as the man ‘universally believed to have guided the Kaffirs into the country’; his abilities made him an asset to the enemy; he had advised the king against certain parties in petitions; he was known as a religious sceptic.38 Broadfoot – who is not uncensorious, and knew Burnes well – makes no hint at sexual adventures as a motive. He misses one important point – Burnes was detested by the Kohistanis for his destructive campaign in their country.
Mohan Lal stated that he witnessed the Burnes brothers being hacked to pieces by ‘Ghazis’ in the garden. What became of them is unknown. Burnes’ Qizilbash friend, Sherif Khan, who was deputy to Captain Johnson in the treasury, wrote to James Burnes to say he had collected the bodies two nights after the assassination and given them decent burial.39 But if this is true, it is strange that the remains were not located by the returning British Army, as others were.
It was Burnes’ consistent view that the best thing the British could do for Afghanistan, and for the security of India, was to leave. The most plausible explanation of Burnes’ behaviour is that he was for months pretending to agree with Macnaghten that all was quiet, in order to get rid of the man without causing opposition to his own succession. Once himself in sole political charge, he could work on an urgent policy of getting the army out; a policy to which, in view of the alarming costs, Auckland might well have been amenable.
To have panicked about an insurrection on the night of 1 November would have led to cancellation of Macnaghten’s departure the next day, and scuppered Burnes’ chance to end the occupation. Alexander Burnes decided to brave it out, and paid for his courage. It was a gamble worth taking, and his death led to a much greater tragedy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Aftermath
Mohan Lal was rescued from the mob by one of Dost Mohammed’s brothers, Mohammed Zaman. He was taken into the Qizilbash quarter and lived in the house of their leader, Shirin Khan. At some stage he was able to enter Burnes’ looted house and rescue a substantial quantity of papers, including Burnes’ private diaries.
Lal remained in Kabul, a vital asset to Macnaghten as the British position quickly deteriorated. With no effective action against a small uprising, there was a massive surge in the number of Afghan resistance fighters. Stupidly, the British had placed all their stores and provisions in buildings outside the cantonments, and these were all captured over the next few days. The British did not move into the Bala Hissar, and a number of sorties from the cantonment failed due to Shelton’s poor tactics, quickly bringing a total collapse in morale.
For the Afghans, Burnes was the most prominent of the British and his death had a positive effect on their morale. The leaders in Kabul sent an appeal to join them to the Afridis of the Khyber:
on the third Tuesday of the blessed month Ramzan in the morning time it occurred, that […] we carried by storm the house of Sickender Burnes – by the grace of the most holy and omnipotent God the brave warriors […] slew Sickender Burnes with various other Feringees of Consideration and nearly 500 Battalion men, putting them to the sword, and consigning them to perdition.1
Macnaghten entered negotiations for evacuation from Afghanistan – in effect capitulation – but concurrently sought ever more complex alliances with various chieftains, and by offering large bribes endeavoured to play the classic British game of divide and rule. Lal was the indispensable agent, in continuous communication with all parties and tolerated by the Afghan leadership groups, who were all still hedging their bets.
Soon Macnaghten was assassinated at a negotiation and the capitulating Kabul force wiped out in the passes of the Khoord Kabul as it attempted to reach Jalalabad. A number of senior officers had been given up as hostages. The story is beyond the scope of this biography, though I will say there were thousands more survivors than is generally acknowledged. Poor bewildered Elphinstone died of his illnesses a prisoner of Akbar Khan, who sent the body downriver to Jalalabad, where in May 1842 it was buried with full military honours. This from the Delhi Gazette seems a fitting encapsulation of the fate of the Afghan campaign:
In the procession for the interment of Gen. E. a distinguished officer of the dragoons fainted from the dreadful effluvia omitted from the chinks of the coffin, made of rude wood […] the pall bearers had a most unpleasant occupation.2
The campaign was riddled with military failings that cannot be laid at the door of one or two individuals. Rather the individuals were part of a rotten system. Properly regarded, the First Afghan War should be seen as an exposure of the fundamental failings in British military organisation and command structure that were to be revealed again in the Crimea.
This Afghan War was part of a century of policy when the British overthrew rulers and replaced them with puppet rival claimants, as the primary method of expansion of British dominance in India. The stationing of Company battalions at the host’s expense, the raising of British-officered ‘independent’ regiments of the puppet ruler, the control of revenues and policy, had all been repeated dozens of times. This was how British rule normally expanded. The dissembling to disguise annexation was normal too. Afghanistan only seems exceptional to us because we know where the boundaries of British India eventually settled.
For later Victorian historians, in the grip of the religious frenzy of their period, the unique immorality of the First Afghan War could be portrayed as showing the Divine Hand of Providence because it resulted in unique punishment. The concomitant was that, as Britain’s invasions of other places had not failed, they we
re subject to divine approval. That is how historians came to portray this episode as more immoral than the rest of the Empire. It fitted to add a Sodom and Gomorrah element – unique sexual rapacity had brought down divine justice.
British troops in Afghanistan indulged in sex and drinking, as all soldiers everywhere always have. This undoubtedly gave offence in a Muslim country. The primary resistance of the Afghans was nationalist. But it should also be noted that the British invasion coincided with a major shift of Islam in Afghanistan as the influence of Wahabbism first began to be felt there. Dost Mohammed himself had undergone religious transformation around 1830, and changed from a carouser to a religious ascetic.
This was part of a wider transformation of Muslim society, but the Emir helped it along. Burnes in 1832 had noted the Jewish and Armenian communities were leaving because Dost had forbidden their trade in alcohol, overwhelmingly sold to Muslims. The Pushtunwall heroes had been hard drinking and womanising men, as had men in the Timurid and Mongol culture. A narrow religious obscurantism was now settling on Central Asia, and these events happened on the cusp of this change.
Those who believe the British Empire was beneficent might consider this account by a junior officer:
Their wells, by which they irrigated the land, were blown up with gunpowder and rendered useless. These people lived, in great measure, on dried mulberries, as the land would not produce sufficient corn for their consumption. There were beautiful […] mulberry trees around the forts. Every morning and evening two companies from each regiment were sent out to cut them down.
We found out that by cutting rings through the bark into the heart of the tree, it was as effectively destroyed as if cut down; and it was […] lighter work […] we became quite adepts in the work of destruction, and a greater scene of devastation was perhaps never beheld.3
The deliberate starvation of the civilian population was an appalling crime. A rural economy dependent on tree crops could not survive the complete destruction of the trees, as there was nothing to live on until new trees grew. Some areas have never recovered from the deliberate devastation of the rural economy.
Nor was this the only atrocity. The attack on the tiny village of Ali Bagh on 18 June 1842 was not untypical. After British soldiers’ effects were found there, the inhabitants were subjected to mass rape. A British officer wrote:
The day before yesterday we burnt Ali Baghan to the ground. The event is one that was to be regretted, partly because it lay in the direct line of our communication, and partly because rapine to a horrible extent […] is said to have preceded the other sort of violence.4
The Delhi Gazette felt this was justifiable:
We can scarcely blame the troops for what has taken place, and very great allowance is to be made on discovering the property of their murdered comrades.
The Hurkaru took a better line:
To ravage and burn villages, and to violate the women […] are not precisely the best measures calculated to restore the honour of Great Britain. We talk about national disgrace, and begin ravaging villages and violating helpless women […]
Mohan Lal had suffered capture and torture, and had been instrumental in negotiating the release of British hostages, but was disgracefully treated by the British after the war. They refused to pay bills of exchange he had raised for Macnaghten to provision the beleaguered garrison and to bribe chiefs, to the huge amount of almost £12,000. Then once the armies returned from Afghanistan they said there was no longer any job for him: his employment by Burnes was deemed irregular, and the question of permanent employment was referred to London, putting it on hold for years and still pending when Mohan Lal decided to go to London himself.
On 25 June 1843 he visited his old colleague from the Kabul mission, Nourozji Fourdonji in Bombay, and afterwards stayed with James Burnes there, and was much feted by Bombay’s Freemasons. On 30 July he sailed on the Sesostris for Britain, via the Suez overland route. On 17 September he disembarked from the steamer Cleopatra in the Isle of Wight, where he was met by Claude Wade, and stayed with him there. A guest of many prominent people, including Lord Ashley, and then Charles Trevelyan in both Southampton and London, he was feted by the Court of Directors and given a dinner by Lord John Russell. He was presented to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace and then stayed as a guest of Mountstuart Elphinstone – it was as though the dramatis personae of Burnes’ life were having a curtain call.
Finally on 23 October Lal arrived at Montrose, presented Burnes’ papers to old James Burnes, and was embraced by Alex’s mother. Returning to Edinburgh he stayed with John McNeill, was lionised by the Corporation and painted by Sir William Allan. He visited Glasgow and Dublin, and then at Liverpool was entertained by Henry Pottinger and Lord Stanley, before returning to London and the hospitality of Lord Auckland and Palmerston. He eventually returned to India via Germany and France. The Court of Directors granted him an annual pension of £1,000, but he was never given serious employment again, and lived beyond his means, addicted to champagne and dancing girls.
Mohan Lal had been received by British high society, but he was a reminder of a disaster people wished to forget. It became evident how much he had needed Burnes as his protector. Lal never again found a patron who valued him without racial prejudice. He was smeared with British stereotypes of the untrustworthy Asiatic: Sir John Kaye declared his espionage work showed him ‘endowed with a genius for traitor-making’.5 Nehru himself commented:
In free India a man like Mohan Lal would have risen to the topmost rungs of the political ladder. Under early British rule, […] he could not rise higher than the position of a Mir Munshi or at most Deputy Collector […] There was apparently no place of activity suitable for him in India, and he must have lived largely in the past when he was the honoured guest of the Rulers of Asia and Europe.6
The papers Lal rescued were presumably among the collection James gave to John Kaye, and have vanished.
On 25 March 1842 the Bombay United Services Gazette published a selection of Burnes’ original despatches, showing the excisions which had been made. Two months later these were widely reprinted in the British newspapers. But with the destruction of the Kabul force and uncertain outcome of the war, there was not the immediate political storm that might have been expected. The Conservatives under Sir Robert Peel were now in government, and Peel was anxious to avoid making the Afghan situation more difficult. The Whigs in opposition could hardly object as they had perpetrated the falsification.
Those pressing for the release of Burnes’ original despatches were a group of radical liberals, including Joseph Hume, the small camp allied to John Stuart Mill (who had of course seen the originals) and the Westminster Review. They had strong support from a body of radical Conservatives.
On 23 June 1842 the Conservative MP for Inverness, Henry Baillie, put down a motion calling for full publication of Burnes’ correspondence. His seconder was Alex’s friend young Benjamin Disraeli. Baillie and Disraeli were opposed by their own government; Peel even arranged to have Baillie invited to dinner by the Duke of Buccleuch on the night of the motion, in the hope it would fall in the absence of its proposer. Baillie turned down the Duke and the plan failed. But neither Baillie nor Disraeli would accuse Hobhouse or Palmerston of misleading Parliament.
Hobhouse made a meticulous three-hour speech against the motion. He concluded by quoting Alexander Burnes’ letter of 8 June 1838 on implementing the restoration of Shah Shuja, repeating the exact trick that Burnes had complained of in the first place. Hobhouse declared:
There is no mistaking his words – two of our regiments as an honorary escort, a British agent, and an avowal to the Afghans that we had taken up [Shah Shuja’s] cause, would ensure his being fixed for ever on his throne – and this is the authority which Lord Auckland is charged with having disregarded.
Peel backed Hobhouse, arguing that full disclosure would only harm relations with Russia. The motion was defeated by seventy-five votes to nine. The same year the
radical MP Sir Frances Burdett, Hobhouse’s former friend, made another attempt but was rebutted by the Conservative President of the Board of Control, Lord Fitzgerald, who said the government repudiated any suggestion that the previous government had indulged in misrepresentation.
This may ring bells with modern readers too. Once in power, Obama immediately withdrew election promises to pursue those in the Bush administration who were responsible for torture and extraordinary rendition. In the UK the Chilcot Inquiry into the 2003 Iraq war – a very similar example to 1838 of the falsification of a government case for war – was simply pushed into the shadows until people had stopped caring. Governments almost always defend or excuse the crimes of their predecessors; this system secures their own future immunity.
Buist finally did a full publication in the Bombay Times of 30 July and 3 August 1842, which led to a much more widespread outcry in the British newspapers. On 1 March 1843 Thomas Roebuck, the radical MP for Bath, put forward a motion calling for a Select Committee inquiry. Peel argued explicitly that it is wrong for a government to investigate the wrongdoing of its predecessor:
It has never been the usage for any government […] to use all its power and influence […] to bring under investigation the acts of its predecessors. It has never been the custom of the House and it would not be just now to establish such a precedent.7
Roebuck spoke well of ‘palpable falsification’ and, assisted by Disraeli, gained a very impressive seventy-five votes against both government and opposition whips, but 187 votes defeated him. Peel and Palmerston ostentatiously walked together into the division lobby.