[1878 A.D. death-rate forty per cent., or five millions. In the autumn of 1878 the affairs of Afghanistan again forced themselves into notice.b RELATIONS WITH THE AFGHANS In following the history of the course of affairs in Afghanistan during the nineteenth century, it should be remembered that the Saddozais and Barakzais are two branches of the Durani tribe, which was raised to dominant power by its chief, Ahmed Khan, the founder of an Afghan kingdom under the Saddozai dynasty towards the end of the eighteenth century. His descendants had ruled, amid many vicissitudes, at Kabul, until in 1818 the assassination by the reigning amir of his powerful minister, Fatteh Khan Barakzai, led to a revolt headed by the Barakzai family, which ended in the expulsion of the Saddozai Shah Shuja, and the establishment at Kabul of Dost Muhammed, Fatteh Khan's son; while Shah Shuja took refuge in the Punjab. By this time the political situation of Afghanistan had become materially affected by the consolidation of the formidable military dominion on its eastern frontier in the Punjab, under Ranjit Singh and his Sikh army. Ranjit Singh took advantage of the distracted condition of Afghanistan to seize Kashmir, and in 1823 he defeated the Afghans in a battle which gave him the suzerainty of the Peshawar province on the right bank of the Indus, though an Afghan chief was left to administer it. Ten years later Shah Shuja, the exiled Saddozai amir, made a futile attempt to recover his kingdom. He was defeated by Dost Muhammed, when Ranjit Singh turned the confusion to his own account by seizing Peshawar and driving the Afghans back into their mountains. At this point begins the continual interference of England and Russia in the affairs of Afghanistan, which has ever since exercised a dominant influence upon all subsequent events and transactions. It has not only transformed the situation of the ruling amirs, but has also profoundly affected the Asiatic policy of the two European governments. Shah Shuja's enterprise in 1833 had been supported by the co-operation of Ranjit Singh, and encouraged by the British viceroy, Lord W. Bentinck. Although the expedition failed, the result was to excite jealousy of the British designs; and the Russian envoy at Tehran instigated the Shah of Persia to attack Herat, the important frontier fortress of northwestern Afghanistan, which was then in the possession of an independent chief. In 1837, in spite of remonstrances from the British representative at Tehran, a Persian army besieged the city, but the appearance of British troops on the southern coast of Persia compelled the Persians to withdraw from Herat in 1838. The rivalry between England and Russia was now openly declared, so that each movement from one side was followed by a counter move on the Afghan chess-board from the other side. The British ministry had been seriously alarmed at the machinations of Russia and the attitude of Dost Muhammed at Kabul; and it was determined that the most effective means of securing their own interests within the country would be by assisting Shah Shuja to recover his sovereignty. A tripartite treaty was made between Ranjit Singh, the British governor-general of India, and Shah Shuja; and a British army marched up the Bolan pass to Kandahar, occupied that city, pushed on northwards to Ghazni, which was taken by assault, and entered Kabul in 1839. As Dost Muhammed had fled across the northern mountains, Shah Shuja was proclaimed king in his stead. But this ill-planned and hazardous enterprise was fraught with the elements [1878 A.D.] of inevitable failure. A ruler imposed upon a free people by foreign arms is always unpopular; he is unable to stand alone; and his foreign auxiliaries soon find themselves obliged to choose between remaining to uphold his power, or retiring with the probability that it will fall after their departure. The leading chiefs of Afghanistan perceived that the maintenance of Shah Shuja's rule by British troops would soon be fatal to their own power and position in the country, and probably to their national independence. The attempt to raise taxes showed that it might raise the people; so that for both men and money the shah's government was still obliged to rely principally upon British aid. The result was that after two years' occupation of the country, in the vain hope of establishing a national government under Shah Shuja, the British found their own situation untenable; for the fierce and warlike tribes broke out into incessant revolt, until a serious insurrection at Kabul in the winter of 1841-42 compelled the British army to make an ignominious and disastrous retreat. The whole force was lost on the road between Kabul and Jalalabad; but Jalalabad was successfully defended by its British garrison, and General Nott held out at Kandahar until General Pollock's temporary reoccupation of Kabul in 1842 restored in some degree the military reputation of Great Britain. The British troops then completely evacuated the country. Dost Muhammed, who had been a state prisoner in India, was replaced on the Kabul throne; and the policy of intervention in Afghan affairs was suspended for nearly forty years. It has been said that the declared object of this policy had been to maintain the independence and integrity of Afghanistan, to secure the friendly alliance of its ruler, and thus to interpose a great barrier of mountainous country between the expanding power of Russia in Central Asia and the British dominion in India. After 1849, when the annexation of the Punjab had carried the Indian northwestern frontier up to the skirts of the Afghan highlands, the corresponding advance of the Russians southeastward along the Oxus river became of closer interest to the British, particularly when, in 1856, the Persians again attempted to take possession of Herat. Dost Muhammed now became the British ally, but on his death in 1863 the kingdom fell back into civil war, until his son Sher Ali had won his way to undisputed rulership in 1868. In the same year Bokhara became a dependency of Russia. To the British government an attitude of non-intervention in Afghan affairs appeared in this situation to be no longer possible. The meeting between the amir Sher Ali and the viceroy of India at Ambala in 1869 had drawn nearer the relations between the two governments; the amir consolidated and began to centralize his power; and the establishment of a strong, friendly, and united Afghanistan became again the keynote of British policy beyond the northwestern frontier of India. When, therefore, the conquest of Khiva in 1873 by the Russians, and their gradual approach towards the amir's northern border, had seriously alarmed Sher Ali, he applied for support to the British; and his disappointment at his failure so far estranged him from the British connection that he began to entertain amicable overtures from the Russian authorities at Tashkend. In 1869 the Russian government had assured Lord Clarendon that they regarded Afghanistan as completely outside the sphere of their influence; and in 1872 the boundary line of Afghanistan on the northwest had been settled between England and Russia so far eastward as Lake Victoria. Nevertheless the correspondence between Kabul and Tashkend continued, and as the Russians were now extending their dominion over all the region beyond Afghanistan on the northwest, the British government determined, in 1876, [1878-1880 A.D.] once more to undertake active measures for securing their political ascendancy in that country. But the amir, whose feelings of resentment had by no means abated, was now leaning toward Russia; and upon his refusal to admit a British agent into Afghanistan the negotiations finally broke down. THE AFGHAN WAR OF 1878-1880 In the course of the following year (1878) the Russian government, to counteract the interference of England with their advance upon Constantinople, sent an envoy to Kabul empowered to make a treaty with the amir. It was immediately notified to him from India that a British mission would be deputed to his capital, but he demurred to receiving it; and when the British envoy was turned back on the Afghan frontier hostilities were proclaimed by the viceroy in November, 1878, and the second Afghan War began. Sir Donald Stewart's force, marching up through Baluchistan by the Bolan pass, entered Kandahar with little or no resistance; while another army passed through the Khyber pass, and took up positions at Jalalabad and other places on the direct road to Kabul. Another force under Sir Frederick Roberts marched up to the high passes leading out of Kuram into the interior of Afghanistan, defeated the amir's troops at the Paiwar Kotal, and seized the Shutargardan pass which commands a direct route to Kabul through the Logar valley. The amir Sher Ali fled from his capital into the northern province, where he died at Mazar-i-Sherif in February, 1879. In the course of the next six months there was much desultory skirmishing between the tribes and the British troops, who defeated various attempts to dislodge them from the positions that had been taken up; but the sphere of British military operations was not materially extended. It was seen that the farther they advanced the more difficult would become their eventual retirement; and the problem was to find a successor to Sher Ali who could and would make terms with the British government. In the meantime Yakub Khan, one of Sher Ali's sons, had announced to Major Cavagnari, the political agent at the headquarters of the British army, that he had succeeded his father at Kabul. The negotiations that followed ended in the conclusion of a treaty in May, 1879, by which Yakub Khan was recognized as amir; certain outlying tracts of Afghanistan were transferred to the British government; the amir placed in their hands the entire control of his foreign relations, receiving in return a guarantee against foreign aggression; and the establishment of a British envoy at Kabul was at last conceded. By this convention the complete success of the British political and military operations seemed to have been attained; for whereas Sher Ali had made a treaty of alliance with, and had received an embassy from Russia, his son had now made an exclusive treaty with the British government, and had agreed that a British envoy should reside permanently at his court. Yet it was just this final concession, the chief and original object of British policy, that proved speedily fatal to the whole settlement. For in September the envoy, Sir Louis Cavagnari, with his staff and escort, was massacred at Kabul, and the entire fabric of a friendly alliance went to pieces. A fresh expedition was instantly despatched across the Shutargardan pass under Sir Frederick Roberts, who defeated the Afghans at Charasia near Kabul, and entered the city in October. Yakub Khan, who had surrendered, was sent to India; and the British army remained in military occupation of the district round Kabul until in December (1879) its communications with India were interrupted, and its position at the capital placed in serious jeopardy, by a |