Part 2
By Farid Afghan
Military Imbalance and the Roots of Internal Division
A question comes up here: why did the Afghan nation, famous across the world for its courage and fighting spirit, become so weak in this war that the British managed to raise their flag over Kabul in just a few months? We need to understand that behind it lay the same two root causes we already touched on at the start: the absence of internal unity, and the imbalance in material and military strength.
Materially, Britain in the 19th century was the greatest industrial power on earth. It had, at the time, the most advanced Martini-Henry rifles, Gatling guns, and artillery so advanced it could level a mountain position from miles away. Afghan forces, by contrast, faced a severe shortage of weapons. They were still relying on old rifles, swords, and homemade gunpowder. On top of that, keeping a regular, professional army requires serious capital and a stable economy, and Afghanistan had neither at all. Endless war had wrecked farming and trade, the state treasury was empty, and there was no money to pay soldiers.
But greater and more fatal even than this material weakness was Afghanistan’s internal discord. After Amir Dost Muhammad Khan’s death in 1863, a long and bloody family war broke out among his sons and grandsons over the throne of Kabul. Brother cut brother’s throat, and the princes turned, one after another, sometimes to the British, sometimes to Russia, seeking help to weaken each other. This infighting destroyed trust between the Afghan tribes, and the order and discipline of the central government collapsed entirely.
When British forces attacked, Amir Sher Ali Khan understood that with a divided nation and an empty treasury, he could not stand against the world’s greatest military power. Under British pressure he left Kabul and retreated toward the northern regions, toward Mazar-i-Sharif, but Russia too openly refused to help him, and he died in this state of despair at the start of 1879.
The Treaty of Gandamak: The Bargain of Independence
After Amir Sher Ali Khan’s death, his son Muhammad Yaqub Khan came to power. Kabul was under British siege, the Afghan army had scattered, and there was no organized resistance left inside the country. Under these extremely dire conditions, Amir Yaqub Khan was forced into a treaty with the British. In May 1879, near Kabul, in a place called Gandamak, a treaty was signed between the Afghan amir and the British representative, Sir Louis Cavagnari, known in history as the Treaty of Gandamak.
This treaty was the darkest page in Afghanistan’s history. Its harshest and most dangerous clause was that Afghanistan would hand over all of its foreign policy, its relations with other countries, and its decisions on war and peace, permanently, to the government of British India. In exchange, Britain promised to protect Afghanistan specifically from foreign attacks by Russia, and to pay the amir an annual subsidy of six hundred thousand Indian silver rupees.
Under this treaty, Afghanistan remained, on paper, an independent country, but in reality it had lost the one thing that marks any country as truly independent: the power to set its own foreign policy. This economic and military weakness brought the Afghan monarchy to a point where it felt like a stranger in its own country.
The Reaction to Gandamak and the Bloody Uprising in Kabul
By signing the Treaty of Gandamak, Amir Muhammad Yaqub Khan had, on the surface, bought his throne a temporary safety. But he had failed to understand the honor of the Afghan people and their freedom-loving spirit. For Afghans, it was unbearable that their king should live off British charity while Kabul’s affairs were decided in London.
Under the treaty, in July 1879, Sir Louis Cavagnari arrived in Kabul as the British Resident, and took up residence in the historic Bala Hissar fortress. The British believed they had brought the whole of Afghanistan under their control without another major war. But this was the calm before the storm.
Only a few months later, in September 1879, some soldiers of the Afghan army who had come to Kabul from Herat, and who hadn’t been paid in months and were in serious economic distress, arrived in the city. These soldiers made their way to Amir Muhammad Yaqub Khan’s royal residence inside Bala Hissar and demanded their overdue, lawful wages.
After Gandamak, Amir Yaqub Khan was under so much British pressure that he could no longer release any significant sum from the national treasury without the British envoy’s approval. When Amir Yaqub gave the excuse of having no money and began stalling and delaying, the soldiers quickly understood that the real cause of their economic misery and their king’s helplessness was that British envoy, sitting there like a pharaoh in another part of the fortress.
The soldiers’ anger suddenly turned from their own king toward the British. They took to demonstration and gathered in front of the British legation. In this extremely sensitive and emotional moment, the British envoy Sir Louis Cavagnari showed arrogance instead of diplomatic judgment, and ordered his guards to open fire on the unarmed Afghans, killing a number of them on the spot.
That gunfire poured oil on the fire, and the buried anger of the Afghans suddenly erupted like lava. The Afghan army and the honor-bound people of Kabul saw this as an assault on their national and Islamic honor, and stormed Bala Hissar. The enraged crowd scaled the walls and broke in, and in one day of bloody fighting killed the entire British mission, including the envoy Sir Louis Cavagnari himself, along with their guards. This event was a slap across the face of the British Empire, one that shook British rulers from London all the way to Calcutta.
The Arrival of Lord Roberts and the Removal of Amir Yaqub Khan
When news of the British envoy’s killing in Kabul reached British India, Viceroy Lord Lytton immediately sent a large force to Kabul under General Frederick Sleigh Roberts. The British army entered Kabul with advanced artillery and retook Bala Hissar. General Roberts carried out brutal reprisals against the people of Kabul. Hundreds of Afghan civilians were publicly hanged, several of Kabul’s markets were burned, and fear spread through the whole city.
Through all of this, the now-powerless Amir Muhammad Yaqub Khan had also become suspect in British eyes. The British removed him from the throne and exiled him to India. Kabul was now under direct British military control, but the Afghan nation could not be crushed by force of arms for long. Religious leaders like the ghazis and Mullah Mushk-e-Alam declared jihad against the British.
Afghan tribes cut off the British army’s supply routes around Kabul and forced them into a siege inside Bala Hissar. In July 1880, on the battlefield of Maiwand, Afghans under the leadership of Ghazi Ayub Khan handed a large British force a crushing and historic defeat. In this battle, the courage of an Afghan woman known as Malalai of Maiwand breathed new spirit into the hearts of the Afghan army. This defeat made it clear to the British that they could never rule Afghanistan directly.
