Stewart Crimson Snow

Britain's First Disaster in Afghanistan
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7524-7606-3
Verlag: The History Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 256 Seiten

In the mid-nineteenth century, the British and Russian Empires played the 'Great Game,' a rivalry for supremacy in Central Asia. To secure a 'buffer zone' in Afghanistan, between India and Russian territory, Britain launched the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1838. Initial success, including the imposition of a puppet regime supported by too few troops (a situation that has great resonance today), was followed by complete disaster in 1842, with 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 civilian camp followers killed by rebellious Afghans. Only one Briton is known to have escaped the massacre. This compelling story of imperial misadventure is told by Jules Stewart, a former Reuters journalist with considerable experience in the region and a specialist in North-West Frontier history, and has a foreword from General Sir David Richards, Chief of the General Staff and a former NATO commander in Afghanistan. It provides important parallels with our current commitments in this graveyard of ambitions, and illustrates how little has been learnt from the past.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stewart, Jules

Leseproben

Chapter 2

‘AN AGGRESSION DESTITUTE EVEN OF PRETEXT’

Auckland had some explaining to do. The Secret Committee of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, taking Burnes’s mission at face value, namely that he had been sent solely to negotiate a trade agreement with Dost Mohammed, wished to know the reason for the Envoy having returned empty-handed. The Honourable Company’s Board of Control in London, whose members included privy councillors and ministers of the Crown, directed orders to the Company’s servants in India through this powerful Secret Committee. Auckland’s version of the mission’s failure was contrived to whip up fears of Russian involvement in Afghanistan. In May 1838, with the fall of Herat a foregone conclusion in the Government’s thinking, Auckland explained to the Committee that the spread of Russian and Persian influence in Afghanistan had induced Dost Mohammed to press his claims on Peshawar and to reject British friendship. On these grounds it was decided to withdraw Burnes from Kabul. This was a blatant distortion of the facts, though whether Auckland was privy to political realities was always an open question. His inner circle of advisers saw to that. Giving it even more urgent ‘spin’, Auckland dramatically announced to the Committee members that the crisis had reached such a critical point that he might be forced to take urgent action using his executive powers. ‘The emergency of affairs may compel me,’ he stated, ‘to act without awaiting any intimation of your views upon the events which have recently occurred in Persia and Afghanistan.’1 Auckland had embarked seven months before on a splendid progress, travelling across northern India by barge, carriage, horse and elephant, with 12,000 camp followers and 1,000 camels in tow, finally settling in Simla, where he was to languish for the better part of two years. During this crucial time, the Governor General was out of touch with Calcutta, which left him totally at the mercy of Macnaghten, Henry Torrens and John Colvin, three of Auckland’s closest advisers, and all of whom suffered from acute Russophobia.

The saddest fact is that nobody seems to have a good word about Auckland, at whose feet most would lay the blame for launching Britain into a totally avoidable, unnecessary and ruinous war. Yet he was as much the tool of more determined men’s machinations as Shah Shuja was to be Britain’s poodle in its war on Afghanistan. On this point the chroniclers, then as now, voice unanimity. Durand’s disdain for the Governor General’s character has already been noted. To this may be added the opinion of Patrick Macrory: ‘This worthy mediocrity was not the man to stand up against the ambitious designs of Lord Palmerston, backed as they were by the Governor General’s own immediate staff, who were soon to show themselves too clever by half.’2 Michael Edwardes takes the view that, ‘Auckland’s worst quality was that he was no judge of men, of their character and worth. This was compounded when he cut himself off from the main centre of the Government of India, at Calcutta, from his own Council and a wide range of experience, at just the time when he needed the peace of a settled establishment and all the expert opinion he could find.’3

Apart from reiterating the need to stop Russia, that ‘formidable element of disorder and intrigue’, Auckland spoke to the Secret Committee in the vaguest terms of how the Government intended to counter the tsarist threat. For now, there might not be cause to take hostile action against Dost Mohammed, who was regarded as a man of ‘equivocal feelings’, but one would have to keep a watchful eye on him. To Auckland’s mind, the key to the matter was Herat: if the city fell, the Government would have to move swiftly to safeguard India’s integrity. The Governor General threw the ball into the Secret Committee’s lap – he appealed for guidance from the home Government, while behind the scenes Macnaghten and the others were setting out their agenda for Afghanistan. A cold and cautious individual Auckland might be, but one who was notoriously infirm of purpose and, Durand writes, ‘it was by gradual steps that he unfortunately suffered the alarms, real or pretended, of others, and their importunities, ultimately to prevail over his own judgement’.4

Auckland gave evidence to the Secret Committee in May, at which time he suggested the Government had no desire to become embroiled in an Asian war that could ultimately bring on a confrontation with Russia. Three months later, he was singing a more belligerent tune. ‘Of the justice of the course about to be pursued, there cannot exist a reasonable doubt,’ the Governor General ominously declared to the Committee members on 13 August. ‘We owe it to our own safety to assist the lawful sovereign of Afghanistan in the recovery of his throne. The operations which we are about to undertake, will doubtless be attended with much expense. But this consideration must, I feel assured, be held comparatively light, when contrasted with the magnitude of the object to be gained, which is no less than to raise up a barrier to all encroachments from the westward.’5 In other words, British India was going to war. The ‘lawful sovereign’ Auckland referred to was, of course, the deposed Amir and British pensioner Shah Shuja, though precisely why the Saddozai claim to the throne should have carried any more legitimacy than that of the Barakzai clan was never satisfactorily explained. Auckland went on to assure what must have been a rather startled Committee that Dost Mohammed was an unpopular ruler, who was seeking to forge an alliance with British India’s enemies the Persians, and plotting to secure foreign (i.e. Russian) aid to wage war on Britain’s ally Ranjit Singh. By the time this doctrine was discredited as nonsense, British India had suffered the most horrific consequences in lost lives and battered prestige. This book’s purpose is not to draw moral conclusions for what is happening in today’s world; however, the parallels with the doctrine of Weapons of Mass Destruction, used to justify the use of military force in a nearby theatre of war, cannot escape notice.

What had transpired between May and August to bring about this extraordinary shift in policy? In June, Shah Shuja was taken by carriage from his gilded retirement in Ludhiana to the Sikh capital of Lahore for a meeting with his old acquaintance Ranjit Singh. Macnaghten, acting in his capacity as agent of the Government of India, had achieved his objective: the Afghan and Sikh potentates had agreed to work together to drive Dost Mohammed out of Afghanistan. Auckland, in fact, had already made plans to receive the Amir in India, where he would take Shuja’s place as a British pensioner in Ludhiana.

The Governor General also informed the Secret Committee of an initiative to revive a treaty between Shuja and Ranjit, ratified in 1833, only this time it would be a tripartite agreement to include Britain. The significance was that Auckland was not only going to despatch his Afghan protégé, with Ranjit’s complicity, across the border to reclaim his throne, but also that the British Government was to assume an active role in this enterprise.

The beauty of the treaty was that it enabled Auckland to kill two birds with one stone: Shuja was persuaded to relinquish his claim to Sikh-held territory on both banks of the Indus, namely Kashmir and the Vale of Peshawar. Macnaghten’s skilful manoeuvrings were the work of extreme political cunning: ‘These countries and places are considered to be the property, and to form the estate of the Maharaja, and the Shah neither has, nor will have, any concern with them,’ the text stated. ‘They belong to the Maharaja and his posterity, from generation to generation.’6 It was, on the face of it, a win-win situation. Shuja was almost effortlessly thrust from oblivion back into the seat of power in his native land. Ranjit was over the moon at the prospect of doing a deal with British backing that would consolidate his dominions. When asked by Macnaghten whether he would like to renew his old treaty with Shuja and ally himself with the British Government, or take care of Dost Mohammed’s claim to Peshawar on his own, Ranjit unhesitatingly chose the former alternative. It was, he exclaimed, ‘adding sugar to milk’.7 The only weak spot in the plan, which all parties chose to ignore, was how and by whom Shuja was to be kept on his throne. Never mind, the strategic minutiae could wait, for now it was full speed ahead to Kabul.

Once Shuja was duly reinstated and had established his authority in Kabul, it was agreed he would send Ranjit an annual tribute, out of gratitude for lending him the support of the Sikh army. The gift list included 55 high-bred horses ‘of approved colour and pleasant paces’, 11 Persian scimitars, 7 Persian poniards, 25 good mules, fruits of various kinds, musk melons ‘of a sweet and delicate flavour’, pieces of satin and 101 Persian carpets. Ranjit Singh obviously had a rather exalted opinion of his own worth, but a rather lowly one of his Afghan ally, who was to receive in return a mere 55 shawls, 25 pieces of muslin, 5 scarves, 5 turbans and 55 loads of rice. It was further agreed that whatever booty they succeeded in looting from the Barakzai family would be equally divided between the two contracting partners. The clause that brought most comfort to Auckland bound Shuja, on the one hand, to refrain from entering into any form of negotiations with a third party without the knowledge and consent of the British Government and their Sikh allies and...