The Story of the Durand Line Negotiations. Part II
In the North: the Emir had extended his territory closer towards Russia. Just a year earlier, in 1892, Mir Yusuf Ali, the Beg of Shignan province, had welcomed a Russian explorer named Dr. Albert Regel to his territory. When the news reached the Emir, he resolved to depose him¹⁰, and not long afterwards, St. Petersburg’s Novo Vremya would report that the Begdom had been occupied by the Afghans. A month later the Emir’s men brought Yusuf Ali to Kabul and imprisoned him there. Gulzar Khan, a native of Kandahar, was appointed as the Governor of the occupied Shignan. And at the same time, the Amir deposed Ali Mardan Shah, the native chieftain of Wakhan, and replaced him with his own official, Ghafar Khan¹¹, extending his influence northward.
The Emir’s expansion into the Beg territory bordering Russia was certainly threatening to Russia, but once again the threat was not from the Emir of a small country, who also happened to be their former pensioner and asylee. The real threat was from the British Government. The monetary and political support that the Afghan Emir received made his occupation of the Begdom look like the British expansion into the areas bordering Russia.
Not surprisingly, a few months later, the Russian Imperial Cabinet submitted an official Memorandum of Remonstrance to the British Ambassador at St. Petersburg. The document stated that the Emir in Afghanistan had encroached into an independent territory bordering Russia and based on the 1873’s Anglo-Russian agreement, the provinces of Roshan and Shignan were now under the unlawful occupation of the Afghans. The Russians wanted the British government to put pressure on Emir to retreat from these provinces¹²
Back in St. Petersburg, the British ambassador quickly responded to the Memorandum of Remonstrance. But, surprisingly, the response read that the British India had limited knowledge of the region and they argued that the Emir of Afghanistan claimed that the province of Roshan and Shignan belonged to the Badakhshan territory, which is clearly stated as Afghan territory by the 1873 agreement.¹³
Given the fact that by 1870s the British were already completing almost a century long period of involvement in Afghan politics, it was highly unlikely that the British might have had limited knowledge of the region. Instead, there could be two possible reasons behind the British response. First, the Anglo- Russian treaty was only clear on the boundary demarcated by the Oxus River, while Roshan and Shignan lay beyond the length of the river. Second, and perhaps a more agreeable interpretation, the more territory rested between British India and Russia the bigger would have been the “buffer zone” between the two empires. So a bargain for more territory was a clever British attempt.
But whatever the British plan was, the subsequent response from Russia was blunt and showed that they were not in the mood for negotiations.¹⁴ Seeing their attempt fail, the British quickly turned their face towards the Afghans; after all, the whole point of establishing a buffer zone was to avoid direct conflicts with a stronger Russia. The viceroy in India asked the Emir to retreat from Roshan and Shignan. Emir avoided the British call; his officials continued to resist Russian explorer’s small expeditions in the area.
Although at that time the British thought it was Emir’s usual habit of procrastination. But, by early 1880’s, Emir had begun to realize that both the British and the Russians were keen to delimit their boundaries with Afghanistan, so his plan was to lay hand at as much land as possible and earn himself some leverage for any future negotiations. In the North he had occupied Shignan and Roshan, and to the South-West, he was slowly encroaching into the Pashtun tribal areas.
In the South: the Emir’s encroachment in the tribal areas was relatively diplomatic. He would, several times, invite chiefs from independent tribes bordering British India from Peshawar to Quetta to pledge allegiance to Afghanistan.¹⁵ The Turis, Orazkaiz, Wazirs, Sheranis, and the inhabitants of Zhob were all invited, at different times, to accept the Emir as their sovereign. But South was not always easy for Emir; his expansion there could be categorized under three fronts.
The first front was the Kafir (infidel) areas, the area between, roughly speaking, Kashmir to Badakhshan and down to Kafiristan (now Nuristan). These areas seemed to be the least problematic for him in the Southeast, because the residents there were non-Muslims, and as a Muslim ruler, he knew that he was able to easily rally support against the non-believers of the Area.¹⁶ In fact, he had successfully done so in the past. When some Hazara chiefs supported Sher Ali khan’s rebellion against the Emir, he labeled the Shiites as infidels and his men massacred a large number of both Sunni and Shiite rebels after subduing them. Sayed Askar Mousavi, the author of Hazara’s of Afghanistan, would provide detailed accounts of such atrocities committed against Hazaras by the Emir — instances like the Emir’s men constructing mounds of severed human heads.
But beyond the Kafir areas, in the second front, his chances of winning over the fiercely independent Pashtuns of the tribal areas seemed thin. His expansion there faced several challenges. By 1883, the Emir had extended some authority over the territories West and North of Peshawar, and the border tribes in Swat, Kunar, and Bajaur. There, he could not make any serious moves further, because by doing so he had to confront the British and the strong heavily armed tribes. Moreover, the Emir was rendered weak and occupied by the constant internal rebellions against his rule.¹⁷
Also, in his expansion towards Peshawar, the Emir had been able to use military might only as far as Asmar in Kunar. Beyond that, his progress was checked by the “Napoleon of the frontiers” Umra Khan of Jandol, a person who was never subdued by either the British or the Emir. Emir did not have enough military power to subdue him and the British never seriously tried to do so¹⁸ because, as far as someone defended Emir’s encroachment into the tribal areas, it was fine with the British. Divided subjects were easily ruled.
And finally on the third front, further down towards Baluchistan laid the strategically important district of Zhob. Zhob was a caravan route by the Gomal Pass and it was located at an important point between Punjab and Ghazni. Being at a commercial hub, Zhobwals’ main concern was their security, and for that reason they had willingly accepted the British government.¹⁹
But this did not mean that the Emir in Kabul agreed with them. In January 1892, Emir sent two of his officials, the Governors of Katawaz and Mukur to the area with an escort of over a hundred horsemen. They marched down Gomal River and arrived at Gakuch and established an outpost there. In the following July, another detachment of Emir’s troops, under the leadership of Sardar Gul Mohammad Khan, advanced to Zhob and there, he wrote to British Political Officer, saying that the people of Gustoi were subjects of Emir and the British must not interfere with them. The same men would later travel to Wana and Waziristan and repeat the same procedure.
Emir was causing the British some distress, and the Viceroy in India was driven to decide to contain the Emir’s forces into a certain boundary. And for this reason, Durand who together with his father Sir Henry Marion Durand had been involved in Afghan politics for about 50 years, was appointed to lead the Kabul Mission.
¹⁰ Page 104. Wheeler, Stephen, F.R.G.S. Public Men of To-Day: An International Series — The Ameer. Ed. S.H. Jeyes. New York: Frederick Warne & Co., Submitted to Education Department Library Ontario, on Jan 4 1896.
¹¹ Ibid. Page. 105.
¹²Ibid. Page.105–106.
¹³ The 1873’s agreement was an agreement signed between the British and Russians after Russia had captured the great Central Asian cities of Bokhara and Khiva. It was an attempt to limit Russian progress further into the “buffer zone” and towards the British India.
¹⁴ Page. 107. Wheeler, S. F. (Submitted to Education Department Library Ontario, on Jan 4 1896). Public Men of To- Day: An International Series — The Ameer. (S. Jeyes, Ed.) New York: Frederick Warne & Co.
¹⁵ Ibid. Page. 13.
¹⁶ Page. 108. Wheeler, S. F. (Submitted to Education Department Library Ontario, on Jan 4 1896). Public Men of To- Day: An International Series — The Ameer. (S. Jeyes, Ed.) New York: Frederick Warne & Co.
¹⁷ Ibid.
¹⁸ New York times. (1895, May 12). Fate of Umra Khan of Jandol. The New York Times.
¹⁹ Page. 108. Wheeler, S. F. (Submitted to Education Department Library Ontario, on Jan 4 1896). Public Men of To- Day: An International Series — The Ameer. (S. Jeyes, Ed.) New York: Frederick Warne & Co.