afghanistanput them to death. Ma’az Allah Khan, or Mazu, head of the Safis of Tagab,
however, remained at large. In 1829 Dost Muhammad Khan sent an army
commanded by Nawab Jabbar Khan to bring him to heel, only for the
campaign to end in disaster. The Safis attacked Jabbar Khan’s camp during
the night and in the ensuing panic his troops fled, leaving their artillery
and baggage to be pillaged by the Safis. Two years later Dost Muhammad
Khan set out in person to avenge this defeat. As he marched through the
Koh Daman he executed or imprisoned local maliks, burnt and levelled
q a l ‘as and destroyed fields, orchards and vineyards. Mazu Khan eventually
submitted and his life was spared after Hajji Khan Kakar pleaded for mercy
on his behalf. A short time later Mazu Khan was shot and badly wounded
by an unknown assailant: it was rumoured that the assassin was in the pay
of Dost Muhammad Khan.
Lord Ellenborough’s Indus policyWhile Dost Muhammad Khan consolidated his control over Kabul’s hinter-
land, in India and London a new policy was being formed that would
undermine his efforts to unify the country, and lead eventually to his
downfall and the occupation of Afghanistan. Following the Elphinstone
Mission and the removal of the French threat of an overland invasion of
India, British policy towards what was known as the Indus States had been
one of non-intervention and indifference, for the Anglo-Sikh Treaty of
1809 was deemed sufficient to secure the defence of India’s northwestern
frontier. The Saddozais and Barakzais were embroiled in a war of succes-
sion, and the Afghans were considered to no longer pose a threat now that
the Sikh kingdom acted as a buffer. Persia had ended its dalliance with
France and in 1814 the Shah reconfirmed the Anglo-Persian Treaty of 1809.
While Fath ‘Ali Shah still cherished ambitions to regain Herat, his plans
were restrained because of the Russian threat to what was left of Persian
territory in the Caucasus. In 1826 Persia even went to war with Russia over
the issue, only to be soundly defeated and forced to concede even more
territory under the Treaty of Turkmanchi of 1828.
In 1830, however, Britain’s policy of indifference was overturned by the
administration of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, who appointed
Lord Ellenborough as President of the Board of Control, the London-
based committee that oversaw the affairs of the East India Company.
Ellenborough had come under the influence of the Russophobe polemi-
cist Lieutenant-Colonel George de Lacy Evans, who argued that Russia’s
territorial gains in the war with Ottoman Turkey and Iran, together with its