nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47support for the siege of Herat was in breach of the AngloPersian Treaty
and told him to prepare for war with Britain. MacNeill then quit the Persian
camp and returned to Tehran. In fact war had already been unofficially
declared, for a month earlier Auckland had ordered a naval expedition to
occupy the island of Kharg in the Persian Gulf. After McNeill left, Shah
Muhammad made a final, desperate attempt to take Herat but his troops
were beaten back from the breaches. In September the Shah, hearing that
Kharg was now in British hands, ‘consented to the whole of the demands
of the British Government’, and abandoned the siege. 61
The British action had prevented Herat from falling into Persian hands,
while the Russian Foreign Ministry had formally disassociated itself from
the actions of Simonich and Vitkevich. Hence, despite the failure of the
Burnes Mission, by the late autumn of 1838 Britain had effectively won
the diplomatic war. The only distant threat that remained to India was
a possible Russian occupation of Khiva. Yet despite this, the invasion of
Afghanistan was not called off for it was argued that, since the Tripartite
Treaty had been signed, Britain was legally bound to fulfil its terms. The
plan for ‘regime change’ in Kabul had now assumed a life of its own.
As the Army of the Indus assembled, Auckland set out to publicly
justify the intervention. On 1 October 1838 he issued the Simla Declaration,
a document that would have done Orwell’s Ministry of Truth proud. 62
As well as justifying the invasion, the Manifesto was a declaration of war,
although Dost Muhammad Khan never received a copy of the document
or any formal notification that Britain was at war with Afghanistan. The
document, drafted by Macnaghten, placed all the blame for the war solely
on ‘the Barakzais’. The attack on Jamrud was declared to be an act of unpro
voked aggression by Dost Muhammad Khan that had brought the whole
region to the brink of war. Needless to say, there was no mention of the
fact that the Sikhs had constructed this fort on Afghan sovereign territory.
Rather, Ranjit Singh had shown the utmost restraint by agreeing to suspend
hostilities to allow Burnes a chance to restore ‘an amicable understanding
between the two powers’.
As for the failure of the Burnes Mission, this too was blamed solely on
Dost Muhammad Khan’s ‘unreasonable pretensions’ and ‘avowed schemes
of aggrandisement and ambition’ that were ‘injurious to the security and
peace of the frontiers of India’. The Amir had shown an ‘utter disregard’
for British interests by his ‘undisguised support to the Persian designs in
Afghanistan’, his ‘subservience to a foreign power’ and his rejection of
the Governor General’s offer of a ‘just and reasonable’ settlement with
the Sikhs. Furthermore the ‘hostile policies’ of the Barakzais meant they