nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47The Amir also assumed Keane would bypass Ghazni, since the Afghans
believed the citadel was impregnable, so no reinforcements were sent,
nor did Dost Muhammad Khan’s son, Haidar Khan, who was governor of
Ghazni, strengthen the citadel’s defences. Instead, the Amir sent another
of his sons, Muhammad Afzal Khan, to join the Ghilzai raiders, hoping
to draw the British away from their base in Kandahar and attack them in
strength at Sayyadabad, between Ghazni and Maidan Shah, cutting off
their line of retreat and annihilating the invaders.
Keane, however, had no intention of leaving any fortress unsubdued in
the rear of his army. Having taken the Tokhi stronghold of Qalati Ghilzai
by storm and installed a garrison, on 21 July 1839 he arrived before Ghazni.
An attack by Afzal Khan and the Ghilzais was beaten off, the grapeshot
from the army’s guns inflicting heavy loss of life on the lightly armed
tribesmen. Some 64 prisoners were taken alive and handed over to Shah
Shuja‘, who tried them as rebels. The Ghilzai retorted that since the king
was a kafir and a ‘friend and slave of infidels’, they had every right to resist
him. One prisoner even drew a knife and Shah Shuja‘ was only saved
from serious harm when one of his bodyguards threw himself between
the king and his assailant, taking the blow instead. Shah Shuja‘ responded
by condemning them all to death and his executioner proceeded to saw
off their heads with a blunt sword.
Unfortunately for the king, a British officer stumbled on the executions
and a few weeks later the Bengal newspapers were full of the gory details.
Keane, Macnaghten and other officers were appalled, mostly, one suspects,
because of the publicity rather than at the executions themselves. As Shah
Shuja‘ rightly pointed out, under the terms of the Tripartite Treaty and on
the basis of Macnaghten’s own assurances, British officials had agreed not
to interfere in his internal affairs. Since he was king, he had every right to
execute rebels.
The righteous anger of the press and British officials was also some
what hypocritical. There was no such furore when a few days later Keane
had several Afghan prisoners shot without due process and condemned
a sepoy to be executed by firing squad after a drumhead court martial. In
1839 British military law was anyway almost as harsh as the Afghan one.
Mutiny and desertion were both capital offences with the accused denied
legal counsel and the guilty condemned to the firing squad, hanging or
being blown from the mouth of a gun. Flogging was a regular punishment
for minor misdemeanours, while under English civil law an offender could
be executed for murder, burglary, counterfeiting, arson and a host of other
felonies. Beheading for treason was still on the statute book, while traitors