afghanistanthe cantonment, also created an economic crisis. The British paid labourers
much higher wages than the market rate, which led to a chronic shortage
of labour. Even the king complained to Macnaghten that it was impossible
to hire labourers to repair the Bala Hisar’s defences and its palaces and
gardens. The high wages, paid in cash rather than kind as was traditional,
led to an influx of labourers from the surrounding countryside, leaving
fields unploughed, trees and vines unpruned and winter wheat unplanted.
As the bitter Kabul winter approached, the army commissariat bought up
vast quantities of grain, fodder and fuel at grossly inflated prices. The scar
city was exacerbated when landowners and shopkeepers withheld supplies
in the hope that the prices would rise even higher. So large were the poten
tial profits, most shopkeepers refused to sell their produce to local people
unless they paid the same inflated prices as the British. Soon the price of
bread, the staple food in Afghanistan, rose beyond the affordability level of
ordinary Kabulis and the streets and bazaars of Kabul were full of people
begging for crusts. Burnes responded by distributing larger amount of nan
A bread shop, or
nanbai, in Kabul. In
Afghanistan bread, not
rice, is the staple diet.