afghanistan
In his reply to the Khan of Bukhara, Dost Muhammad Khan pointed
out that when he had gone to Bukhara to plead for assistance against the
British invasion, the Khan not only refused to help, but treated him and his
sons like prisoners. Dost Muhammad Khan then compared this treatment
with the kindness and honour accorded to him in exile in India. ‘I have
not the slightest concern about the friendship or enmity of any foreign
power,’ he concluded, ‘feeling assured of the British... What is it to me if
Russia, Persia and Bokhara are my enemies on account of my friendship
with England?’ 7 When Henry Lawrence, the British Resident in Lahore,
heard of the Amir’s decision, he greeted the news as a godsend: ‘it is clear
that, if we had been on bad terms just now with Kabul, we should have
lost, first Peshawar and then the Punjab and all India would have reeled
under the blow’. 8 The news from Kabul meant that Lawrence was able to
withdraw all but a token force from the Punjab and send them to suppress
the Sepoy uprising.
Many of the British officers who played a major part in the suppres-
sion of the Mutiny were from the Punjab and the Northwestern Frontier
and had had their first campaign experience as junior officers in the First
Afghan War, where they had learnt many hard lessons. Unlike the super-
annuated veterans of the Napoleonic Wars who had bungled that war, this
new breed of Frontiersmen’s response to the Mutiny was swift, decisive and
often brutal. Not only did they succeed in preventing any major uprising in
the Punjab, they contributed significantly to the defeat of the Indian rebel-
lion. Pushtun units such as the Multani Horse and the Mounted Police also
played an important role in the defeat of the rebellion. The Afridis even
handed over fugitive sepoys who claimed nanawatai to the authorities in
Peshawar. In the wake of the Mutiny, India was placed under Crown rule
with Queen, and later Empress, Victoria as head of state while a Viceroy
replaced the old office of Governor General.
The conquest of Qataghan and Herat and the death of
Amir Dost Muhammad KhanWhile Britain fought for its Indian Empire, Dost Muhammad Khan set
out to subjugate the Mir Ataliq of Qataghan, who had formed a military
alliance with Bukhara and the fugitive Mir Wali of Khulm. The Mir Ataliq
was sent an ultimatum to admit an Afghan hakim and to recite the khutba
in the Amir’s name. When these demands were rejected Afzal Khan assem-
bled his forces in Khulm. The Mir Ataliq appealed to Bukhara, but although
the Khan raged about the Amir’s imperial ambitions and excoriated him