nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47the Indian telegraph from Peshawar to Kabul. When ‘Ata Muhammad
returned to Kabul Sher ‘Ali Khan reluctantly agreed to consider the issue
of a British Resident. In January 1877 Sayyid Nur Muhammad Shah and
other Afghan officials arrived in Peshawar, but by this time Anglo-Afghan
relations had been placed under even more strain by Lytton’s decision to
intervene militarily in the affairs of Kalat. For several years Baluchistan
had been plagued with tribal and civil war. So in the autumn of 1876 Lytton
sent troops to support the Khan of Kalat and put down the revolts. The
outcome was the Treaty of Jacobabad, signed in December 1876, which in
Lytton’s words made Britain ‘virtually masters’ of Baluchistan. The terri-
tory became a British Protectorate and, in return for military aid to keep
him in power, the Khan of Kalat agreed to allow a British garrison to
be stationed in Quetta and for the Indian rail and telegraph network to
be extended to Chaman, on the Afghan frontier. This was a triumph for
Lytton’s Forward Policy, for among other things the Viceroy believed that
Quetta would become the most important intelligence-gathering centre
on the Afghan frontier.
The news from Baluchistan was not well received in Kabul for the
Khans of Kalat had been subordinate to, and allies of, the Durrani mon -
archy since the days of Ahmad Shah. Sayyid Nur Muhammad Shah, Sher
‘Ali Khan’s prime minster and chief negotiator at the Peshawar Conference,
was a native of Baluchistan and he was particularly angry about the treaty.
As for the presence of a British garrison in Quetta and the extension of the
rail and telegraph to the Afghan frontier, these were regarded as a direct
threat to Afghanistan. Yet Lytton failed to understand the wider political
repercussions of the Kalat intervention and expressed amazement as to
how the Treaty of Jacobabad could ‘injuriously affect the Amir of Kabul’. 40
When the two sides finally met in Peshawar, it was clear to all that
Anglo-Afghan relations were almost at breaking point. The discussions
did not start well, for Sayyid Nur Muhammad Shah made it clear that
the Amir was still not prepared to consider a permanent British pres-
ence in Afghanistan. The prime minister then laid out his government’s
view on the obligations Britain was under because of previous treaties
and the aides-memoires of 1869 and 1873. According to the Amir, Britain
had already committed itself to the defence of Afghanistan against unpro-
voked external aggression. Since there were Russian troop movements
on the Murghab and Amu Darya frontiers, Sher ‘Ali wanted Britain to
provide financial and military assistance. The British view, on the other
hand, was that any discussion regarding financial and military commit-
ments was conditional on the Amir first agreeing to allow a permanent