afghanistanBritish presence in Afghanistan. The result was a deadlock that lasted for
three months.
While the Peshawar Conference dragged on without any resolution
in sight, the threat of a Russo-Turkish War in the Balkans grew more
and more likely. As far as the Disraeli government was concerned, it was
even more urgent for military observers to be located inside Afghanistan,
for all that lay between Russia and British India, according to Salisbury,
was a ‘weak’ and ‘barbarous’ country’. 41 So when Pelly reported to Lytton
that he had ‘conclusive’ proof that Sher ‘Ali Khan was engaged in a secret
agreement with Kaufman, Lytton claimed that Pelly had finally ‘torn aside
the impenetrable veil which has so long concealed from us the increasing,
and now apparently complete, extinction of British influence at Kabul’. 42
On 3 March 1877 Lytton wrote a detailed response to the Afghan
interpretation of Anglo-Afghan agreements, a memorandum that is to
the Second Anglo-Afghan War what the Simla Declaration was to the
war of 1838–42. In a detailed critique of the 1855 and 1857 treaties and
Mayo and Northbrook’s aides-memoires, Lytton effectively annulled these
agreements, arguing that none of them placed Britain under any obliga-
tion to the Amir in respect of the defence of his realm, the maintenance
of Afghanistan’s territorial integrity or the sustaining of his dynasty on the
throne. This was especially so since ‘the conduct and language of the Amir
during the last four years has been one of chronic infraction, or evasion,
of the first Article of the Treaty of 1855’. 43
As far as the 1857 treaty and the aide-memoire of 1869 were concerned,
these related ‘exclusively... to special circumstances, considerations and
conditions’, and hence there was no right of appeal to these undertakings
in the current circumstances. As far as the 1855 and 1857 treaties were
concerned,
it is as clear as anything can be, that neither the one nor the other
imposes on the British Government, either directly or indirectly,
the least obligation, or liability, whatever, to defend, protect, or
support, the Amir, or the Amir’s dynasty, against all enemies, or
any danger, foreign or domestic.The Afghan view that the aides-memoires of 1869 and 1873 had the
force of ‘adhs – covenants or treaties – was ‘entirely erroneous’ and the
statement that Britain would ‘view with severe displeasure any attempts
on the part of [the Amir’s] rivals to disturb your position’ was interpreted
as relating solely to the Amir’s situation in 1869. Lord Mayo, he declared: