nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47Army. Fifteen years later he repeated his Kandahar exploit by leading the
relief of Mafeking during the Boer War. As for ‘Ayub Khan, Maiwand was
a pyrrhic victory, for instead of securing him the throne, it drove Britain
into a hasty deal with his cousin and rival, ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan. The
siege of Kandahar, however, did result in the British government deciding
to abandon the plan to retain control over the area and in April 1881 the
province was handed over to ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan’s governor.
Britain had been fortunate to escape the ‘rat trap’ without suffering the
kind of humiliation that it experienced in the First Afghan War. Even so,
the invasion was hardly a resounding success. Cavagnari and three other
British officials along with their escort had been slaughtered, and the rais-
ing of the siege of Sherpur had been touch and go. The defeat at Maiwand
and the siege of Kandahar were further dents to British military prestige.
The intervention was the death knell for Forward Policy supporters and
cost Disraeli an election, Lytton his Viceroyship and the British Exchequer
£17 million, three times the original estimate. General Roberts eventually
emerged as a British hero, but the real winner was ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan,
who finally won the struggle for the throne that had begun with the death
of Dost Muhammad Khan nearly two decades before. Even so British
officials claimed the gains of the Second Anglo-Afghan War outweighed
the losses. Britain now had an ally on the Durrani throne who provided
the strategic depth India sought against Russian aggression. The Afghans
viewed the occupation in a very different light for, as Kakar rightly remarks,
‘What the British gained from this and from their first Afghan war was the
everlasting bad will of Afghans.’ 19
Amir ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan and the suppression of dissentAfter the withdrawal of British forces, the situation inside Afghanistan
continued to be unstable. A few months after the British evacuated
Kandahar, ‘Ayub Khan took the city and ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan, backed by
Mushk-i ‘Alam’s Ghilzais, set out to confront his rival, while ‘Abd al-Quddus
Khan, now governor of Turkistan, was ordered to march on Herat. In
September 1881 ‘Ayub Khan’s army was soundly defeated at Chehel Zina,
near Old Kandahar, and he fled into Persian territory after he heard that
Herat had fallen to ‘Abd al-Quddus. Meanwhile ‘Abd al -Rahman Khan’s
troops celebrated their victory by plundering Kandahar. ‘Abd al-Rahmin
Akhund and Maulawi Wasi, Kandahar’s most senior religious figures
and the men who had issued a fatwa condemning the Amir’s alliance
with Britain, sought sanctuary in the shrine of the Khirqa-yi Sharif. ‘Abd