afghanistanamong the frontier tribes. Memories of Nadir Khan’s brutal suppression of
the Mangal revolt a decade earlier were still fresh in local memories, while
many of the Waziris and other tribes on the Indian side of the frontier were
content with the autonomy granted by British rule and were unwilling
to allow any army, Afghan or British, to march through their territory. 12
A third division under ‘Abd al-Quddus Khan was sent to Kandahar
with orders to occupy Chaman, Gulistan, Pishin and the Khojak Pass.
‘Abd al-Quddus took an inordinate time to reach Kandahar, however, and
when he finally arrived he had to put down a revolt by religious leaders.
With the help of Loynab ‘Ali Ahmad Khan the rebellion was eventually
suppressed, then followed this success by conducting a brief but bloody
pogrom against Kandahar’s Qizilbash. By the time ‘Abd al-Quddus was
ready to march into Baluchistan, the war had ended.
Who exactly fired the first shot in the Third Anglo-Afghan War is still
a matter of dispute, at least as far as Afghans are concerned. According
to the official British account, on 3 May 1919 General Saleh Muhammad
Khan cut off the water supply to the British garrisons and occupied
outposts on the Indian side of the Khyber Pass. Afghans, on the other
hand, claim that fighting began when British airplanes bombed positions
inside Afghanistan, 13 though official British accounts state the Royal Air
Force was not deployed until after the Afghans invaded.
What seems to have happened was that the ghazis disobeyed Saleh
Muhammad’s orders and launched a pre-emptive strike on British outposts,
forcing the general to march across the frontier in support of the lightly
Pushtun tribesmen from the Khyber region. It was individuals such as these that British
troops faced during the Third Afghan War.