afghanistanproclaimed Loynab ‘Ali Ahmad Khan as King. He attempted to take Kabul
but was defeated after the Khogiyanis accepted the offer of a substantial
sum of money from the Mujadidis of Shor Bazaar and defected. Loynab ‘Ali
Ahmad fled to Peshawar, where he consoled himself with a binge-drinking
spree. After he had sobered up, he made his way to Kandahar and made
his peace with ’Aman Allah Khan.
’Aman Allah Khan still hoped to raise an army from his Durrani tribe,
so when he heard ’Inayat Khan had fled Afghanistan he rescinded his abdi-
cation, ignoring his religious advisers’ objections that this was unlawful.
The Durranis, though, were reluctant to rally to the royal standard and
the king doubtless had cause to regret his sarcastic remark about lazy
Kandahari men. Kandahar’s ‘ulama’ also refused to condemn Habib Allah
Kalakani as a rebel, for many of them had opposed the king’s constitutional
reforms from the outset and had no interest in his plan to emancipate
women. Shortly before ’Aman Allah Khan’s abdication, some of Kandahar’s
religious leaders had written to the king, complaining about new regula-
tions that required mullahs to have a teaching qualification in order to
teach in state schools and the issue of female education. ‘Abd al-‘Aziz,
the king’s Minister for War, tried to win their support by persuasion as
well as by gifts of cash, and made sure tribal and religious leaders heard
graphic accounts from refugees of the lawlessness, rape and other atrocities
committed by Kalakani’s followers in Kabul.
By the end of February 1929 tribal opinion had begun to swing in the
king’s favour. Levies from Wardak, Jalrez and the Hazarajat even defeated
a force sent by Habib Allah Kalakani against Kandahar. ’Aman Allah Khan,
however, failed to win over the Sulaiman Khel Ghilzais, for as mukhlis of
Nur al-Mashayekh these clans were bound by oath to support their pir,
who had given his blessing to the rebellion. ’Aman Allah Khan’s appeal to
the Viceroy to be allowed to import arms from India was also rejected on
the ground that Britain was officially neutral in the conflict. An appeal for
Soviet assistance by Ghulam Nabi Charkhi, ambassador in Moscow, was
more successful and Moscow agreed to provide him with money, weapons
and military advisers, and granted him permission to recruit levies from
the many Afghan refugees living in Uzbekistan.
The return of the Musahiban brothers’Aman Allah Khan’s chance of regaining the throne was undermined even
further when he heard that Nadir Khan and his brothers had landed in
Bombay, where they announced they had come to liberate Afghanistan