afghanistan
Prime Minister Hashim Khan was caught between a rock and a hard
place. He dared not risk the accusation of capitulating to Britain or Russia,
yet at the same time failure to comply meant Afghanistan’s territorial integ-
rity was once more under threat from the surrounding superpowers. In an
attempt to address the problem, Hashim Khan convened an emergency
Loya Jirga, which was opened by King Zahir Shah dressed, inappropri-
ately, in full German military uniform. The king and senior ministers then
defended the government’s policy of neutrality, but Nur al-Mashayekh, in
a fiery speech, recalled Afghanistan’s resistance to British domination and
declared that expelling foreign residents and handing them over to Britain
was both contrary to the shari‘a and the Pushtun tradition of nanawatai.
‘We will fight it’, he declared and ended his peroration with the cry of Allah
hu-Akbar, God is Great, a chant taken up by the whole assembly. 7 Many
other anti-British speeches followed, but in the end the delegates voted to
expel all non-diplomatic Axis aliens on condition Britain gave a formal
pledge of safe conduct back to their home countries. However, in accord-
ance with international law regarding neutral countries, the government
refused to expel the German, Italian and Japanese ambassadors. Fearing
that the ussr and Britain might invade anyway, the Loya Jirga approved
compulsory conscription and a special war tax. German and Italian diplo-
matic staff therefore remained in Kabul and continued their intrigue with
the Fakir of Ipi, but attempts to extend his revolt failed miserably. The Fakir
happily took all the cash and weapons the Germans and Italians offered,
but made only a few token forays against British outposts.
Following the German retreat from Moscow in the winter of 1941/2, the
power and influence of the German lobby at court waned. It was further
undermined when German officials in Kabul, in an attempt to tie down
Soviet forces in Central Asia, tried to revive the basmachi militias, using
agents of the ex-Amir of Bukhara. Germany recruited dozens of local
agents on both sides of the Amu Darya and basmachi amirs reactivated
their militias in northern Afghanistan. Matters came to a head in April 1943
after Britain handed the Afghan and Soviet governments a list of known
German agents operating in Afghan and Russian Turkistan. The Afghan
government responded by placing the ex-Amir of Bukhara and his son-in-
law under house arrest and imprisoning dozens of Turkistani exiles. This
action, however, did not sit well with Nur al-Mashayekh and other influ-
ential religious leaders. Akhundzada Miyan Gul of Tagab even publicly
denounced the detention of the Bukharan royal family from the pulpit
of the Pul-i Kheshti mosque. 8 Britain renewed its demand for the expul-
sion of all Axis diplomats and this time refused to back down, so Hashim
nandana
(Nandana)
#1