afghanistan
Yet even Dost Muhammad had little hope that the war would end in
anything but defeat. ‘He was a weak fly about to encounter a huge elephant,’
he declared, ‘and could but pray that God would give him victory against
such overwhelming odds.’ 33 The Amir even sought an augury from Hazara
diviners, but his premonition proved correct. The Sikhs remained behind
the safety of the Peshawar fort and Dost Muhammad Khan, unable to
make any impression on its strong defences, opened negotiations. One of
the envoys Ranjit Singh sent to Dost Muhammad’s camp was an American
adventurer, Josiah Harlan, who referred to himself as General Harlan, even
though his entire military career had comprised service as a temporary
medical orderly in the Burma campaign. 34 Harlan was a friend of Masson
but the two men had fallen out and parted company. Harlan subsequently
led an abortive attempt to place Shah Shuja‘ back on the throne and later
spent time in Kabul, but after being implicated in a plot to assassinate Dost
Muhammad Khan, he fled Peshawar and eventually entered the service
of Ranjit Singh.
Dost Muhammad Khan was forced to accept the status quo and his fail
ure to take Peshawar opened the door for his enemies. While he was away
campaigning law and order broke down in the Afghan capital and when
the Amir returned to Kabul his senior advisers failed to turn up for meet
ings. The Ghilzai then rebelled over the imposition of the war tax, while
the Jawanshir Qizilbash secretly intrigued with Shah Shuja‘. The secur
ity situation eventually became so bad that Masson hired armed guards
and barricaded himself in his house. When Dost Muhammad asked the
Kandahar sardars to mediate, he found out just in time that the Kandahar
envoy was plotting with the Peshawar sardars to have him assassinated. To
cap it all Masson heard that a Russian officer, Lieutenant Ivan Viktorovich
Vitkevich, had arrived in Bukhara and was sending military intelligence
back to St Petersburg. 35
The Burnes Mission to Kabul and the Persian siege of HeratMasson urged the Amir to mend his bridges with the British. Since a new
Governor General, George Eden, Lord Auckland, had recently arrived in
Calcutta, Masson suggested he write a congratulatory letter in the hope
that Auckland would be more amenable to mediating a settlement of the
AfghanSikh War. In his letter, written in May 1836, the Amir assured
Auckland that, ‘I look upon myself and country as bound to [the British
Government] by the strongest ties.’ He then went on to explain that the
war with Ranjit Singh had not been his fault but was due to the ‘reckless