afghanistanwere ‘illfitted, under any circumstances, to be allies of the British govern
ment or to aid her just and necessary national defence’, and concluded
that ‘so long as Caubul remained under [Dost Muhammad’s] government
[Britain] could never hope that the tranquillity of our neighbourhood
would be secured, or that the interests of our Indian empire would be
preserved inviolate’.
As for Shah Shuja‘, his popularity had ‘been proved... by the strong
and unanimous testimony of the best authorities’ and he would return
to Afghanistan ‘surrounded by his own troops’. Without the least hint
of irony, the Declaration went on to declare that he would be ‘supported
against foreign interference... by a British army’. Once the ‘independ
ence and integrity’ of Afghanistan was secured, British forces would then
be withdrawn. In conclusion, the Governor General ‘rejoiced that...
he will be enabled to assist in restoring the union and prosperity of the
Afghan people’. The Declaration was even more duplicitous, since Russia’s
presumed ambitions in Central Asia, which was the real reason for going
to war, were barely mentioned, and then only obliquely. Lord Palmerston,
the British foreign secretary, was delighted with this, for he was anxious not
to raise further tensions with St Petersburg given Russia’s recent military
campaigns in the Balkans, the death of the Ottoman sultan and the threat
posed to what was left of the Ottoman Empire from Pasha Muhammad
‘Ali in Egypt.
The justifications for war contained in the Simla Declaration uncannily
echo similar statements made to justify ‘regime change’ by the Soviet Union
in 1979 and the u.s. and Britain in 2001. Here too the Afghan govern
ments were deemed untrustworthy by dint of their hostile policies, which
alleged ly posed a threat to the invading nation’s ‘national security’. Both the
Soviet Union and United States mistakenly believed that their nominee for
head of state was more popular (that is, pliant) than the then incumbent
and claimed that their military intervention was altruistic and would bring
peace, prosperity, stability, security and good governance. They too pledged
to withdraw their forces as soon as the new government had established
law and order. As was the case in the First AngloAfghan War, all of these
assumptions and assurances would prove to be fallacious.
Lord Melbourne, the prime minister, and Palmerston still had the
problem of justifying military action to Parliament, where they faced
a storm of criticism from the Tory opposition. Like Auckland and
Macnaghten, London had suffered from the long delay in communica
tions between London and Calcutta and dispatches arrived often months
after events in Central Asia had overtaken the home government’s policy.