nadir shah and the afghans, 1732–47The jihad against the British occupation and the fall of CharikarA few days after Macnaghten broke this news, and a day or so after the
Durrani military elite reaffirmed their allegiance to the king, all the key
actors who had suffered from these reforms and cuts in state subsidies –
Durrani nobles, Ghilzai khans and Kohistani mullahs – met in secret in
Kabul and swore on the Qur’an to unite and ‘annihilate’ the invaders. 24
The first sign of trouble was when the Tezin Ghilzais plundered a qafila
on its way to Kabul. A few days later the Jabbar Khel attacked But Khak,
in southeastern Kabul, a settlement that was the gateway to the Jalalabad
road and the Khurd Kabul gorge. Within a week the British line of supply
and communication with Peshawar had been cut. Meanwhile in Laghman,
Muhammad Shah Khan, the father-in-law of Akbar Khan and head of
the Babakr Khel Ghilzais, secured a fatwa from local mullahs and raised
the standard of jihad. When Shah Shuja‘ sent Hamza Khan, head of the
Tezin Ghilzais, to negotiate with Muhammad Shah, he encouraged the
Laghmani chief to continue his revolt. When Hamza Khan returned to
Kabul, the king imprisoned him for treachery, inflaming his already angry
tribe even further.
As Sale’s Brigade was about to return to India, Elphinstone ordered him
to reopen the Kabul–Jalalabad road, but since his troops were at the end of
their tour of duty, Elphinstone refused to issue them with the latest percus-
sion rifles. Instead he gave them the oldest and most worn-out Brown Bess
muzzle-loading muskets, relics of the Napoleonic Wars, and a gun that one
junior officer claimed was ‘useless’ and ‘about as bad specimens of firearms
as can be manufactured’. 25 Designed for the set-piece, infantry battles of
the Napoleonic era, the Brown Bess was only effective at short range and
was far less accurate than the Afghan jezail.
Sale’s Brigade had to fight all the way from But Khak to Tezin and
repeatedly storm the heights of the deep valleys to drive off enemy snipers.
When he reached Tezin, the chief ’s subsidy was restored in full and he
even received an unofficial apology for the ‘harsh and unjust’ reduction
in his allowance. At Gandamak, Sale received an urgent message from
Elphinstone to return to Kabul, for the Kohistan had risen in revolt. Sale’s
Brigade, however, was in no fit state to fight its way back to the Afghan
capital. Most of its officers and hundreds of rank and file troops had been
killed or wounded, they were low on ammunition and most of the baggage
had been abandoned or looted. After consulting with his senior officers,
Sale decided to ignore his orders and pushed on to Jalalabad, where he
took possession of the principal fort and began to strengthen its defences.