afghanistan
While Sale battled his way down to Jalalabad, Macnaghten was
congratulating himself that the Ghilzai revolt was over and that he and
Elphinstone, by now incapacitated by gout, would be returning to India in
a few days. So when at the beginning of November Eldred Pottinger, who
was now political officer in Charikar, wrote to inform the envoy that Mir
Masjidi and Sultan Muhammad Khan of Nijrab had rebelled, he failed to
take the report seriously and told Pottinger that these tribes would give
up once they heard news of the Ghilzai defeat at Qalat-i Ghilzai. What
Macnaghten did not realize was that the Kohistan uprising was the start
of the coordinated uprising agreed at the secret meeting in Kabul some six
weeks earlier. Nor was it just a revolt, for Mir Masjidi too had proclaimed
a jihad.
The outposts at Charikar consisted of two cantonments, Charikar-i
Kohna, or Old Charikar, at the mouth of the Ghurband river, and Laghmani
about a kilometre to the north. 26 The two garrisons were defended by
around eight hundred of Shah Shuja‘ al-Mulk’s troops commanded by
Captain Codrington, consisting of Gurkhas and a small contingent of
Punjabi artillerymen. Few of these men had seen any combat and most had
brought their wives and children with them. When Pottinger first surveyed
the outposts, he informed Macnaghten that the positions were indefensible
and requested reinforcements and additional funds to strengthen their
defences, but his request was denied for there was no money to spare.
Macnaghten also reminded Pottinger that these posts were barracks and
not fortresses. Codrington managed to stretch his budget and ‘surrepti-
tiously’ added two bastions to the defences, but when the revolt broke out
the barracks were only half-complete. Old Charikar did not even have a
door on the main entrance and neither position had an internal water
supply. Instead, drinking water came from the Ghurband canal nearby,
while Old Charikar also used water from a diverted, intermittent stream
that ran from the shrine of Khwaja Seh Yaran.
The first signs of the breaking storm was on 1 November 1841, when Mir
Masjidi’s mujahidin overran Aq Sarai and cut the garrison’s line of retreat
to Kabul. Mir Masjidi then set out for Kabul at the head of five hundred
ghazis, while 2,000 more men were sent to join Shah Muhammad Khan
Safi, who was marching on Laghmani. The day after the fall of Aq Sarai
Mir Hajji read out his fatwa of jihad from the minbar of the Pul-i Kheshti
mosque under the very noses of Shah Shuja‘ and Macnaghten. Meanwhile,
Old Charikar and Laghmani were surrounded by some 20,000 mujahidin,
who outnumbered the defenders by more than twenty to one. Pottinger
tried to play for time, expecting a relief column would be sent from Kabul.
nandana
(Nandana)
#1