afghanistanwith Mir Masjidi, who agreed to allow the garrison safe passage back to
Kabul in return for a payment of 60,000 rupees.
Pottinger’s plan was to slip away during the night, head for the friendly
settlement of Istalif and cross the plains to Pai-yi Minar and Kabul. Both
Pottinger and Haughton were wounded but at least they had horses; every-
one else had to walk the 80 kilometres (50 mi.) to Kabul. Pottinger split
the evacuees into two columns and they managed to slip away without
detection, only for the two sections to lose touch with each other in the
dark. Pottinger and Haughton eventually made it to Istalif and arrived
in Kabul the following morning. The rest of the force was not so fortu-
nate. At daybreak they were overtaken on the road by the enemy cavalry
and slaughtered to the last man, woman and child. The wounded, which
Pottinger had left behind, were also killed when the rebels stormed the
barracks. The fall of Old Charikar opened the road to Kabul and the
Kohistani rebels poured into the capital where they reinforced Mir Masjidi,
who had taken up a position in Behmaru. The garrison at Old Charikar
had fought with exceptional bravery and held out for more than a week
against overwhelming odds, yet neither they nor their officers received any
recognition. Macnaghten even had the temerity to claim that the Gurkhas
had ‘behaved ill’. 27
The Kabul uprising and the death of BurnesWhen Pottinger and Haughton finally reached the Kabul cantonment, they
found they had escaped the frying pan only to fall into the fire. Kabul was
in an uproar. The uprising in the capital, which began in early November
1841, was the culmination of months of resentment at the presence of
alien, non-Muslim forces on Afghan soil, British interference in the king’s
intern al affairs and Burnes’s fiscal and military reforms, which had under-
mined the power and wealth of both the king and his courtiers. For this
reason the hatred and resentment was particularly directed at the British
political establishment represented by Macnaghten, Burnes and Trevor.
It is commonplace among historians to claim the Kabul uprising of
1841 was a disorganized revolt by ordinary people and shopkeepers, but the
evidence does not support this. Rather it was part of a coordinated revolt
that had been sealed by an oath on the Qur’an some six weeks earlier. The
chief instigator of the Kabul rebellion was ‘Abd Allah Khan Achakzai, a
Durrani noble and supporter of the Saddozai monarchy. Sometime just
before or after the secret meeting in September, ‘Abd Allah Khan had gone,
Qur’an in hand, to ’Amin Allah Khan Logari and persuaded him to become