afghanistanGeneral Pollock’s campaign in eastern AfghanistanOn 20 August 1842 General Pollock, having ruthlessly subdued the
Shinwaris, set out for Kabul. Sale, whose wife was one of the hostages,
accompanied him and his experience of fighting his way through the Haft
Kotal proved invaluable. Sale had raised a regiment of Afghan jezailchis and
their firepower helped swing the battle in Pollock’s favour, for Akbar Khan
and the Jabbar Khel were waiting for Pollock in expectation of another
massacre. As Pollock’s force advanced up the road from Gandamak, the
troops were constantly reminded of the fate their comrades-in-arms had
suffered eight months earlier. At Gandamak, the vultures were still gorging
themselves on the rotting flesh of Shelton’s 44th Foot, and all along the
route mounds of skeletons and decomposing bodies were strewn every-
where. Many of the corpses showed signs of mutilation and some could still
be identified as the bodies of friends and comrades-in-arms. The Khurd
Kabul gorge was so clogged with corpses and skeletons that the troops had
to clamber over the decomposing remains. 38 The stench of rotting flesh was
almost unbearable, yet there was no time to bury the thousands of dead,
for Pollock’s force had their hands full fighting a series of running battles.
Pollock, though, outsmarted Akbar Khan, sending his troops to storm
the heights and then dispersed the enemy with bayonet charges. After two
defeats and with the British force approaching But Khak, Akbar Khan
fled north to the Ghurband, while Pollock occupied the Bala Hisar un-
opposed. Kabul itself was deserted, for most of the capital’s population
had fled to the Koh Daman, though the Hindu traders and moneylenders
had stayed behind. A few days later General Nott arrived from Kandahar,
having defeated the Ghilzais at Qalat-i Ghilzai and Ghazni. Among the
trophies he brought with him were the sandalwood gates from the tomb
of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, which he claimed had been pillaged some
eight hundred years earlier from the Hindu temple of Somnath. However,
Major Henry Rawlinson, the political officer at Kandahar and a Persian
scholar who later distinguished himself by documenting and decipher-
ing the Achaemenid inscriptions at Behistun, was not convinced. He was
‘positively convinced’ that the gates were Ghaznavid, based on the Kufic
inscriptions inscribed on them. 39
Kabul may have fallen but the hostages were still in Afghan hands.
Akbar Khan ordered them to be moved from Laghman to Bamiyan, with
the intention of sending them to the safety of Khulm. Fortunately for
Pollock, Akbar Khan entrusted this task to Saleh Muhammad Khan, who
had formerly commanded one of Shah Shuja‘ al-Mulk’s cavalry regiments.