afghanistanHerat and Afghanistan’s poorly defined and poorly defended northwestern
frontier. One particular problem was that Dilawar Khan, wali of Maimana,
refused to acknowledge ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan’s suzerainty and in May 1882
he wrote to British officials asking for protection and threatened to ‘apply
to other quarters’ if Britain did not recognize Maimana’s independence.
When British officials curtly replied that they regarded Maimana as an
integral part of Afghanistan, Dilawar Khan accepted Russian cash and
arms and by so doing turned a minor dispute into an international crisis.
In the previous year Russian forces had occupied the Akkal Oasis, the
gateway to Merv and Herat, so when Maimana accepted Russian cash and
military assistance, British officials feared this was a precursor to the occu-
pation of Herat. The Amir was urged to bring Maimana back under central
authority and establish a garrison in the town. To assist this campaign the
Viceroy sent ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan a thousand muzzle-loading muskets. In
the spring of 1882 two armies from Herat and Balkh marched on Maimana,
whereupon Dilawar Khan raised the Imperial Russian flag over his cita-
del. Yet again Maimana proved a hard nut to crack and Muhammad Ishaq
Khan, governor of Balkh, unable to take the town by storm, finally agreed to
a truce after Dilawar Khan agreed to make a token submission to the Amir.
The following summer Ishaq Khan tried once more to subdue
Maimana, but this time he was aided by Mir Husain Khan, Dilawar Khan’s
uncle and dynastic rival. Maimana was besieged once more in March 1884,
but when Dilawar Khan appealed to the Russians for military assistance
his pleas were ignored. A few weeks earlier Russian forces occupied and
annexed Merv, despite St Petersburg having assured Britain that Russia
had no designs on the region. The furore that followed led to calls from
Members of Parliament and the British press for Britain to declare war on
Russia. A conflict was eventually avoided but as a consequence Russia was
not prepared to push Britain any further by intervening in Maimana, and
so Dilawar Khan was left to face the Amir’s wrath alone. When Maimana
finally fell it was sacked and many of its inhabitants slaughtered. As for
Dilawar Khan, he was sent in chains to Kabul. Ishaq Khan then installed
Husain Khan as the new wali, but all real power lay with the Afghan
military governor, backed by a large force of government troops.
As far as Britain was concerned, the fall of Maimana could not have
been more timely, for British and Russian officials were in the process of
negotiating a joint demarcation of Afghanistan’s northwestern frontier. A
month after Maimana fell, the agreement was signed and for the next two
years Russian, British and Afghan commissioners surveyed the region from
Herat to the Amu Darya and drew an internationally agreed frontier. At