afghanistanforeign companies. The result was that most of these mineral resources
remain unexploited due to lack of technological expertise and modern
mining equipment.
The Amir’s only serious engagement with modern technology, apart
from the trinkets that littered the Dilkusha Palace, was the purchase of
machinery for the manufacture of weapons, ammunition, boots and
uniforms. A number of new, unsealed roads were constructed, primarily
to facilitate the swift movement of troops. The Amir repeatedly rejected
British offers to link Kandahar and Jalalabad into the Indian rail and tele-
graph network and advised his heirs to do the same. Until recently, the
only working railway in Afghanistan was a kilometre or so of track that
linked the frontier port of Hairatan to Uzbekistan.
Though Amir ‘Abd al-Rahman was never willing to admit it, his hold
on power was due more or less solely to the fact that Britain continued
to supply him with modern weapons and large sums of cash to suppress
rebellions. This stability may have served Britain’s geopolitical aims by
creating a buffer state that protected India from a Russian invasion, but it
was achieved at great cost to the Afghan people, who were forced to endure
twenty years of tyranny. It also turned Afghanistan into a rentier state that
was even less capable of financial self-sufficiency than it had been before.
When the Amir died, Afghanistan was no longer technically in debt, but
this was only because several million rupees of the British subsidy were
retained in Indian banks as a strategic reserve.
Despite the fraught nature of the Anglo-Afghan relationship, as far
as Britain was concerned Amir ‘Abd al-Rahman Khan had done the job
required of him. He had been a reasonably loyal ally who had reasserted
central government’s control over a country that had teetered on the edge
of collapse. He had allowed Britain to demarcate Afghanistan’s inter-
national frontiers and so reduced the risk of a Russian invasion, as well
as Afghan interference in India and tribal affairs. Afghanistan as a buffer
state was thus effective, even though British military strategists knew that,
had Russia decided to call Britain’s bluff and occupy Herat, there was
little Britain could have done to prevent it. In the end, it was diplomacy,
combined with the threat of war in Europe as well as Asia, that made Russia
honour the frontier protocols.
Afghanistan thus survived as a nation state, but it had been a close
call. Prior to and even after the Second Afghan War, Lytton, Roberts and
other senior officials had seriously debated the breakup of the country
into smaller self-governing units, or even outright annexation of southern
Afghanistan. In the end a united Afghanistan was deemed far less trouble