afghanistan
Not everything went the mustufi’s way for, despite his repeated
attempts, the Amir refused to sign death warrants for Dr Ghani and his
brothers, probably because their execution would have had serious reper-
cussions for Anglo-Afghan relations. Nor did Habibiyya College end up in
the hands of Islamic reactionaries. Instead the Amir appointed his eldest
son and heir, ’Inayat Allah, as Minister for Education and Western subjects
continued to be taught. The Amir, though, did crack down on political
debate and dissent, disbanded his consultative council, and reverted to
the autocratic tradition of his father.
One of the many unsolved questions arising from the Mashruta
Conspiracy is the role of Mahmud Tarzi and his Young Afghan circle,
a movement which was regarded as almost synonymous with Hizb-i
Mashruta. Like many of those accused of involvement in the conspiracy,
Tarzi’s family had a history of support for Ya‘qub and ‘Ayub Khan and some
of Tarzi’s circle of Young Afghans were arrested, including his nephew.
Tarzi later employed several of the alleged conspirators as editors on his
newspaper and published their literary works. It is therefore difficult to
believe that Mahmud Tarzi knew nothing about the Hizb-i Mashruta, or
that he was not complicit in the alleged conspiracy to depose Amir Habib
Allah Khan. One well-placed Afghan official even told Jewett that the
chief conspirator was ‘the son of a cousin [of the Amir’s] who was exiled
to Turkistan’, a comment that surely refers to either Mahmud Tarzi or
his nephew, since Tarzi’s father was dead by this time. Evidently some
officials believed Mahmud Tarzi had a leading role in the plot and in the
Hizb-i Mashruta.
If, as seems highly likely, Mahmud Tarzi was a leading light in the
Hizb-i Mashruta and/or the Sirr-i Milli, why was he not arrested along
with his nephew, and why was his nephew not executed? Did the Tarzis
betray the other conspirators in return for their lives and was Mahmud
Tarzi secretly conspiring to depose Amir Habib Allah Khan? We will prob-
ably never know the answers to these questions, for the Tarzi family are
highly unlikely to publish any papers that might tarnish the saint-like
image accorded to him by his descendants and Afghan monarchists.
Mahmud Tarzi, the Seraj al-Akhbar-i Afghaniyya,
and Afghan nationalismWhat we do know is that the suppression of the Constitutional Party
marked Mahmud Tarzi’s rise to political power. During the last decade
of Habib Allah Khan’s reign, Mahmud and his brothers and nephew were