dreams melted into air, 1919–29
The emergence of a Turkistanian independence movement posed one
more foreign policy dilemma for ’Aman Allah Khan, as many Muslim
leaders urged him to support their struggle for independence. In the
summer of 1919 ’Aman Allah Khan sent a mission to the Khan of Bukhara
that included the Hazrat Sahib of Karokh, the Mir of Guzargah, military
advisers and a gift of six artillery pieces. Two more ambassadors, accom-
panied by a large body of troops, were sent to Merv and Khiva, while
hundreds of Afghans and Indians joined the Afghan Volunteer Force and
were sent north to assist the Khan of Bukhara. The following year Nadir
Khan was dispatched to Qataghan to coordinate this military assistance.
However, the Amir’s support was far from altruistic. In return he demanded
Muhammad ‘Alim Khan cede substantial territory in the Ferghana oasis,
while Afghan assistance to the Khans of Merv and Khiva was tied to a
pledge that they would cede the Amir sovereignty over the Pandjeh oasis.
The Dobbs Mission and the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1921Moscow was well aware of the Amir’s covert assistance to the basmachis,
even as Suritz and the Kremlin debated the pros and cons of the draft Soviet-
Afghan treaty. Following the fall of Bukhara, the Soviet administration
covertly set up the Central Committee of Young Afghan Revolutionaries
(Jawanan-i Afghan), a movement dedicated to the overthrow of the Durrani
monarchy and the establishment of a Soviet-style Republic. In Afghanistan
and Britain, the fall of Khiva and Bukhara resurrected the spectre of a Soviet
invasion of Balkh, so despite having agreed to the draft treaty with Russia
only a matter of months earlier, ’Aman Allah Khan asked the Viceroy to
send Dobbs to Kabul to renew discussions about an Anglo-Afghan treaty.
When Dobbs arrived in Kabul in early 1921 he reported the capital
was seething with intrigue with Russians, Italians, Germans, Turks and
French all vying for a stake in independent Afghanistan. However, despite
the threat from Russia to Afghanistan’s northern borders, Tarzi con tinued
to insist Britain agree to the terms the Afghan side had demanded at
Rawalpindi, which Britain had already rejected. The negotiations from
the British viewpoint were complicated by the fact that their intelligence
service had failed to obtain a complete copy of the Soviet-Afghan Treaty
and Dobbs had only a general idea what the Russians had offered the Amir.
In the end, Dobbs spent nearly a year in Kabul, during which time the
Afghan government signed treaties with Turkey, Italy and Iran. Dobbs’s
hands were tied, for London insisted as a precondition of any formal
treaty that the Amir abrogated his treaty with Russia, so when in August