afghanistanearlier by an Afridi assassin, undertook the hazardous trip and managed to
negotiate the release of Molly Ellis. 37 Following the success of this mission,
Sir John Maffey, Chief Commissioner of the Frontier, called a jirga of Afridi
and Orakzai leaders and threatened them with military action, whereupon
they signed a declaration outlawing the bandits and surrendering some of
their traditional autonomy. Britain thus exploited the murders and hostage
crisis to secure greater influence over the frontier tribes, while at the same
time undermining the king’s credibility with tribal leaders. From this point
forward ’Aman Allah Khan’s relations with the Pushtun of southeastern
Afghanistan, already under strain as a result of his constitutional reforms,
became even more fractious.
The Islamic backlash: the Khost Rebellion and the Loya JirgaIn the spring of 1924 tribal discontent with the government’s reforms finally
led to a revolt among the Mangals of Khost. The catalyst for the rebellion
was the actions of a government official who, in accordance with the new
family law, refused to annul a marriage because the father of the woman
in question had pledged her to another man while she was an infant. A
certain ‘Abd Allah, known as Mullah-i Lang, the Lame Mullah, declared
this ruling to be against the shari‘a and issued a fatwa condemning the king
as a kafir. In a dramatic gesture, Mullah-i Lang appeared before the jirga
bearing a copy of the Nizam Namas in one hand and a Qur’an in the other
and called on the assembly to decide between human and heavenly law.
The king sent mediators to the area to attempt to justify the new laws, but
Mullah-i Lang sent them packing, damning them as lackeys of an infidel
regime. Mullah-i Lang then declared jihad and condemned ’Aman Allah
Khan as apostate on the grounds that his Constitution rejected the eternal
nature of the Qur’an. Mullah-i Lang even went so far as to claim the king
had become an Ahmadiyya, a sect founded in 1889 by Mirza Ghulam
Ahmad Qadiani, a Punjabi, whose followers believed he was the Mahdi
and Messiah.
Rebel forces marched down the Logar valley and occupied Gardez,
though government forces led by Jamal Pasha, a Turkish general, managed
to halt their advance on Kabul and retook Gardez. The victory, however, was
short-lived. A few weeks later, ex-King Ya‘qub Khan’s son ‘Abd al -Karim,
who was living in exile in Lahore, escaped the surveillance of the British
authorities and crossed into Khost, where the rebels declared him King.
They then went back on the offensive and reoccupied Gardez, wiping out
one of the government’s crack Turkish-led regiments in the process. At