afghanistan
’Aman Allah Khan’s handling of the constitutional crisis, the Khost
rebellion, the Piperno Affair and foreign relations demonstrated a worry-
ing degree of political naivety and poor judgement. The king’s belief that
he could impose his own reformist vision on his nation simply by fiat
created only discontent and rebellion, while his capitulation to ideolog-
ical opponents led to disillusionment among reformers and those who
wanted a more gradual process of modernization. In April 1924 Sardar
Nadir Khan, the eldest of the Musahiban brothers, confided to Sir Francis
Humphrys, the British Minister in Kabul, that he opposed the rapidity
of the king’s modernization programme, the lack of public consultation
over the Constitution, cuts in military spending and the domination of the
military by Turks. Shortly afterwards, Nadir Khan told the king to his face
that he only owed his position to the army, whereupon an angry ’Aman
Allah Khan sent Nadir Khan into what was in effect exile, appointing
him ambassador to France. The breach between the Seraj and Musahiban
families became permanent a year or so later when the king annulled the
engagement of his sister to Nadir Khan’s brother, Muhammad Hashim
Khan. In response, Nadir Khan resigned his post and retired to Nice, where
he was joined later by Shah Wali Khan and Muhammad Hashim Khan.
Even Mahmud Tarzi became disillusioned with his protégé. The rela-
tionship seems to have begun to fall apart after ’Aman Allah Khan overruled
Tarzi and signed the Anglo-Afghan Agreement of 1921, for a few months
later Tarzi was sent as ambassador to France. He was recalled in 1924, rein-
stated as Minister of Foreign Affairs, but Tarzi again fell out with the king
over his handling of the constitutional crisis and the Piperno Affair. In 1927
Tarzi, pleading ill-health, left for Switzerland. Other reformers, who had
lost hope that any significant change could be instituted under the mon -
archy, re-formed the Hizb-i Mashruta and anti-government shab namas
once more began to circulate. Another faction founded Afghanistan’s first
Republican Party, while the Jawanan-i Afghan, the pro-Bolshevik move-
ment in Bukhara, established a cell in Kabul that was the precursor of
Afghanistan’s Communist parties.
’Aman Allah Khan eventually regained some of the ground lost to
the Islamic lobby. In 1926, when a German shot an Afghan, allegedly in
self-defence, his trial was conducted according to European legal proced-
ures; he was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, but received a
royal pardon. Tarzi then privately reassured foreign diplomats that qisas
would not be applied in the case of foreign, non-Muslim guest workers.
Queen Soraya opened a girls’ school in the Dilkusha Palace and eventually
established a number of girls’ schools outside the palace walls. ’Aman Allah
nandana
(Nandana)
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