Prescribed reading
for those training for imperial service in 1871, was W W.
Hunter's, The Indian Musulmans: Are They Bound in
Conscience to Ache Against the Queen? In the early nineteenth century, Hunter
describes there was a large rebel camp that attracted both Afghan and Indian
fighters to a jihad initially against the Sikh power centred
in the Punjab, and then against their British successors. Rather than being a
traditional movement untouched by the West, this 19th century jihad was modern
and indeed cosmopolitan in character, a fact to which Hunter's descriptions of
its leader's rapturous reception in the British cities of Calcutta and Bombay
attest. Similar are his descriptions of the vast and secret network of foreign
supporters, financiers and recruits to this Afghan jihad. In short it bears an
uncanny resemblance to the 1980’s Afghan war. Both cases witnessed the
establishment of a charismatic foreign leader and his compatriots in
Afghanistan.
During the 1850’s
then, Wilayat Ali, a Wahhabbi and student of Syed
Ahmad of the Delhi Sultanate, confecting the story that Syed Ahmad was not
really dead but merely waiting in the mountains to resume the jihad, thus
shaping Wahhabism into a cult centered on its hidden imam. A secret network
based on Patna was established by which funds, supplies, and weapons were sent
along a covert caravan trail to the Mahabun Mountain,
along with volunteers to be trained as mujahidin. In January 1853, in response
to an appeal from a local chief, the British launched a raid on the Hindustani
camp at Sittana, and the raid forced the Hindustanis
to put off their jihad, which was rescheduled for the summer of 1857, Sepoy
Mutiny.
Not shown in “The
Rising” many young Wahhabis, easily identified by their distinctive black
waistcoats and dark blue robes, fought and died in the uprising. In the end
several hundred mutinous soldiers fled to the camp where Wilayat Ali had died
of a fever a year earlier so it was his younger brother, Inayat Ali, who
launched a final a raid into the plains, apparently believing that he would be
joined by mujahidin sent up from Patna.
In April 1858 the
British military commander in Peshawar led a three-pronged assault on the Mahabun Mountain to wipe out the Hindustani Fanatics once
and for all. Inayat Ali had just died of fever, and the Wahhabis were again
taken by surprise. The mujahidin were surrounded and all but wiped out, yet
somehow Wilayat Ali's eldest son, Abdullah Ali, escaped to fight another day.
The survivors moved to an abandoned settlement named Malka, where they were
entirely dependent on the charity of their neighbors. Amazingly, the Wahhabis
bounced back, again. They rebuilt their organization and reopened their
underground trail to the North-West Frontier.
Under the leadership
of Abdallah Ali, they moved from one hideout to another, harassed in turn by
the local tribes and the British authorities. In 1873, Abdullah Ali's youngest
brother in Patna appealed for an official pardon, rejected on the grounds that
the Hindustani Fanatics would eventually be forced to give up. But the
government was, as often before, indulging in wishful thinking. The Hindustanis
clung on, kept alive by handouts from the Pathan tribes.
When a British
journalist came to write about the North-West Frontier in 1890, he noted that
the Hindustanis were widely admired among the tribes for their "fierce
fanaticism." Their colony was celebrated locally as the Kila Mujahidin, or
"the Fortress of the Holy Warriors," wherein they "devoted their
time to drill, giving the words of command in Arabic, firing salutes with
cannon made of leather, and blustering about the destruction of the infidel
power of the British." It was said that they were still awaiting the
return of Syed Ahmad, their Hidden Imam. Then came the great frontier uprising
of 1897–98, beginning in Swat and spreading like the proverbial wildfire south
through tribal country, and requiring an army of 40,000 to reduce them to
submission.
The nature of the
society of the first Muslims, the forefathers or salaf,
and the incredible expansion of the Islamic community throughout the Arabian peninsular and beyond towards the Maghreb and south and
central Asia during the time of the Prophet and his immediate successors has
been proof to devout Muslims ever since that following the instructions of
Allah and the examples of the Prophet will ensure a just and peaceable society
and the concomitant cultural, military and political superiority of the Islamic
world. The texts and the example of the first generations of believers thus
provide an ideal, a reference point, that can be compared, inevitably
unfavorably, with any given extant government, situation or ruler. They offer a
vision of an' authentic' and 'true' Islamic society, against which reality
rarely stands much comparison. This is a political resource of enormous power.
The core texts of the Qur'an and the hadith are thus 'closed', in that they are
unchangeable, but also ,open', in that they are infinitely flexible, providing
answers in principle to all questions of behavior at all times. The former
quality means they have an autonomy that prevents manipulation by anyone hoping
for short-term gain in a specific local or political context, the latter means
they can be made appropriate for all people in all situations.' This again
means that Islam is always politically engaged as it allows dissident movements
in the Islamic world to appeal to the 'purity' of an, often imagined, earlier
society or religio-political order, predicated on a
'true', authentic reading of the Holy texts. There is thus an obvious religious
answer, and proscribed programme for action, for any
political grievance. If the corrupting elements are purged, the logic runs, a
fair and just and happy society will be established.
While recommending
the inclusion of Muslims into European society upon more or less equal terms as
a way of treating with their militancy, Sayyid Ahmad Khan stressed the fact
that the gentlemen who deserved such inclusion were to be men like himself,
anglicized Muslims who could interpret Islamic passions to the West and
European reason to the East. Despite their often sophisticated meditations upon
the nature and future of modern Islam, men like Sir Say vid were forced by
political circumstances to play the role merely of intermediaries between
Christians and Muslims because none was able to assume political power in his
own name. In order to do this Savvid Ahmad Khan, like
his liberal descendants today, who continue to play the same role, also had to
emphasize the threatening aspects of an Islamic violence whose substance he was
(like today’s moderate Muslims) ostensibly denying.
In many ways today's
jihad builds upon the earlier ventures described here. It, too, is located on
the peripheries of the Muslim world geographically, politically and
religiously, operating now in places like Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan and
India, as well as in Thailand and the Philippines. See Case Study.
But the key to
Afghanistan as such are the Pashtuns, historically referred to as the Pathans.
During British intrigues in the nineteenth century, the Pashtuns were romanticized
by the likes of Rudyard Kipling as the primitive and fiercely volatile tribes
occupying the northwest frontier region of India. In the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, weak Afghan governments used the independent Pashtun
tribes as a buffer against British forces moving north to thwart Russian
influence. This was the Great Game. In 1893, the British threatened to cut off
arms shipments that the Amir of Afghanistan desperately needed, forcing him to
sign a treaty creating the Durand Line, effectively splitting the Pashtun
region in two. Individual villages, and even families, suddenly found
themselves on opposite sides of supposed international borders. The situation
was only exacerbated in 1907 when Britain and Russia ratified the Anglo Russian
Convention, designating spheres of influence in Central Asia. By this juncture,
the Pashtun as a people were forever lost to the British as possible allies or
even neutrals.
As a result, over the
course of time, the British Government of India vacillated between policies of
purposeful withdrawal, in which troops were stationed on the more easily
secured plains east and south of the Pashtun tribal areas, and policies of
aggression, in which expeditions were mounted into Pashtun territory for
extended engagements with the various tribes. In 1901, the British opted to
contain the Pashtun tribes by re-designating the area they inhabited as the
"North-West Frontier Province." This area was separated from the
remainder of the Punjab, divided into districts under British political agents
who reported directly to the central government, and were administered via
pseudo-treaties with occasional military reprisals to keep them in line. We
already discussed British micromanagement in Iraq's tribal areas. This policy
was no less disastrous in Afghanistan as it in case of Iraq's tribal areas
described in the previous part.
While Afghanistan
gained its independence from Great Britain in 1919, the U.S. did not confer
recognition until 1935, and no diplomatic mission was opened until 1942. Thus
one can say that American relations with Afghanistan were rocky from the start.
Much of the initial
delay resulted from the U.S. government mirroring British diplomatic moves. At
the time of Afghanistan's independence, the British had not yet concluded their
final treaty from the Third Anglo-Afghan War. When the U.S. did establish
relations with Afghanistan over two decades later, and had to do with trumping
the Nazi German efforts to gain a foothold in the region.
U.S. relations with
Afghanistan regained strategic priority when the Soviet Union invaded the
country in December of 1979. Throughout the 1980s, Saudi Arabian-funded and
American trained and equipped mujahidin battled the Red Army, forcing the
Soviets out of Afghanistan in 1989. With the Russians out, these same jihadists
we empowered against the Communist threat changed their objectives in order to
obtain new sources of funding and maintain their jobs as holy warriors.
The leaders of so me of these groups say that they originally joined the
mujahidin for religious reasons. Their intent was to transform themselves and
simplify their lives. Several of these former idealists now admit they remain
in the Islamist fighter trade for the salaries. These men have skills and
careers like anyone else. As for the Afghans as a whole, a few years of
occupation are tolerable. If the coalition forces fail to bring stability soon
however, they may find themselves facing an unexpected foe in the common Afghan,
even a decade from now or more. If the coalition forces we fail to eradicate
the Pashtun led Taliban, simply through their tenacity, these groups may
eventually succeed in convincing the the majority
Pashtun population, that they can outlast the U.S. and provide the long-term
security that the Afghan people are seeking.
Al Qaeda-linked
groups, various well known Afghan warlords, and strongly fundamentalist Islamic
social organizations are operating in eastern Afghanistan and the Northwest
Territories of Pakistan. Their low intensity insurgent movement is made
possible because of the Pashtun social code named Pushtunwali.
This code states that any person, even an enemy, who asks for protection and
hospitality, will receive it.
After being given
sanctuary, these groups provide their hosts with money and expertise in areas
such as medicine. Should the coalition forces not act decisively against the
leadership of these groups, the native insurgents, much like Hezbollah
guerrillas in southern Lebanon, and Hammas in
Palestine, may eventually become integrated into the social fabric of Pashtun
life.
Within a generation,
we may very well end up with a region as strongly fundamentalist as the US
faced at the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, and a population as
openly hostile as the one the British faced in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries.
The first armed
involvement by the British was initiated to protect the northern approaches to
the British Raj (India) from Russian expansion. The original intent was merely
to replace Afghan ruler Dost Mohammad, with someone more sympathetic to British
interests. The British answer to replacing Dost Mohammad was to allow Shah Shujah al-Malik to take over as ruler of the country. He
was a despised former ruler of Afghanistan who the British intended to place on
the throne using their military assistance along with that of Ranjit Singh, the
Sikh Maharajah of the Punjab. Singh ruled the Punjab from Lahore, southeast of
Kabul across the Indus River. (Olaf Caroe, The
Pathans 550 B.C.-A.D. 1957, 1958 ,317-20.)
Why the British
thought it a wise decision to allow a despised former ruler, different in
religion, culture and ethnicity from the vast majority of Afghans, to try to
hold the throne in Kabul with the aid of a rival Sikh power, is a mystery. But
the British arrived in Kandahar in April of 1839 without a fight. Within weeks
of their entry into the city, the' Afghan's true feelings toward the British
began to manifest. The Chiefs were hoping that the Shah's British military
backing would soon leave the country, allowing them to regain full control of
their territories.
After a two-month
delay, the army advanced north from Kandahar to the fortress of Ghazni, ninety miles south of Kabul. The hastily formed
Intelligence Department, consisting of two British Political Officers, informed
Lt. General Sir John Keane, commander of the expedition, that Ghazni would be undefended when the British arrived. Based
on this faulty intelligence, Keane foolishly decided to leave the siege guns at
Kandahar. After a four-week march, in July of 1839, the British army arrived at
Ghazni and found the fortress to be heavily defended.
(Brigader General Sir Percy Sykes, A History of
Afghanistan, 1940,7-8.)
Fortunately for the
British, a traitor nephew of Dost Mohammad came into the British camp and
informed them that the Kabul gate, a side gate into the fortress, was not
heavily guarded.
Pounding the gate
with 900 pounds of gunpowder, British infantry and footsoldiers
poured into the breach. Over one thousand Afghans were killed while only
seventeen British soldiers lost their lives.
Before the British
Army even began to regroup and march on, Dost Muhammad sent his brother to the
British camp, proposing a deal in which the Dost would become Shah Shujah's prime minister. William H. Macnaghten,
the blustering commander of the British expedition, coldly refused
the offer. Considering that Dost Mohammed had never actually carried out any
action that directly opposed British intentions in the region, one cannot
wonder if this compromise may not have worked, at least long enough to set more
strategic goals in motion. As it was, the deal was declined, and British
indecisiveness during their subsequent occupation of Kabul would reinvigorate
the Afghan will, and seal the fate of thousands of British subjects. (Sykes,
11.)
The first major
British mistake came when Dost Mohammad, along with his entire clan, fled north
into Uzbek tribal territory, in modern day Uzbekistan. The small British column
sent in pursuit of the Dost inadvertently used one of his supporters as a guide
and were unable to catch up to the fleeing royal, allowing him to escape. Thus,
although the British made a triumphant entry into Kabul, they left intact the
entire enemy force from the Amir down to the lowliest enemy soldier who used
the situation to blend in to the population.
Foreshadowing the
disaster to come, when Shah Shujah rode into Kabul in
August of 1839 and reoccupied his palace, he was welcomed with empty streets
and indifference on the face of the city's inhabitants.
There is no question
that today in Afghanistan, President Karzai would lose control of the
government, and likely his life, if not for the presence of American and
international troops in Kabul. At present, the nation is in the infantile
stages of building an adequate army and police force capable of resisting the
aspirations of various powerful warlords. Karzai's power does not extend
outside of Kabul and the satellite citadels such as Kandahar. When it comes
right down to it, the combined use of arms and money, sometimes referred to as
the carrot and stick method, is really the only true means of
succeeding in international affairs. Human beings, whether as individuals, or
as a collective group who form an empire, act each moment to improve their lot
in life. Anything that one or the many agree on, they do so because it somehow
serves their own interests. The only way to force a change is if by doing so,
it benefits them in some way, or if the alternative to not accepting the
proposed situation somehow makes life worse. On a smaller scale, the combined
lack of carrot and stick is one of the problems the British faced in
Afghanistan, and one from which the coalition forces today can learn an
interesting lesson.
Shortly after the British
invasion of Afghanistan, Yar Mohammad, master of Herat, put aside his
differences with the Persians for their siege two years prior and began
scheming with them against the British presence in Afghanistan. Learning of Yar
Mohammad's conspiratorial engagement with the Persians, the British chose to
bribe him into cooperation. Yar Mohammad took the money and continued to plot
against the British. Two years and 200,000 British pounds later, the British
realized the folly of their policy and ended the payments. By this time, the
British did not have the military assets to send against Yar Mohammad in order
to break his will by force. In the end the British political mission was forced
to leave Herat, and the British buffer against both Persian influence to the
west, and Russian influence on the northern flank of Afghanistan, was lost.
Beyond Herat, the
situation was not much improved. The method by which the British chose to
control the country was not a good fit for the demographics and socio-economic
conditions of the time. Shah Shujah was the supposed
ruler of the country, but was held in place through the force of the British
military. British officers led both the Shah's troops and the local tribal
levies, and they were paid out of British coffers. The Afghans especially
chafed at the heavy taxes imposed on them to maintain these troops, and the
fact that the British could launch expeditions against them without any input
from the Shah or local chiefs. This method of operation has been improved on in
contemporary Iraq where the United States is footing the majority of the bill
for both U.S. and Iraqi troops and the Iraqi government has the final say in
nearly all military operations.
Macnaghten wrote to his superiors in India and England that the
situation in Kabul, and the country in general, was tentative. Over the course
of the first year in Afghanistan, he recommended that additional troops be
sent, and requested that he be allowed to advance on Herat in the northwest,
and Peshawar in the east. In the second major mistake of the occupation, no
units of significant size were sent. Aside from small garrisons located along
the lines of communication to India, and small probing forces, his requests to
expand the British area of control were denied. (Sykes, 16-8.)
From a historical
perspective, while the suggested campaigns would have likely overstretched
British assets, the potential success of taking the fight to the enemy were
instead replaced with the folly of doing nothing. In eerie foreshadowing of
what was to come, the road from Kabul down through Ghazni
to Kandahar was passable only by permission of the western Ghilzai,
while the eastern Ghilzai held the route from the
capital to Jalalabad in the hollow of their hand. Meanwhile, in some of the few
encounters between the British and the local populace outside of Kabul, the
British were not endearing themselves to the Afghan people. On one occasion, a
detachment sent to garrison Bamian, located just
outside of Kabul, demanded that the local Hazara inhabitants sell the army food
and supplies. When the people refused because the food was needed to feed their
cattle in the upcoming winter, the British attacked the local fort. The
supplies in question were burned and the fort's occupants were shot. (Sykes,
15.)
Throughout the
region, Afghans of various ethnicities grew increasingly angry at the
efficiency of the British backed taxation system, the inefficiency of Shah Shujah's government, and were increasingly swayed with Dost
Mohammad's claim to be "Commander of the Faithful." Support for the
Dost amongst tribes situated in every cardinal direction from Kabul began to
grow. Surprisingly, the Dost defeated a small British force just north of
Kabul, then rode to the capital and surrendered to Maenaghten.
The lack of British ruthlessness at this juncture led to the third major
British mistake of the campaign.
Dost Mohammad's
surrender as a victor enhanced his position in the eyes of the British, who
merely exiled him to Ludhiana in the Punjab. This comfortable exile served to
maintain the dignity of the Dost's clan in the eyes of his fellow Afghans. To
compound their mistake, the British did not pursue Dost Mohammad's son, Akbar
Khan. As the months passed, the wives and children of British and Indian Sepoy soldiers
began arriving in Kabul. Seeing this as another sign of a prolonged occupation,
Akbar Khan picked up where his father left off, gaining followers and biding
his time to destroy the British.
The fourth and most
disastrous mistake for the British was the most avoidable and sealed the doomed
fate of the British in Afghanistan. After the initial entry into Kabul, the
British had to decide where to garrison the army. The most reasonable location
would have been in the Balla Hissar,
the great fortress that dominated the city of Kabul, an astute and impressive
fortification even to this day. Captain Alexander Burnes, strongly
recommended the fortress, and the British initially set out to fortify the
structure. When Shah Shujah complained that the Balla Hissar dominated both the
city and, more importantly, his palace, and lowered his dignity among the
Afghans, Maenaghten agreed to abandon the fortress as
British quarters. Instead of occupying this nearly impregnable structure, the
British eventually built a cantonment on a low, swampy plain outside of Kabul.
The isolated cantonment kept the British out of touch with the pulse of the
Afghan people. Tactically, the cantonment was much too large to be adequately
defended. It was dominated by the Beymaroo Heights,
hills northwest of the cantonment, and various forts, none of which the British
occupied. Finally, the cantonment's supply compound was located a quarter mile
away, a decision that was soon to prove utterly disastrous.
Runjeet Singh, the faithful Sikh ally to the British, died in
late 1839, and Sikh warriors now feIt no apprehension
at hassling British officers passing through Sikh territory on their way to
Kabul. This left Avitabile, an ltalian
who ruthlessly governed Peshawar to the east of Kabul, as the only barrier to
the Sikhs and Afghans joining together to close off the Khyber Pass to the
British.
When in the south,
Baluchi tribes laid siege to Khelat, a city in modern
day Pakistan south of Quetta. The city quickly surrendered and the British political
officer, Lieutenant Loveday, was taken captive. He was horribly treated while
in captivity and his throat was cut just as a British punitive force approached
the rebel camp several months later.
As these other events
were unfolding, in the harsh wastelands between Kabul and Khelat,
the Durrani tribes of Kandahar began to rise up in
opposition to Shah Shujah's ruIe.
In their resistance we see the glaring failure of the British to immerse
themselves in the local political and cultural situation. The Durrani, founders of the earlier Afghan Empire, and
ancestors of Afghanistan's current president Karzai, had been heavily oppressed
under Dost Mohammad's rule. They originally rejoiced at Shah Shujah's reclaiming of the throne, but his lack of follow
through with their requests, combined with the patronizing attitude of the
British, led the Durrani to take up arms against the
Shah and his British protectors.
* Shortly after one
of his men killed (September 1853) Colonel Frederick Mackeson the most senior
British official on the North-West Frontier of the Punjab, leader of the
Wahhabi- Hindustanis Inayat Ali issued following statement: British rule in
northern India had officially begun in 1765, would end in June 1857. (C.Allen, God’s Terrorists, 2006, p.116)
Allan describes how
letters and other papers seized during the suppression of what the British
termed the Sepoy or Indian Mutiny of 1857 show that there was no overarching
conspiracy to free India from a foreign yoke. The central thesis of his new
book however is that ,”the Wahhabis, who alone had a well-thought-out plan to
overthrow the British” (Allen, 2006, p.125)
According to Allen’s
well researched book, shortly after the Mutiny broke out a fatwa was issued in
Delhi, declaring a jihad against the British ”a group of mullahs erected a
green banner on the roof of the city's greatest mosque, the Jama Masjid, and
published a fatwa proclaiming jihad.” (p.136.) By the end of September 1857
Delhi was a ghost town, entirely cleansed of Muslims, who were now viewed by
the ritish as the real enemy. (Allen, p.162)
Jihad in
the British Empire and Now.
For updates click homepage here