Return of a King: The Battle For Afghanistan (50 page)

In booty they carried off all his wealth and goods

As the autumn wind strips the leaves off a tree.
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Shortly after this, the rebels sent out a proclamation to the chiefs across the country: ‘On the third Tuesday of the blessed month Ramadan in the morning time, it occurred that with other heroic champions stirring like lions, we carried by storm the house of Sikander Burnes. By the Grace of the most holy and omnipotent God, the Brave Warriors having rushed right & left from their ambush, slew Sikander Burnes with various other Firangis of Consideration, and nearly 500 Battalion men, putting them utterly to the sword & consigning them to Perdition.’
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The trunk of Burnes’s headless body was left in the street to be eaten by the dogs of the city. For nearly a week, no one even thought to try and save anything of his mangled remains. Finally Burnes’s friend Naib Sharif, with whom he had spent many a lively evening, sent a servant to pick up the rotting remains and bury them in the garden of Burnes’s house.
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At the time of his death, Sir Alexander Burnes, soldier, spy, traveller, diplomat and thwarted deputy Envoy, was only thirty-six years old.

With Burnes’s house and Johnson’s treasury in flames, and the occupants of both houses slaughtered, the angry mob rippled out from the Sunni stronghold of Ashiqan wa Arifan and the Shor Bazaar, past Shah Zaman’s Pul-i-Khishti Masjid, and over the bridge in search of other targets. At the same time, as the news spread of plunder and profit, armed tribesmen began to pour into town from the rural hinterland. ‘The people of the surrounding region heard the news of Burnes’s assassination,’ wrote Fayz Mohammad. ‘Within a short time, while Shah Shuja and the English officers were still trying to devise a plan, many people had gathered in the city . . . The Ghilzais immediately pitched in without hesitating even a moment to unpack – the infantry with their bags of food still on their backs, and the cavalry with theirs in their saddlebags.’
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Already, late the previous night, Lady Sale had seen from her rooftop large numbers of armed Kohistani horsemen heading into town; now the stream of armed tribesmen pouring into Kabul from all directions and of all ethnicities swelled to a torrent. ‘Abdullah Khan Achakzai and Aminullah Khan Logari welcomed the armed volunteers who came dancing and drumming joyfully from all directions,’ wrote Mirza ‘Ata. ‘They gathered them under the battle standard of Islam outside the walls and ordered them to attack.’
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There had been around 300 rebels in the morning when the attack on Burnes’s compound took place; but within forty-eight hours some 3,000 fighters had assembled in the city; three weeks later, the numbers had swelled to an almost unprecedented 50,000 as a whole range of groups with quite different motives and grievances were mobilised to take on the British. Having arrived separately the different – and sometimes rival – groups made separate camps: in reality, especially at the beginning, the insurgents were never the united force the British imagined them to be. The supporters of the Barakzais took over the Shah Bagh, the crumbling remains of one of Shah Jahan’s old pleasure gardens. The Kohistani Tajiks based themselves in Deh Mazang, the eastern Ghilzais put up in the fort of Mahmud Khan, while the pro-Sadozai Royalists like Aminullah Khan Logari dominated the Old City. Most of the incomers were not from the Durrani elite but were instead drawn from relatively marginal groups: some were restless Pashtuns from the valleys and passes to the south and east of Kabul, from the Koh Daman and Logar, but it was perennially rebellious Tajik Kohistanis, deeply affected by the vicious punitive campaigns of Burnes and Sale the previous year, who initially seem to have made up the majority of the incomers, encouraged by their Naqsbandi pirs and especially by Mir Masjidi’s kinsman Mir Aftab, who marched in with a large party on the evening of 3 November. Some, such as the Logaris, arrived with their chiefs; others came as individuals, called to arms by the radical Sunni ‘ulema and encouraged by the rumours of rich plunder to be had. Shuja later wrote that he believed that ‘these men are not influenced by considerations of religion, they give their lives for the wealth of this world and do not fear death’.
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But the rebels certainly used the rhetoric of religious war in order to recruit for and justify their revolution – a relative innovation in the internal history of the Afghan peoples as most previous conflict had been between Muslims.
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‘All the citizens, great and small, rich and poor, civilian and military, were made to swear on the Holy Qur’an to support the struggle,’ adds Mohammad Husain Herati.
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The first targets of the newly strengthened rebels were the series of small outlying forts and tower houses between the town and cantonment that the British military bureaucrats had commandeered as storehouses. ‘All these forts were close to the city,’ wrote Herati, ‘in a continuous web of orchard walls and irrigation channels, with thick tree-cover, which made it easy for the guerrillas to approach.’
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There was nothing random about this choice of target: the rebel leaders were well aware that the British had failed to make proper arrangements for guarding their supplies which were stored not within the cantonment but at the forts of Jafar Khan, Nishan Khan and Mohammad Sharif.

They realised that if they could destroy or capture these forts, the British would either die of hunger, or surrender from lack of ammunition, or both. Thus, as soon as Burnes was dead, they headed out of the city to destroy the forts and loot the godowns there. Within minutes, they pulled down the Fort Jafar Khan and set it on fire. Then they pushed forward to the Fort Mohammad Shareef which was adjacent to the Cantonment, and the Ghazis then turned their attention back to bringing down the walls, and like rats began to dig up the foundations.
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That morning, Captain Colin Mackenzie had woken in the third of the walled compounds to be targeted for attack, the Qal’a Nishan Khan, the commissariat fort reserved for the supplies of the Shah’s forces. This fort, which contained nine months’ supplies of wheat and fodder, as well as all the British medical supplies, lay just over a mile from the British headquarters, flanked by the canal and the Qizilbash quarter of Murad Khani on one side and on the other abutting the Shah Bagh. Mackenzie had already heard rumours of trouble in the town but was absorbed in adding up his regimental accounts, which he wanted to complete before accompanying the Envoy down to Peshawar the following day.

Suddenly, a naked man stood before me, covered with blood, from two deep sabre cuts in the head and five musket shots in the arm and body. He proved to be a sawar [cavalryman] of Sir W Macnaghten sent with a message to us, but intercepted by the insurgents. This being a rather strong hint of how matters were going, I immediately ordered all the gates to be secured. At the same time I caused loop holes to be bored into the upper walls of Captain Troup’s house [a short distance away] in which were stationed a naik [NCO] and ten sepoys. Whilst so employed, the armed population of Deh-i-Afghanan came pouring down through the gardens and began firing at us . . . One of my men was killed, and another badly wounded.

The attackers then occupied the whole of the Shah Bagh and could not be dislodged despite repeated sallies from the fort by Mackenzie’s men, who continued to suffer casualties.

The canal was cut off during the day, and so closely watched that one of my followers was shot while trying to fetch some water; but we fortunately found an old well, the water of which was drinkable. Towards the afternoon, having no ammunition but what was contained in the soldiers’ pouches, I communicated with Capt Trevor who despatched my requisition for ammunition at least, but did not send assistance. Capt Lawrence’s gallant offer to come to our aid, if loaned two companies, was refused [by Elphinstone and Macnaghten]. In the evening I served out provisions from the Government stores. The attacks continued at intervals during the night, and we had the most disagreeable suspicion that the enemy was undermining our northwest tower.
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That afternoon, while Mackenzie was fighting for his life, within the city the rebel leaders were reviewing their options. Until early afternoon they had all kept their horses saddled in case the expected British counter-attack broke through to their headquarters.
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But it was becoming increasingly clear that the British were too shocked to respond in any coherent way, and several chiefs who had initially offered their services to them, seeing the failure of nerve in the cantonment, now began to drift away and to put out feelers instead to the rebels.
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As Vincent Eyre commented: ‘The murder of our countrymen, and the spoliation of public and private property, was perpetrated with impunity within a mile of the cantonment, and under the very walls of the Bala Hisar. Such an exhibition of weakness on our part taught the enemy their strength – confirmed against us those who, however disposed to join in the rebellion had hitherto kept aloof, and ultimately encouraged the nation to unite as one man for our destruction.’
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As a first step to this, the rebel leaders decided that rather than prepare for a quick exit they had better organise themselves instead into a provisional government, and elect a leader, without which it was not lawful to declare jihad.

As most of the leading nobles at the beginning of the uprising were Royalists, their first thought was to offer Shah Shuja the chance to expel his infidel backers. Shuja had made his frustration with the British widely known, but according to Herati the rebel overtures were nonetheless met with a firm rebuke from the Shah.

The leaders of the uprising sent a deputation to His Majesty, saying: ‘You are our monarch, and we seek your support in our struggle against this foreign occupation: please separate yourself from this tribe of foreigners!’ His Majesty replied: ‘Our rule is inseparable from the English, whose honoured guest we have been for thirty years; and even though their imposition of the worthless Uthman Khan as the Nizam al-Daula and Wazir has caused us much grief, yet we bear them no grudge: let what is to befall them fall also on us!’ Having failed in their attempt to co-opt His Majesty, the rebels declared him an infidel, a kafir.
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In the absence of a Sadozai to lead them, the insurgents then turned to the Barakzais. There had been rumours for several weeks that Dost Mohammad’s clever and ruthless son, Akbar Khan, had at last escaped from Bukhara. But in his absence the rebels were forced to turn to the most senior of his Barakzai cousins, Mohammad Zaman Khan, the man who had saved Mohan Lal’s life earlier in the day. When he had first heard of the outbreak, Zaman Khan had sent his son Shuja, the Shah’s godson, to Captain Trevor to offer his services.
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Now, seeing the way the wind was blowing, he agreed to take on the leadership of the revolt, writing politely to Macnaghten that he had accepted the offer ‘not from his own wish, but to prevent greater ills arising’. He said that he was prepared to become Wazir to Shuja and negotiate a British withdrawal by peaceful means. ‘They elected Mohammad Zaman Khan Barakzai as their leader,’ recorded the disapproving Herati, ‘and he who was commonly known as the “rich nomad”, a country bumpkin, now became the most powerful man in Kabul.’
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The two real leaders of the uprising were not forgotten: Aminullah Khan Logari was elected his Naib, or deputy (a title he proudly retained for the rest of his life), with Abdullah Khan Achakzai acting as the Commander-in-Chief of the rebel armies. A proclamation was issued: ‘Nawab Mohammad Zaman Khan Barakzai, Ghazi, in kindness the flower of the times, and in religious devotion the wonder of the age, has been selected by the Muslims of all tribes, under the title of Amir of the Faithful and Imam of the Holy Warriors, and as such recognised by all.’
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Soon after this, mullahs and malangs [dervishes] rushed through the streets of the city banging their drums, formally declaring a jihad.

In the Bala Hisar, Shah Shuja, understanding the vital importance of an immediate response before the insurgency gained any more momentum, was increasingly baffled by the failure of Macnaghten to counter-attack: it was not just self-defeating, it was also such a stark contrast to the way he had been so keen to manage every minute detail of Afghanistan’s governance in peacetime. Yet, parallel to all the frantic activity in the city, the British leadership within the cantonment remained strangely quiescent, as if frozen with fear. As Herati put it, ‘His Majesty eventually sent his Chief Secretary to Macnaghten in the cantonment with the message that: “Now is no time for idleness or delay! Send troops at once to invest the city from all sides and quell this riot before it swells to unmanageable proportions; arrest the leaders before they get fully organised – it can still be done!”’ Herati went on:

Macnaghten – alas – thought His Majesty over-nervous, and merely sent one platoon of Tilingas [sepoys] with artillery to the Bala Hisar fort to calm the royal nerves. His Majesty again sent an urgent message: ‘We are currently quite safe in the Bala Hisar fort; but the utmost urgency is security in the city, which must be restored at once, otherwise these turbulent townsmen will never be tamed!’ Macnaghten’s only answer was: ‘Why all this hurry?’ If only Macnaghten had followed His Majesty’s advice, and had sent immediately some proper English troops to invest the city from all sides, and to make an example of the ring-leaders by burning down their houses, they would have struck the fear of God into the rioters and restored order! As it was, Macnaghten dithered, while His Majesty had only his small personal guard and had to bend to his will.
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