Execution of Five Prisoners—The Kotwal of Cabul—His Proclamation to the
People—Nek Mahomed and the Amir—Aghir Khan’s Crime—The Moollah
Khwaja Nazir and his Attempt to raise a _Jehad_—Effect of the
Executions upon the People—Preparing Winter Quarters—Dispersion
of the Tribes at the Shutargardan—Execution of Afghan
Officers—The Course of Justice—Stern Reprisals necessary—Afghan
Fanaticism—Hostility of the Mass of the People—The Position of the
Amir—Political Problems.
CAMP SIAH SUNG, _20th October_.
To-day we have had the satisfaction of seeing marched out to execution
in the Bala Hissar five prisoners, more or less directly concerned in
the events of the last few weeks, whose guilt was very clearly
established in our eyes. As might have been expected, it has been no
easy matter to collect evidence in Cabul, many witnesses being afraid of
after-consequences if they bore testimony to the conduct of men under
suspicion. We have not notified in any way what is to be the duration of
our stay here, and once our protection over our well-wishers is removed,
their fate may be readily imagined. There is no one who cherishes
revenge more fervently than an Afghan, and every witness would be marked
down by the kinsmen of those against whom he had appeared. By a little
judicious management, however, in which Hyat Khan, Assistant Political
Officer, has been chief agent, pretty full evidence has been obtained
without publicity, and after being carefully sifted, it has been
submitted to the Military Commission,[19] of which General Massy is
President, as the various prisoners implicated have been brought up.
Yesterday this Commission had before it five prisoners, all of whom it
sentenced to death by hanging, and to-day this sentence was carried out.
The terms of the proclamation issued by General Roberts from Zerghun
Shahr left no outlet of escape for all such persons as were concerned in
the massacre of Sir Louis Cavagnari and his companions, or who offered
armed resistance to the British troops advancing with the Amir under
their protection. Death was the penalty incurred in either case;
assassination being the one offence, and treason against their lawful
sovereign the second. This dual mode of dealing with offenders was no
doubt due to the inference that those who chose to fight against us must
have so far committed themselves in prior events as to make them in
technical term “accomplices after the act.” To aid and defend a murderer
is to participate in his crime; and the leaders at Charasia and on the
Deh-i-Afghan Heights, though nominally only accused of high treason
against Yakub Khan, were really guilty of abetting the men who had fired
the Residency and slaughtered its inmates in the early days of
September.
-----
Footnote 19:
The members of the Commission were Brigadier General Massy
(President), Major Moriarty, Bengal Staff Corps, and Captain Guinness,
72nd Highlanders.
-----
In the attack upon our Embassy and in the after-tumult and organized
resistance to our troops, it was known that the city people had borne a
prominent part, and it was therefore necessary that one of their leaders
should be made to suffer for their offences. Accordingly, the Kotwal, or
chief magistrate of Cabul, was arrested immediately after the
proclamation of Sir F. Roberts had been read in the Amir’s garden, and
he was the chief personage among the five tried yesterday. The evidence
against this man, Mahomed Aslam Khan, was that after the Residency had
been stormed, he ordered and superintended the throwing of the bodies of
the Guides over the Bala Hissar wall into the ditch below, where they
now lie in a deep hole covered over with stones and rubbish. This was
his active participation in the first series of events, and there was no
doubt the influence his position gave him was exercised in every way in
favour of the mutineers, and that he made no effort to control the city
rabble. When it became known in Cabul that our forces were encamped at
Charasia, he showed himself most active in organizing measures to drive
us back. On the night before the fight, when all the fanatical passions
of the soldiery and the populace were excited to the utmost, he issued a
proclamation in which all faithful Mahomedans were called upon to
assemble and march out to do battle against the British. This was
circulated throughout the city and neighbourhood, and brought in many
recruits; while, to keep the ill-organized army up to its work, he gave
Rs. 1,000 to the bakers to cook food for the troops. This they were to
carry with them to the Charasia Heights. The police were further
employed to turn out, in the early morning of October 6th, all
faint-hearted citizens who shirked the duty imposed upon them of meeting
our army. With a boldness that seemed almost like bravado, Aslam Khan
did not seek safety in flight when we encamped before Cabul, but
actually acted as our guide, when Sir Frederick Roberts visited the
ruins of the Residency. He explained very vividly all that took place,
and even pointed out the grave of the Guides below. His defence before
the Commission was, that the bodies were thrown over the wall by his
people without his knowledge; and that in respect of the proclamation,
he issued it at the instigation of Sirdar Nek Mahomed Khan,
Commander-in-Chief of the rebels, who said the Amir had given orders to
that effect. There was just a colourable excuse in this, as it is now
established beyond doubt that Nek Mahomed visited the Amir in our camp
the night before Charasia. The Amir was really a puppet in the hands of
the men then about him, and it is quite on the cards that they
authorized Nek Mahomed to use his name freely; and that in this way the
proclamation was published. The double dealing of the Wazir, the
Mustaufi, and Zakariah Khan and his brother, have since come to light,
and they are now under arrest awaiting trial, though sufficient evidence
to hang them is not yet forthcoming. It is an ill-return on the part of
the Amir’s retinue that the freedom granted to them on the march to
Cabul should have been thus abused. The messengers we allowed him to
receive and despatch in all good faith seem to have been merely
emissaries of the mutineers preparing a trap in which to destroy our
force. That Nek Mahomed should be in our camp on the 5th and fight
against us on the 6th, in command of 4,000 or 5,000 troops, was the
outcome of our generosity towards Yakub Khan, whom we treated as a guest
instead of a prisoner. He himself is so weak-minded and helpless, that
one hesitates to accuse him of direct treachery. But the case is very
different with his most trusted ministers, who are now in safe custody
in the quarter-guards of our British regiments. Nek Mahomed is a
fugitive, and it is doubtful if we shall ever capture him, unless he is
ill-advised enough to try conclusions with us in the winter months; but
if he is ever caught, and can be tempted to make a clean breast of it,
the truth of the whole business in which he was the leading spirit will
be made clear. It is only bare justice to Yakub Khan to give his own
version of Nek Mahomed’s interview with him. The Amir states that he
entreated Nek Mahomed to return and order the dispersal of the mutinous
regiments then in the Bala Hissar: to forbid the city rabble from
showing any resistance to us; and to issue a warning against any one
appearing armed in or near Cabul. This is the Amir’s statement, and
until Nek Mahomed is forthcoming, it must be looked upon as trustworthy.
The second prisoner, if lowest in rank, seems to have been most
intimately connected of the batch with the revolting scenes following
the Massacre of the Embassy. This was Aghir Khan, chowkidar of Mundai,
who was sworn to as having carried the head and shoulders of one of the
English sahibs from the smoking ruins of the Residency to the ridge on
which stands the Upper Bala Hissar, overlooking the city. This was on
the morning after the place had been sacked, and it was generally
believed that it was Sir Louis Cavagnari’s head that was carried along.
Aghir Khan’s defence was, that he took the head with the intention of
preserving it until the British should come; but that on reaching the
ridge the Kotwal’s people seized it, and that he could not learn what
afterwards became of it. His story was quite unsupported, and the man’s
general demeanour and known character were all against him. A more
ruffianly-looking face could scarcely be found in the whole of
Afghanistan, which is very prolific of such growths.
In this outbreak of fanaticism in Cabul, it was quite impossible that
the _moollahs_ could remain quiet, their known hatred to foreign
intrusion being always a dangerous element in local politics. One of the
five prisoners was Khwaja Nazir, a priest of great influence, who
preached a _jehad_, collected large numbers of his most fanatical
followers, gave them a standard, and sent them out to Charasia. The
fourth man tried was Sultan Aziz, a Barakzai, son of the Nawab Mahomed
Zaman Khan, ex-Governor of Khost. Being related in blood to the reigning
family, it was all the more significant that Sultan Aziz and his father
should have fought at Charasia, after being leading spirits in arming
the mob which flocked into the Bala Hussar on the evening of the 5th
October. The fifth and last prisoner was Kaisruh Khan, ex-General in
rank and Superintendent of Army Clothing: he played a similar part to
that of Sultan Aziz. All five prisoners were condemned to death by the
Commission, and this sentence was confirmed by the Major-General
Commanding. This morning they were marched out of camp at half-past
nine, under escort of a company of the 92nd Highlanders, a fatigue party
following with picks and shovels as grave-diggers. There was very little
ceremony observed, and only a few Cabulis from the city looked on as the
men were escorted towards the Bala Hissar gate. Two scaffolds had been
raised, the Kotwal being honoured with a special rope outside the door
which young Hamilton so gallantly defended, and which was eventually
battered in by the fire of the field-piece dragged up by the mutineers.
The other four were hanged on a scaffold built in the courtyard, round
which the Guides had been quartered. With the usual apathy of
Mahomedans, the men did not seem to appreciate their fate, and gave no
trouble when told to mount the scaffold. They were buried in a
rudely-dug grave near where they were hanged, and the gallows still
remain ready for any other prisoners who may be considered worthy of
death. The news of the execution is said to have had a healthy effect
upon the city, it being now made clear to the populace that our old,
absurd mode of dealing with assassins as if they were saints, has no
longer a place in our policy. However distasteful the office of hangman
may be, it has to be filled; and in the present case our army is but
taking the place of the executioner by pressure of circumstances. The
mutineers had not the courage to defend the city they had incriminated
by their acts; and having spared the city, all that remains for us to do
is to punish such of the rabble whose guilt is brought home to them.
There have been few changes in camp beyond a reduction in the number of
regiments encamped on Siah Sung Ridge. The 5th Ghoorkas, 23rd Pioneers,
and F-A, R.H.A., are now in Sherpur cantonments busily engaged in
hutting themselves. The place is so filthy that a systematic cleansing
and fumigating process is being instituted by Dr. Porter, in chief
medical charge. The floors of the rooms are being scraped to a depth of
three or four inches, and new floors laid down, while the wholesome
influence of whitewash is also being brought to bear upon the walls. Our
troops are very healthy now—no cholera has been reported for a week—and
it would be absurd to risk the chance of typhoid fever and kindred
diseases by neglecting ordinary sanitary precautions. The barracks are
expected to prove very comfortable quarters for the winter, as it seems
plain we shall have to stay here for four or five months. Since the
capture of the twelve guns, abandoned so hastily on the Ghazni Road, we
have heard no more of regiments marching down upon Cabul, and for the
present at least the enemy may be looked upon as non-existent. From the
Shutargardan, too, we hear of the dispersion to their homes of the
Mangals and Ghilzais who have worried Colonel Money so persistently, and
perhaps there may now be a chance of our fortnight’s post reaching us.
It will be the last from that direction, as it has been resolved to
trust in future to the Jellalabad route. What is the reason of the slow
advance from the Khyber? This is what every one is asking, and the
answer is generally brief enough: “Want of transport.”
CAMP SIAH SUNG, _23rd October_.
Yesterday two ressaldars of the Afghan cavalry, who were proved to have
been in the Bala Hissar during the attack upon the Embassy, and to have
shared in the after-events, were marched out to execution in the Bala
Hissar. When told they were to suffer death ignominiously by hanging,
they showed no alarm, answering merely “It is well.” This indifference
to death stands these men in good stead; for, if found guilty, they are
executed within twenty-four hours, thus leaving them only a very short
time in which to consider the awkward termination of their careers. As a
little trait of character it may be mentioned that one of these
ressaldars, a fine portly man, picked out the stone from his signet-ring
during the night, his pride no doubt prompting him to destroy the stone
sooner than it should fall into infidel hands. It may be that he found
means to convey it away secretly to his friends; but so close a watch is
kept upon condemned prisoners that this seems unlikely. Ten o’clock is
the hour at which men are generally hanged; and now, daily, a little
crowd of soldiers, camp-followers, and traders from the city gathers
near the 72nd quarter-guard, from which starts the road down the ridge.
The soldiers, in shirt-sleeves and with the favourite short pipe in
their mouths, betray but faint curiosity, looking upon the culprits with
hearty contempt, and only regretful that they have not had to meet them
in fair fight. “If we’d been the French,” I heard one man plaintively
say, “there’d have been more than two or three.” No doubt there would;
but our mode of warfare with men, compared with whom the Arabs of
Algeria are gentlemen, is very different to that followed by the
generals of Napoleon III. The few Afghans who watch the little company
of British infantry marching down with the prisoners in their midst are
almost as much attracted by the bayonets of our men as by the presence
of their unlucky countrymen; and they soon turn back to our tents to
mulct us in rupees by sharp bargaining in poshteens (sheep-skin coats),
furs, carpets, and Russian chinaware. The two ressaldars stepped out
boldly enough to keep pace with their escort; and whatever their
feelings may have been, they concealed them stolidly enough. They looked
less brave when standing pinioned, with the rope about their necks,
facing the ruins of the Residency; and not one on-looker felt the least
pity for them, for the shot-marked walls on every side call up bitter
memories and silence any thought of mercy. Our Black Assize is a very
small one so far; for the majority of the leaders have escaped, and we
have to content ourselves with the small fry. Even as it is, men are
remanded from day to day if the evidence is at all faulty, and the
Military Commission are careful to avoid jumping to conclusions. To-day
a sepoy of the 1st Herat Regiment was hanged; and as he was caught in
the city by a Kizilbash, it is expected that more of his companions are
still hidden within the walls. With a temerity that showed his desperate
case, this man had his rifle and ten cartridges with him, but he made no
show of resistance. The difficulty of obtaining evidence is gradually
disappearing, the Kizilbash who handed the sepoy to General Hills,
Military Governor of Cabul, coming forward openly and stating all that
he knew. It is to these Kizilbashes that we shall have greatly to trust
in examining into the details of the Massacre, as the city people are
all against us. Being semi-independent, and forming a powerful section
among themselves, the Kizilbashes have less to fear, than others, from
any measures of revenge that may afterwards be taken against them; and
if we can once get them to speak openly, our work will be greatly
simplified. Of the secret combination which Kushdil Khan, Nek Mahomed,
and the other influential chiefs about the Amir’s person promoted, it
will be far more difficult to take up the threads; but there is still
some hope of tracing the conspiracy to its source. As the investigation
proceeds, and the various statements forthcoming are dove-tailed into
each other, it will become plain upon whom the chief guilt is to rest.
There are still several prisoners to be tried, and each day adds its
little quota of evidence against the large class of “suspects.”
There will no doubt be exception taken to the course Sir F. Roberts is
pursuing, and political capital may be made out of it;[20] but unless
the mission of the army now before Cabul is to be a failure, there is no
option but to follow out to the end the lines of policy laid down. The
murder of our Envoy and his escort was, as the Proclamation in the Bala
Hissar of October 12th sets forth, “a treacherous and cowardly crime,
which has brought indelible disgrace upon the Afghan people,” and there
is but one punishment for treachery and cowardice of this kind. If daily
executions are to be the rule for the next few weeks, they can only be
those of isolated persons who may fall into our hands; and their death
is a very small atonement for the crime in which so many participated.
The city rabble is unpunished; the Herat regiments have escaped; and if
we are nominally in possession of Northern Afghanistan, that possession
means very little to the ruffians we have to deal with. They will pocket
our rupees and thrive upon us as long as we remain; and the instant we
take our departure, their arms, now hidden, will soon be furbished up
again for future mischief. Apart from this view of the case—which is, of
course, only taken as regards the discontented and fanatical part of the
nation more nearly concerned in the events of the first week in
September—there are two other considerations which have to guide us in
all that we are doing. The first is that our presence is not desired by
any Afghan of spirit in the country, and the second and far more serious
is that we have on our hands and are proclaiming ourselves the
protectors of a sovereign who has scarcely a vestige of power. Of our
position towards the Amir Yakub Khan I will speak presently; but the
sullen submission of the people can more readily be disposed of.
Whatever despot has governed Afghanistan his subjects have always
preferred to suffer under his rule than to submit to outside
interference; and this jealousy of foreign intruders has always been a
stumbling-block in our dealings with Amirs in days gone by. We have had
to calculate not only upon the sincerity of the ruler, but upon his
capacity for controlling the fanaticism of his subjects. Up to the
Treaty of Gundamak, we blindly believed that such capacity could exist.
Now, after being roughly undeceived, we have taken for a time these
subjects under our immediate control, and we find them submitting to
superior force, but yielding in no way cordially to their fate. We can
trust them while an army is among them, but our acts are only looked
upon as temporary, and not the least active assistance can be counted
upon in our search after those whom we have come to punish. The people
will give supplies when each village is visited by a purchasing party,
strongly escorted by our cavalry; but otherwise they would gladly let us
starve sooner than open their grain-stores for our benefit. The few days
on which we had to fight, every villager who thought he could do so with
safety to his own skin pulled trigger upon detached parties of our men;
and if the headmen are now coming in, seeing Cabul is at our mercy, it
is because they dread a visitation from our troops. They are as
insincere in all their protestations of friendship as forty years ago;
but we put the proper value now upon their promises, and are strong
enough to punish them if occasion arises. Such is the attitude
relatively of our army and the people: the only sign we give of our
supremacy being by keeping a tight hand upon Cabul itself, and by
hanging such of our prisoners as participated in its crime.
-----
Footnote 20:
This expectation proved only too well-founded.
-----
Our relations with the Amir are on a very different footing, though it
would puzzle a Russian diplomatist to say what is the basis of our
policy. It is a mixture of suspicion, forbearance, and contempt. Once
Yakub Khan had thrown himself upon our protection and disowned the acts
of the mutineers, his personal safety was assured, and this, no doubt,
was his first aim. But how much further did he mean to go? That he
heartily desired his turbulent regiments to be punished one can well
believe, and that he schemed to save Cabul from the fate it had courted
is quite possible; but unless an accomplice in their acts, he could not
have expected that his most trusted ministers and kinsmen would be
arrested and himself confined to our camp. Here he must see our
suspicion peeping out: but, then, mark our forbearance. In our
proclamations rebellion against the Amir has been cited as worthy of
death; we are living upon tribute grain collected as due to him; the
citizens of Cabul have been declared “rebels against His Highness,” and
our Military Governor of the city is “administering justice and
punishing with a strong hand all evil-doers” with his “consent.” This is
one side of the picture, and these acts are the direct outcome of our
efforts to re-establish something like order after the anarchy which
prevailed when we began our march upon the capital. There is nothing of
contempt in them; it is merely laying the foundation for replacing the
Amir on his throne more securely for the future. Our forbearance is
further shown by the consideration displayed towards his subjects:
nothing is taken that is not paid for—and, in most instances,
exorbitantly paid for—and there is not the slightest affectation of
treating the country through which we pass as conquered territory. But
there is another side of the picture where new aspects appear and some
anomalies crop up. The Amir’s authority is proclaimed as justification
for many of our acts; and yet at the same time we loot his citadel, and
seize upon, as spoils of war, all guns and munitions of war which for a
few weeks only had passed out of his hands into those of the rebels. Did
he, by abandoning his capital and its defences, lose all right and
interest in the cannon which guarded them, in the ammunition collected
for years past in the Bala Hissar, and in the very clothing prepared for
his regiments? Apparently he did, for the two hundred and fourteen guns
now in our camp are looked upon as captured from an enemy who used many
of them against us; the untold quantity of gunpowder which the explosion
of the 16th untouched is to be destroyed; and our camp-followers are
masquerading in the warm uniforms of Afghan Highlanders. This is the
feature of contempt in our policy. Our war, unlike that of last year, is
against the subjects of the Amir, and not against the Amir himself; and,
so far as we have gone, we have assumed the functions of the sovereign
in their fullest sense, using his name only to smooth away difficulties
that would otherwise have to be overcome by force. This assumption has
had to be made for the simple reason that Yakub Khan is too weak and
vacillating to exercise the authority which we have so ostentatiously
recognized, and his ministers too corrupt to be trusted near his person.
But beyond the immediate exercise of military power in Cabul and its
neighbourhood, we can do nothing. There is no responsible Government
which could take out of our hands the task of hunting up the men who
have been guilty of treachery and murder; and as our first duty is to
our dead Envoy and not to the living Amir, it follows that our present
work is that of judges and not of king-makers. That work has to be done,
and we are doing it unflinchingly, and until it is completed, the Amir
must be content to accept his position as a sovereign in leading
strings. By the time we have dealt with all the culprits that can be
captured, the cloud of suspicion now resting upon Yakub Khan will either
have deepened or been dissipated, and our second duty of punishing or
aiding him under his difficulties will then have to be fulfilled. The
drift of evidence seems now fairly in his favour, _i.e._, he was not
involved in the work of Nek Mahomed and Kushdil Khan; and taking it as
most probable that he will finally be convicted of nothing worse than
weakness, it will remain with us to say if he is again worthy of our
trust. With his army dispersed, and his artillery (which goes for so
much in the eyes of Asiatic nations) in our hands, the only semblance of
power he can derive will be reflected from our arms—if we reinstate him
in good faith. And if his weakness is held as our justification for
reducing him to the rank of a political pensioner, comfortably housed in
India, are we to fit out his successor with new war-trappings, which may
at any moment be seized by mutinous regiments and turned against us at
the first opportunity? More unlikely things have occurred than this; but
unless our army carries back with it to India the trophies it now boasts
of, there will be sad disappointment in every mind.
I have dwelt with great pertinacity upon the political side of the
Afghan question as it is developing under the walls of Cabul, because
our late successes may have overshadowed the great problem which has now
to be worked out, viz., what are the future relations between India and
Afghanistan to be? From what I have written, a fair judgment may be
formed as to whether the sanguine view, that the line of policy laid
down in the Treaty of Gundamak still remains good, can be consistently
maintained. The arrest of the Mustaufi, the Wazir, and their two
intimate friends, has raised the revolt in Cabul far above the level of
a local _émeute_ of discontented soldiers.
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