AFGHANISTAN. 



Subjugation of the Kafirs. In the delimita- 

 tion of boundaries between Afghanistan and British 

 India, which followed the Cabul agreement of Nov. 

 12, 1893, the limit of the British sphere of influence 

 was drawn to inckide many tribes that had paid in- 

 termittent allegiance to Afghanistan, which once 

 included the Punjaub and Cashmere, and in recent 

 times many of the hill tribes that since have been 

 subjected to British rule. Kafiristan, however, was 

 placed by this agreement on the Afghan side of the 

 frontier. The Kafirs have always lived at enmity 

 with the Afghans, whose ameers have vainly tried 

 to conquer them. Living in isolation and holding 

 no commercial intercourse with their Afghan neigh- 

 bors, with whom they are constantly at feud, they 

 have remained poor and wretched in their fertile 

 and well-watered valleys, which have always been 

 coveted by the Afghans Cultivating the sterile and 

 rocky soil of the neighboring mountains. The Ka- 

 firs have been supposed by some to be of Greek 

 race, descended from the soldiers of Alexander of 

 Macedon. Russian ethnologists have claimed for 

 them a Russian origin, while British ethnologists 

 believe that they are allied to the Hindus, and trace 

 analogies between the Hindu religion and theirs. 

 They are physically a fine race, as fair-skinned as 

 Europeans, often blue-eyed, and hence probably of 

 Western origin. The boundary agreement gave to 

 Abdurrahman the license that he desired to test his 

 army which had successively subjugated to his 

 iron rule the Shinwaris, the rebellious people of 

 Turkestan, and the powerful Hazaras upon these 

 indomitable infidels, whose country would well re- 

 pay the cost of conquest. Preparations for the 

 conquest of Kafiristan took two years, as the troops 

 could not move with their artillery until military 

 roads were built. Gholam Haider Khan, the Afghan 

 commander in chief, marched into Kafiristan with 

 a considerable army in the autumn of 1895. Ab- 

 durrahman justified the movement on the ground 

 that, as the new Russian boundary was not many 

 miles from Kafiristan, the Kafirs, if they were not 

 reduced to his rule, would be likely to fall under 

 Russian influence and eventually be absorbed by 

 Russia. The number of the Kafirs has been vari- 

 ously estimated by some as high as 1,000,000, by 

 others as low as 100,000. Reports from the seat of 

 war represented Gholam Haider's troops as slaugh- 

 tering the Kafirs wholesale and reducing the sur- 

 vivors to slavery. This was denied by the Ameer's 

 officials, who said that his policy was one of con- 

 ciliation, and that the fighting was not resumed 

 after the winter campaign, but that Gholam Hai- 

 der's forces were engaged in making roads with a 

 view to opening the whole province and providing 

 lines of communication with Cabul and Badakshan. 

 The Kafirs are active and athletic shepherds and 

 herdsmen, living on meat and wine, not cultiva- 

 tors of the ground. Their women are described 

 as very beautiful and the men as exceedingly 

 courageous in their own savage mode of warfare, 

 defending the:nselves and carrying out raids in 

 the country of their inveterate enemies with such 

 reckless bravery and crafty cunning that nearly 

 every man has slain a Mohammedan. J'mt when 

 they are confronted with quick-firing guns and 

 breech-loading rifles their courage fails, for they 

 have a superstitious dread of these modern weapons. 

 Hence Gholam Haider's winter campaign, which 

 ended on Jan. 24, 1896, when the Afghan troops 

 were withdrawn from Kafiristan, was quite success- 

 ful. The Afghans carried the Kafir outworks in 

 the Bashgal valley and on the side of Hie Hindu 

 Kush, and were prepared to follow up their success 

 in the early spring by pursuing the Kafirs into 

 their last places of retreat. The Ameer's troops 

 captured 25 forts, not without some serious fight- 



ing so severe, indeed, that the Afghan losses in 

 killed and wounded amounted, by their own admis- 

 sion, to 1,500. Some of the Kafirs the Ameer at- 

 tracted to his own service, for he was eager to enlist 

 such good fighting men under his banner. He an- 

 nounced that it was not his intention to extirpate 

 them or reduce them to slavery, and chose to regard 

 them not as in fact Kafirs or unbelievers, but as 

 misguided, heretical .Mohammedans. He gave or- 

 ders that the enemy were not to be needlessly slain, 

 but to be taken alive. The population of the coun- 

 try that was overrun and devastated by his troops 

 was transported wholesale from its ancient homes, 

 to be planted again, the Ameer said, in a country 

 adapted to its tastes and habits. Those who es- 

 caped took refuge in the mountain fastness from 

 which Timur in his day was not able to dislodge 

 them. The doom of this isolated white race, who 

 appealed to the Feringhis, or English, as brothers, 

 awakened strong sympathy in England ; but as the 

 Ameer took firm ground in the matter on his rights 

 under the Durand treaty, the British Government 

 declined to interfere. The Government of India 

 offered to fugitive Kafirs an asylum in Chitral. 

 Many of the Kafirs who were carried off were sold 

 as slaves, especially the women, who are sought 

 after by wealthy Afghans for their harems as Cir- 

 cassian girls are by the Turks. This traffic the 

 Ameer discountenanced, if he did not suppress it, 

 by a decree ordering it to cease. He gave orders to 

 his officials not to oppress submissive Kafirs or seek 

 to convert them to Mohammedanism by force. 

 Those Kafirs who fled to Chitral were assisted and 

 settled on small grants of land by the Mehtar, on 

 condition of their observing the terms attached to 

 the offer of asylum. 



The British and Foreign Antislavery Society me- 

 morialized the British Government, calling atten- 

 tion to the precarious condition of the Kafirs and 

 entreating the Government to use its influence with 

 the Ameer, who has become better armed by means 

 of large grants that he receives annually from 

 the Indian Government, not only for the prevention 

 of the exterminating raids upon the Kaffirs and 

 other tribes of the Hindu Kush, but also for the 

 abolition of slavery throughout Afghanistan itself, 

 which alone can put a stop to the continued capture 

 of slaves that has for centuries been the motive of 

 predatory attacks upon neighboring and weaker 

 tribes. The troops occupied in the spring the 

 southern and eastern portions, and held the strate- 

 gic positions that insured the domination of Ka- 

 firstan. Thence they moved into the northwestern 

 district in the summer, in order to complete the 

 subjugation of the people, who were promised that 

 they would be well treated if they submitted peace- 

 fully. The operations of Gholam Haider in the 

 winter had extended into the Arnawai valley, in- 

 habited by 40,000 Kafirs, 16,000 of whom were car- 

 ried off into Afghanistan. In the course of the 

 fighting 'several hundred Kafirs burned themselves 

 to death rather than fall into Mohammedan hands. 

 This valley was expressly reserved in the Durand 

 treaty to the British sphere of influence, and there- 

 fore the Ameer was called upon to restore to their 

 homes all those whom he had deported. 



The Pamir Boundary. The mountain systems, 

 of Asia diverge, striking northward, eastward, and 

 westward from the tract in which the Pamir Bound- 

 ary Commission in 18!)5 marked out the limits be- 

 tween India, China, Russia, and Afghanistan. The 

 lines correspond closely with the ranges that start 

 in the neighborhood of the Wakhir and Kilik passes, 

 to extend to the farthermost limits of the continent. 

 At this point, where the three empires meet, a wedge 

 of Chinese and one of Afghan territory are inter- 

 posed to separate by many miles the Indian from 



