AFGHANISTAN. 



tor-oil plant, madder, and asafffitida abound, and 

 of the latter there is a large export to India. Lead, 

 copper, iron, and some gold and precious stones 

 are mined. Silk is produced extensively, and felt, 

 carpets, rosaries, and postins or sheepskin coats 

 are exported. Horses, woo], spices, timber, and 

 nuts are also exported largely. The chief im- 

 ports from India are cotton piece goods of Brit- 

 ish and Indian manufacture, China tea, indigo, 

 and sugar. The imports of Russian merchandise 

 from Bokhara in 1890 amounted to 3,944,568 

 rubles, and the exports to Bokhara were 3,983,- 

 270 rubles in value. 



Anglo-Afghan Disputes. The military de- 

 fenses of northwestern India were considered 

 complete when the mountain passes through 

 which hostile armies have entered the Indus val- 

 ley were occupied and fortified and stategic rail- 

 ways and arsenals established in Sindh. The 

 passes and all the mountain region before the 

 last Anglo- Afghan war belonged to untamable 

 hill tribes, which were supposed to be subject to 

 the Khan of Kelat or the Ameer of Cabul. 

 Since then the British authorities, besides in- 

 creasing the numerical war strength of their 

 army enormously and training a native auxiliary 

 army offered by the feudatory princes, have es- 

 tablished a new military frontier, which is in- 

 tended to confine the scene of any armed strug- 

 gle with a Russian army in Asia to the region 

 beyond the Himalayas. By advancing to Quet- 

 ta they have, moreover, contracted the front open 

 to a direct attack, and can place troops in the 

 field to face a Russian advance coming in any 

 direction through Afghanistan and forward 

 troops and supplies several times more swiftly 

 than can the Russians. The fortress of Quetta 

 is a position that can not be turned, and the 

 waterless and impassable nature of the country 

 on either side renders the single line of railroad 

 communication entirely safe from an enemy in 

 front, while the energetic work of pacification 

 carried on for several years past has secured it 

 against treachery from within. The Quetta Rail- 

 road and the two broad-gauge railroads up the 

 Bolan and Harnai passes permit of the rapid accu- 

 mulation of forces behind the extended works 

 of Quetta, which a defeated general could hold 

 until the enemy, lacking railroad communica- 

 tions, would be compelled to relinquish the posi- 

 tions he has seized whenever a crushing force, 

 brought up by rail, advances upon them. In se- 

 curing this position it was necessary not only 

 to annex a great part of Beluchistan, but to be- 

 gin the disintegration of Afghanistan by con- 

 quering neighboring hill tribes belonging polit- 

 ically, as well as ethnically, to the Afghan king- 

 dom. The fact of their political allegiance to 

 the Ameer, formerly insisted upon in order to 

 hold him morally responsible for the misdeeds 

 of the wild hill men, was denied by the Indian 

 authorities after they began the difficult task of 

 subjugating them, in order to keep up the fiction 

 of a buffer state, a strong, free, and independent 

 Afghanistan. Abdurrahman, who had been in- 

 duced to employ his military forces in reimposing 

 the Afghan yoke on the alien races of Afghan 

 Turkistan, and in extending his conquests over 

 Roshan, Shignan, and Wakhan. even establish- 

 ing posts in the Pamirs in order to dispute their 

 possession with the Russians and the Chinese, 



turned his attention to the defense of his south- 

 ern borders against the encroachments of his 

 ally. In the east the British planned to extend 

 their political frontier quite up to the Hindu 

 Kush range, although the Yusufzais and Moh- 

 mands beyond Peshawur and the tribes of the 

 Swat and Kunar valleys and Kafiristan have 

 hitherto acknowledged no foreign master except 

 the Ameer of Cabul, whose rule has been asserted 

 also among the Dards and Kohistanis beyond 

 Cashmere and Gilgit, and in Chitral and Yassin, 

 farther north. The feverish haste of the British 

 to annex these alpine districts did not spring 

 from a fear that the Pamirs and the icy passes 

 of the Hindu Kush and the Himalayas in this 

 region could ever be used for the passage of a 

 hostile army. The object was to create a buffer 

 under British dominion which will prevent all 

 intercourse between the people of India and the 

 Russians when the latter shall have established 

 themselves in the Pamirs, and thus guard against 

 the intestine political dangers that would arise 

 from the immediate proximity of another power- 

 ful European military empire in a region where 

 a fortified military frontier and a strict frontier 

 guard are unnecessary and impracticable. 



The operations against the Pathan hill tribes 

 near the new railway line and in the Peshawur 

 district led to a coolness between the Ameer and 

 the Indian Government, which was increased 

 when the British seized and fortified a strategic 

 position on the farther side of Pishin in territory 

 that was unquestionably Afghan. The khanates 

 bordering on the Pamir region have sometimes 

 paid tribute to Afghanistan and sometimes to 

 Cashmere. If the British had done nothing to 

 excite his jealousy in districts nearer Cabul the 

 Ameer might have allowed them to work their 

 will in these distant provinces. As it was, he 

 used all his craft and influence to frustrate their 

 designs. When Aman-ul-Mulk, the Mehtar of 

 Chitral, died, he was succeeded by his son Afzul, 

 who was well disposed toward the British. But 

 before the death of Aman-ul-Mulk Afghan troops 

 had been pushed up the Kunar valley, and hard- 

 ly had the young chief assumed the government 

 when he was confronted with a pretender, Sher 

 Afzul, who with the assistance of the Afghans 

 entered Chitral from Badakshan, seized the for- 

 tress of Chitral, put the new chief to death, and 

 proclaimed himself Mehtar. The British au- 

 thorities at Gilgit gave their countenance and 

 aid to Nizam-ul-Mulk, brother of the murdered 

 Mehtar, who about the beginning of 1893 de- 

 feated the usurper, who fled into Afghanistan, 

 and established himself in the chieftainship. 

 The English were thus enabled to continue their 

 operations among the mountain tribes beyond 

 Chitral. After they had occupied a place called 

 Chilas with a garrison and erected a permanent 

 fort they were attacked by 1,500 of the neighbor- 

 ing Kohistani mountaineers, who were finally 

 driven off after a desperate battle, in which 200 

 of them were killed. The British then took the 

 offensive, and marched against the villages of 

 the hostile tribes, destroying one after another, 

 until the natives made their submission. Of the 

 British, 23 were killed, including Major Averell 

 Daniell, the leader of the expedition. 



The Ameer raised a strong protest against the 

 British occupation of the village of Biland-Khel 



