Shuja had been kept briefed by his own network of spies and informers, and he was all too aware that he was being treated as a puppet—or a mooli, a radish, as the Afghans call it. He was especially humiliated that the action for which he had been waiting three decades had finally been arranged behind his back without even the most cursory reference to him as to how it would be executed. Nor was he at all happy about paying any tribute to Ranjit Singh, the man who had tortured his son and stolen his most valuable possession, even if in the treaty the tribute was disguised as a “subsidy.”
