Whether this was true or not, many British officers sent their families to take shelter in the Bala Hisar, along with their baggage and possessions, while Macnaghten initially refused to send reinforcements to Bamiyan, saying they could not be spared from Kabul. He then sent a series of jittery and paranoid despatches to Simla. “The Afghans are gunpowder,” he wrote, “and the Dost is a lighted match … We are surrounded by spies.”91
