Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan, 1839-42

by William Dalrymple

it was also clear from this attempt to reach out to the Afghans that the British were not interested in cultivating Shah Shuja’s friendship for its own sake, but were concerned only to outflank their imperial rivals: the Afghans were perceived as mere pawns on the chessboard of western diplomacy, to be engaged or sacrificed at will. It was a precedent that was to be followed many other times, by several different powers, over the years and decades to come; and each time the Afghans would show themselves capable of defending their inhospitable terrain far more effectively than any of their would-be manipulators could possibly have suspected.

It was Shah Shuja’s grandfather, Ahmad Shah Abdali, who is usually considered to have founded the modern state of Afghanistan in 1747. His family came from Multan in the Punjab and had a long tradition of service to the Mughals. It was appropriate therefore that his power derived in part from the enormous treasure chest of Mughal gems plundered by the Persian marauder Nadir Shah from the Red Fort in Delhi sixty years earlier; these Ahmad Shah had seized within an hour of Nadir Shah’s assassination.b

Ahmad Shah hardly ever lost a battle, but he was ultimately defeated by a foe more intractable than any army. He had had his face eaten away by what the Afghan sources call a “gangrenous ulcer,” possibly leprosy or some form of cancer. At the height of his power, when after eight successive raids on the plains of north India he finally crushed the massed cavalry of the Marathas at the Battle of Panipat in 1761, Ahmad Shah’s disease had already consumed his nose, and a diamond-studded substitute was attached in its place. As his army grew to a horde of 120,000 and his empire expanded, so did the tumour, ravaging his brain, spreading to his chest and throat, and incapacitating his limbs.

Elphinstone sat scribbling in his diary, trying to make sense of the Afghan character in all its rich contradictions. “Their vices,” he wrote, “are revenge, envy, avarice, rapacity, and obstinacy; on the other hand, they are fond of liberty, faithful to their friends, kind to their dependents, hospitable, brave, hardy, frugal, laborious, and prudent.”45 He was astute enough to note that success in battle in Afghanistan was rarely decided by straightforward military victory so much as by successfully negotiating a path through the shifting patterns of tribal allegiances. “The victory is usually decided by some chief going over to the enemy,” wrote Elphinstone, “on which the greater part of the army either follows his example or else takes flight.”

While still at the Krozach Gymnasium, Jan had helped found a secret society called the Black Brothers, an underground “revolutionary-national” resistance movement begun by a group of Polish and Lithuanian students intent on fighting the Russian occupation of their country. In 1823, the Brothers were exposed after they wrote anti-Russian letters to the principal and teachers of the Gymnasium, and began posting revolutionary slogans and verses on prominent public buildings in the town. Witkiewicz and the five other ringleaders were arrested and interrogated. On 6 February 1824, in an attempt to stamp out any further democratic aspirations among Polish students, three were sentenced to death and three to flogging followed by life exile to the steppe. At the time, Witkiewicz had just celebrated his fourteenth birthday.