Afghan

“ The East is the country of contradictions, and the Afghan character is a strange medley of contradictory qualities, in which courage blends with stealth, the basest treachery with the most touching fidelity, intense religious fanaticism with an avarice which will even induce him to play false to his faith, and a lavish hospitality with an irresistible propensity for thieving. ”

“ Though some tribes are said to be nomadic, predatory, and the poorest and most barbarous of all the races in Afghanistan, those I came in contact with seemed, compared with the Afghans, a hard working peaceful people, unless they were roused by cruelty and oppression; then, indeed, they fought with dogged persistence. They seemed to have a certain simplicity of character which contrasted strongly with the duplicity of the Afghan. Though undersized, they are of great physical strength, and as slaves taken in war, or servants for hire, they seemed to me to do all the hard work in Kabul. ”

“ It stirred the hearts of that eager multitude as the heart of one man. The Afghan cavalry, on issuing from the city, had spread themselves over the open country to the east, and the foot-men had taken possession of a neighbouring village and its surrounding gardens. The Persian videttes had fallen back; the trenches and batteries had been manned; and the reserves had stood to their arms, when, looking down from the ramparts, the excited Heratees saw the Persian Sirdar, Mahomed Khan, with a large body of troops, prepare himself for an offensive movement, and push onward to the attack. ”

“ Of the Afghans, to commence with, there are [194] three chief divisions: the Durani or Afghan proper, of which race is the Amîr; the Ghilzai; and the Pathan or border Afghan. Each of these is divided up into many different tribes: the tribes into branches, and the branches into families.
We gather valuable information concerning Afghanistan—Ariana—and the peoples inhabiting it, from the ancient writers; but the Afghans, as a distinct people, do not appear in history until the commencement of the tenth century ”

“ That soil can surely never flourish, which is eternally watered with human blood. The earliest records of Afghan history present to us the same prevalence of murderous tastes, from the days of Sinkol, the contemporary of Romulus, throughout the Middle Ages, down to the year of our Lord, eighteen hundred and forty-two, when the British Government wisely resolved to have nothing more to do with Afghanistan. ”

“ This frontier is satisfactory, and well defined.
Bounded on the west by Persia, on the south and east by Baluchistan and the Indian Empire, Afghanistan contains the immense range of the Hindu Kush Mountains, with their numerous ramifications. In size it is some 217,800 square miles, with a population of 5,000,000 to 6,000,000, of which 56 per cent. are Afghan and 44 per cent. non-Afghan tribes. As it lies between our territory in Central Asia and Great Britain’s Indian Empire, it has long been an object of interest to the British, who have desired to establish in it an exclusive supremacy. ”

“ It illustrates, in a remarkable manner, both the general character of Afghan politics, and the extraordinary vicissitudes of the early career of the man whom thirty years afterwards the British raised from the dust of exile, and reseated on the throne of his fathers. The history of the Afghan monarchy is a history of a long series of revolutions. Seldom has the country rested from strife—seldom has the sword reposed in the scabbard. The temper of the people has never been attuned to peace. ”

“ Afghan′istan′ (5,000) , a country in the centre of Asia, between India on the east and Persia on the west, its length about 600 m. and its breadth about 500 m., a plateau of immense mountain masses, and high, almost inaccessible, valleys, occupying 278,000 sq. m., with extremes of climate, and a mixed turbulent population, majority Afghans. The country, though long a bone of contention between England and Russia, is now wholly under the sphere of British influence. ”

“ They look on the Afghans as the first of nations, and each man looks on himself as the equal of any Afghan.
They are capable of enduring great privation, and make excellent soldiers under British discipline, though there are but few in the Indian army. Sobriety and hardiness characterize the bulk of the people, though the higher classes are too often stained with deep and degrading debauchery. The first impression made by the Afghan is favourable. The European, especially if he come from India, is charmed by their apparently frank, open-hearted, hospitable and manly manners ”

“ The Afghan Army, regarded as a fighting machine matched against civilized troops, could not be considered efficient. The Afghan, as a soldier, has many good qualities; he can live for days on a few handfuls of grain, and endure considerable fatigue at the same time; he can sleep in the open on the coldest night, wrapped in his sheepskin, and do no more than he is accustomed to; over mountains he is untiring; and he is plucky and would fight well, provided he had confidence in his officers. ”

“ The Afghan invariably has a slippery, treacherous look about his countenance which he cannot disguise, and which, personally, I do not much admire. He seldom looks at one straight in the face, can be very sullen when he is not boisterous, and I should think would easily seek cause of offence and pick a quarrel with any one weaker than himself in order to have a fight. These fellows were, for instance, most unlike the gentlemanly Beluch. ”

“ The whole of the North-west Frontier Province of British India is inhabited by races which are either Afghan in origin or closely related thereto. Then, again, there are the numerous Afghan or "Pathan" tribes, peopling that wild intricacy of rugged mountains and sequestered valleys, which forms a buffer area between the above province and the territories of the Amir of Kabul, and which they jealously guard from the intrusion of strangers and the menace of settled government. ”

“ At the Kabul Hospital when a Hazara came for treatment I found his language so difficult to understand, that in the absence of my Armenian interpreter, I often had to call upon some one to translate for me into modern Persian. With their high cheek-bones, small oblique eyes, and scanty beards, they differ much in physiognomy from the Afghan, and their form of government, manners, and morals are equally divergent.
The government of their chiefs is more despotic and less republican than that of the Afghan chiefs. ”

“ No part of Afghanistan has been subject to more speculative theories, or requires more practical elucidation, than this mountain region in which so large a share of the drama of Afghan history has been played. ”

“ So Masson and Ferrier assumed the rôle of Afghan travellers, clothed in Afghan garments, but more or less ignorant of the Afghan language, living with the people, partaking of their hospitality, studying their ways, joining their pursuits, discussing their politics, and placing themselves on terms of familiarity, if not of intimacy, with their many hosts in a way which has never 347 been imitated since. No one now ever assumes the dress of the Afghan and lives with him. ”

“ The term Afghan really applies to one section only of the mixed conglomeration of nationalities which forms the people of Afghanistan, but this is the dominant section known as the Durani. The Ghilzai (who is almost as powerful as the Durani) claims to be of Turkish origin; the Population.Hazaras, the Chahar-Aimak, Tajiks, Uzbegs, Kafirs and others are more or less subject races. Popularly any inhabitant of Afghanistan is known as Afghan on the Indian frontier without distinction of origin or language ”

“ The Afghan Government has great hopes concerning this common object, to which it attributes very great significance, and places as the very foundation of its policy this aim, humane with regard to all mankind, and is ready by all means and at all times to pursue the continuance of our mutual friendship. Wherefore the Afghan Government hopes that the sincerity of its ideas and hopes will meet with the respect and trust which it deserves on your high part. ”

“ Before the close of the eighteenth century but one Englishman had ever penetrated into that unknown land. Forster, a member of the Bengal Civil Service, in 1783-84 had crossed the Punjab to Cashmere, and thence had descended through the great Khyber and Koord-Cabul passes to the Afghan stronghold, whence journeying on by Ghuznee, Candahar, and Herat he had won his way to the borders of the Caspian Sea. ”

“ The Russians have settled with us the frontier line between their dominion and Afghanistan, and have bound themselves to respect it. With the Afghan Amir we are on friendly terms, and we have taken up our permanent position on his Eastern border towards India, reserving to ourselves the control of the tribes within a broad belt of territory, otherwise independent, between the Afghan kingdom and British India. ”

“ Chance, which in Asia plays no less a part in the affairs of man than in Europe, threw across his path a native who had visited Kabul some weeks before with letters from the Governor-General of Turkestan. The Afghan had been deputed by the Amir to attend to the Turkestani. He had met and escorted him to the capital and back again to the western boundary. As the Russian had entered Afghanistan from the Kushkinski Post, along the Hari Rud valley, he was conducted from the capital to the frontier by the route he had first followed. ”

“ This is probably the onl}' occasion on which a Christian missionary has ever preached in the bazaar of Kabul. After the war of 1839-40, the attitude of the Afghan people towards the British, and strangers in general, underwent a great change, and whereas before that war they were politely if not cordially received, afterwards it was as much as any man's life was worth to enter Afghanistan, whether in disguise or not. ”

“ We found the Afghan troops in every respect better off than those of Persia. They are physically finer men, are better clad, better armed, and [400] better provided with shelter, carriage, and provisions, though there is room for improvement on all points.
At Dih Mullah we were accommodated in a double-storied summer-house, in an ornamental garden adjoining the village. ”

“ In following the hero of this story through the last Afghan war, you will be improving your acquaintance with a country which is of supreme importance to the British Empire and, at the same time, be able to trace the operations by which Lord Roberts made his great reputation as a general, and a leader of men. Afghanistan stands as a line between the two great empires of England and Russia; and is likely, sooner or later, to become the scene of a tremendous struggle between these nations. Happily, at the present time the Afghans are on our side. ”

“ Every country and every people has a stake in the Afghan resistance, for the freedom fighters of Afghanistan are defending principles of independence and freedom that form the basis of global security and stability. ”

“ At daybreak a large body of Afghans, with many standards, were discerned on a hill about a mile northward of the Asmai ridge, from which and from the Kohistan road they were moving on to the crest of that ridge. They were joined there by several thousands coming up the slopes from out the village of Deh Afghan, the northern suburb of Cabul. It was estimated that there were about 8000 men in position along the summit of the ridge, and occupying also a low conical hill beyond its north-western termination. ”

“ The Afghan rulers have spies and others in India as well as in European countries who give them information on all subjects which affect Afghanistan either directly or indirectly, and the Amir and his intimates take the utmost interest in the doings of [307] those who rule the destinies of other nations, and they watch all that goes on between the different powers. ”

“ Afghanistan was -- and is -- one of the poorest country’s on the face of the earth. It will take years of hard work by the Afghan people and the international community to reverse the effects of decades of occupation and civil war. ”

“ If British troops should enter Afghanistan to support the Ameer against foreign aggression, they shall return as soon as they have repelled such foreign aggression.
That a British resident shall reside at Cabul, and that the British Government shall have the right to depute British agents to the Afghan frontier. ”

“ As a province Afghan Turkestan ranks among the most important in the State. Before its division at the hands of Abdur Rahman it embraced much of the territory which he apportioned to the province of Badakshan, including every important khanate contained within the Oxus region. If now, when Afghanistan has been reduced to order and a settled system of administration has given place to the authority of the Khans, its revenues are less than others, its position is equal to Herat and Kandahar. ”

“ Now that the Russian outposts have been pushed to the Afghan frontier, it is unreasonable that Kabul should remain inaccessible....
A message from the governor of Russian Turkestan to the governor of Afghan Turkestan, requesting that direct commercial intercourse might be established across the Oxus, had already been delivered when the initiatory efforts of the Novoe Vremya and the St. Petersburg Bourse Gazette were seconded by the Viedomosti and the Moscow Bourse Gazette. ”

“ The various Afghan tribes, separated from each other by natural barriers and intervening alien stocks, though similar in physical type, speech, religion and culture, have no sense of unity, no common political aims, while the appalling list of tribes constituting the population of the country1396 offers little hope of Afghanistan ever developing national cohesion. ”