CORRESPONDENCE.
THE AFGHAN TREATY.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR.")
Fra,—The news of the conclusion of peace with Afghanistan is to be regarded with satisfaction. We end our hostilities with the Afghan Government, at any rate for the time being. With the close of these it is probable that the hostile activities of the independent tribes on our Indian borders will dwindle away and cease. So far so good. We approach a stage of comparative tranquillity in an anxious region where, at this reason of the year, military operations are conducted in the worst possible conditions. The heat is pitiless and terrible; water is scanty ; supplies and forage are locally unprocurable ; roads, outside our own roads through the passes, useless for military operations on a considerable scale. The hardships and difficulties involved in these conditions are immense. To the troops who have met and overcome them our warmest sympathy and admiration are due. Whether or not in various directions the administrative arrangements of the Government of India have been equal to an occasion which has long been foreseen, is a question on which I would reserve opinion until the facts are better known.
When we come to examine the Treaty that has been lately signed at Rawal Pindi we find ourselves on ground that is not altogether clear. The Treaty announces peace ; that, as I have said, is a great gain. It annuls a privilege previously enjoyed by the Amirs of importing arms and warlike munitions through India. That is a slight gain, for the value of the privilege depended on ourselves. It is probable that in recent years Afghanistan has supplied itself from other quarters, apart from its own manufactures. The Treaty confiscates the arrears of the late Amir's subsidy, and forbids a subsidy to the present Amir for the future. The first of these provisions relieves the Indian Treasury of a substantial and inconvenient• liability. That is a gain, although the sum confiscated is probably much less than the cost of the war. The second is personal to Amir Amanulla.
As to the rest, the Treaty is not, and does not profess to be, a. final settlement of the questions in issue. It is a mere fore- runner of another Treaty to be concluded later (if in the meantime the Afghans behave well), with the prospect of the re-establish- ment of " the old friendship on a satisfactory basis." It is pertinent to inquire what this wide general expression precisely means, for on its interpretation much will depend. The points of view of ourselves and the Afghans are widely different.
The rest of the Treaty deals with the delimitation of an andemareated section of the West Khyber and the retention of the British troops in their present positions on this side of the border. Here again the wording of the Treaty is not free from obscurity. Our main operations have been beyond the Khyber in the country round Dakka, which is the first Afghan fort on the road from the mouth of the pass at Landi Kotal to Jalalabad and Kabul. A British Commission is to carry out the demarcation forthwith, and its boundary is to be accepted by the Afghan Government, who will, however, have a representative with the Commission. The Commission will work westwards, starting from Palosi, on the Kabul River, a point to the north of Landi Kotal. Meanwhile the British troops are to remain " on this side of the border." Which border is meant ? Do we withdraw from Dakka ? Dakka is Afghan, and was certainly so in the time of the late Ansi/. Abdur-rahman and his successor ; while the present Afghan Government accept, by the Treaty, the Indo-Afghan border accaptad by the late Amin The ambiguity is, I hope, plain to those on the spot. If the object of the demarcation is, as it presumably is, the acquisition of a railhead for the railway which flanks the Khyber Pass on the north and east and is designed to go round it, then it would have been better, in my opinion, if this had been stated plainly.
I have said that in the questions in issue between us and the .Afghan Government the two points of view are widely different. The Afghan view had no more capable exponent than the late Amir Abdur-rahman. That forceful personage had no doubts about his policy. Not a yard of railway-line, not a foot of telegraph-wire, would he allow within his borders, and he was jealous, more than jealous, of any intercomnaunication between his own border authorities and those of the British or any other Government. Granted the isolation which he required, his passionate attachment to which is easy to understand, he was willing to, and did, abide by the Treaty provision of 1893, in that he accepted the advice of the British Government in regard to' his relations with foreign Powers, while he was guaranteed against unprovoked aggression on his own dominions. The British view, on the other hand, was that this position of jealous isolation was inconsistent with the discharge of its own Treaty responsibilities, with the efficient administration of the border country, and the civilized development of Afghanistan itself. In 1904, on Abdur-rahman's death, an attempt was made to widen our intercourse with Afghanistan, and to place both countries in a better position in these important respects. The attempt failed. The isolation policy remained in the ascendant under the late Amir Habibulla, who followed strictly and faithfully in his father's footsteps. Thus the leading features of these relations have been a subsidy and guarantee by the greater and protecting Power, and a surrender of independence in relations with foreign Powers by the less, along with a condition of internal isolation broken only by trade which struggles fitfully through numerous obstacles, fiscal and other, on the Afghan side. Occasional and costly visits by Ands Abdur-rahman and his sons to India or to England have not altered this position. It cannot be called one of friendship, and " old friendship " is a still greater misnomer if we recall to memory our various wars with Afghanistan. Aversion and mistrust are inherent factors in a situation which is not improved by hollow generalities. In Afghan eyes the subsidy has been the overt symbol of friendship, and that has often not been drawn.
Now the scene has changed, though not the feeling. War does not make for friendship. The young Avair has broken his Treaty obligations and drawn the sword. Various motives have been assigned to him. It is said that he has been influ- enced by Bolshevik propaganda from the North, by Indian revolutionaries harbouring at Kabul, by the desire to divert Afghan sentiment regarding his own succession by a popular war that seemed likely to be successful. The precise motive or influence is not very material. It seems more probable that, in the confusion caused by his father's murder, the feelings to which we have alluded got beyond control, and the inevitable followed. Be that as it may, the attack on the British border has failed, and the Treaty cannot be said to emphasize the failure of the outrage. It should have been plain, stern, and uncompromising.
No doubt there have been strong reasons for an inconclusive Treaty. Peace and retrenchment are our most urgent require- ments, in India as well as elsewhere, and the Afghans are still capable of much mischief. We are not anxious to push them to extremities. The fighting, which has spread over several hundred miles, has not always been in our favour. Of these considerations the Afghan delegates have been fully aware, and they have made the most of them. As to the future settle- ment with Afghanistan we must wait and see. That is a policy which has not lately found favour in this country, although- in these days of titanic convulsion there is much to be said for it. A frontier, said Andrew Lang in one of his minor essays, appears to be a very demoralizing place. He spoke of Europe, but the North-West border of India would be within the scope of his observation. In the meantime, while we wait, we should improve our border administration as far as we can. The test by which it has been tried must have clearly brought out the weak points. The first task is to reduce the unruly tribes, to remodel and sift the tribal militias and levy corps, to improve the roads, and rid ourselves ruthlessly of all tribal payments that are not wages for definite service definitely rendered. The task is not easy, but our soldiers and political officers should be equal to it now as they have been in the
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