THE ABDICATION or YAKOOB KHAN.
THIS is melancholy news from Afghanistan. There is no reason to doubt.that Yakoob Khan' unable to bear the position to which. his alliance with the British has reduced him, has abdicated his throne, without naming any successor, though possibly with some expression of a wish that his son, alai° child, may be accepted by the. British as titular Arneer. The Indian Government has accepted this abdication, which, indeed, it could not prevent, and there is now no legal Sove- reign in Afghanistan, and no single person with an accepted claim to rule it. Ayoub Khan, the most powerful Afghan left, is only Governor of Herat. Pacishah. Khan is, at moat,, first pretender to the hereditary chiefship of the Clan Ghilzai. Wail Mohammed is only a pretender, pessibly favoured by the invading Power. Sir Frederick Roberta is only General in occupation of the- five. Eastern forbresses of Afghanistan, and in three-feurths of the country does not possess, or affect to possess, any rights whatever. The country is in fact legally in anarchy, and practically in anarchy tempered by; the right of General Roberts to maintain order in the cities his lieutenants OCOupy, and of the " Sirdars" Oh clan-chiefs to maintain, as much authority as they can-ever their tribesmen. It is a country full of irregular aPidiers, released from even nominal responsibility to any head. Under such circumstances, the British Government, unless it hee the nerve to retire, or the foolhardiness to annex, has pearitically no alternative except to continue and to extend its military occupation, until it can discover or create a native master for Afghanistan. Discovering one, means waiting under arms until some pretender—say, for choice, Ayoub Khan, who is- of the dynasty, and has troops—can conquer all other pre- tenders; and arrange some niodus vivendi with the British Power, operations which, as any alliance with the British will impair his authority, will certainly not be completed under two years, and may take twenty,. Creating one, mans, on the other hand; selecting a pretonden—say, for choice, Wall Mahommed who also is- of the dynasty, and who is reputed to have a powerful character—and then conquering. Afghanistan on his behalf, That is an operation which, considering that all the nationalists' will ' retreat upon Herat, and that we shall have, to. cross the llindoo Koosh by little-known routes and- in face of. unknown tribes, in order to occupy Balkh,
and that we cannot attempt the enterprise without two well supplied and strong columns in addition to the forces now maintained, will take, under the most favourable circum- stances, two campaigns. It is folly to say or to think that the Sirdars will elect an Ameer who can do the work for himself, and yet be friendly to the British. The Sirdars do not want • a master, and if they did, would not choose one with an honest regard for an alliance which they regard as fatal to their independence, their authority, and their faith. They may submit to the irresistible, and accept one ; but then that means that they are conquered, which is precisely the work not yet done, and requiring so much time and energy. Circumstances have, therefore, produced such a situation that the British Government, if they will not retire, must waste many months, much treasure, and many regiments in an effort to subdue a vast region, which they acknowledge that they do not want, and which the day they leave it to itself will burst out into insurrection against the British nominee. That is a very dreary prospect, even if we accept the Government view of its duties; and if we do not; it is one to make very quiet men doubt whether the first object of all citizens should. not be the overthrow of the Government which has produced such a situation.
We cannot see where the answer to this dilemma lies, or would lie, if Mr. Gladstone were ruling instead of Lord Beaconsfield. We have destroyed, intentionally or other- wise, the rudimentary monarchy in Afghanistan, and must either replace it by a new one ; or, by holding Can- debar alone,* await the chances which the future may produce, or retire within our own dominions. Those are the alternatives, and we do not believe the Duke of Argyll could add to them, any more than Lord Cranbrook can. Of these policies, the Government reject the third one, a re- treat, absolutely, alleging that it would leave all former dangers untouched, and add to them the new one that we should be seen to have submitted to defeat. [That is absolutely untrue, for we have defeated everybody ; but we are now stating the Government case, not our own.] And unless we utterly misunderstand the language of their advocates, they also re- ject the second one, which their followers still think may be adopted. They are not going to retire on Candabar. On the contrary, they are going to hold all they have, until some un- defined period, and to make it certain in some way that Herat shall not fall to Persia or to Russia by-and-by. So strong are they on this point, so little, that is, do they think that Can- debar would be sufficient, that their advocates talk of occupying Herat permanently, which is, of course, a completely different plan from the occupation of Caudal= alone. It would lead to the annexation of all Afghanistan ; and, in fact, to all foreign nations would seem to involve that at once. You cannot hold a frontier, and leave nobody responsible for the back-country. The Government is therefore driven back on the old alternatives, annexation, which they repudiate, and the manufacture of a Prince, which, as we say, will occupy them two years spent in efforts to enable him to establish his ascendancy. While they are establishing him, there will be no rest in India, no end to useless expenditure, a permanent draft upon the military resources of the country, and great discontent, caused not by the war of conquest, which natives will think natural, but by the severity with which taxes must be raised, and by the necessity of cantoning sepoys in a country which they both detest and dread.
We say nothing about the certainty that our Prince, when we have made him, and reduced his kingdom
to order, will want to be rid of us, for we wish to write from the Tory stand-point ; but that he will, we may take to be as certain as the wish of any European Prince for independence and for territory. That, however, 18 only a prediction ; the certainty is that the Tory Government stands condemned by its previous acts and by Yakoob Khan's abdication, to manufacture a Prince who will require, first, a considerable British army to conquer his dominion, and then a smaller British army to control and protect himself.
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