THE PEACE WITH AFGHANISTAN. T HE terms of Peace with Afghanistan
have at last reached London, but they will not modify the judgment pro- voked by the rumoured arrangements. The Peace is a botched- up affair, bringing Great Britain nothing but some new and heavy responsibilities. The sum and substance of it is that Afghanistan becomes one of the vassal States of India, differ- ing from others principally in this,—that whereas they pay tribute to the Indian Treasury, the Indian Treasury pays tribute to Cabul, in the shape of a grant of £60,000 a year, the interest, at four per cent., upon £1,500,000. For the rest, Yakoob Khan has assented to terms which undoubtedly reduce him to dependence. He has ceded to us all the gates of his country to the South. That is to say, he has allowed us to take the Khyber and Michnee Passes, which are not his and has permitted us to regulate the independence of the tribes, Afreedees and.Momunds, to which they have from time immemorial belonged. He has also "assigned" to us the Kurum Valley—that is, the Peiwar Pass—by which Nadir
Shah entered India, and on which a British garrison, when once stationed, will be only fifty miles from the Afghan capital, and can swoop upon it at any convenient moment. The revenue of the Valley is to be paid to the Afghan Ameer, but the administration will be, as exclusively British as it was in the "Assigned Districts" of Berar. He also, assigns to us the valleys of Pisheen and Sibi, which communicate with the Bolan Pass, and from which Canda.har will be permanently commanded. In other words, more easily understood by those unfamiliar with Indian geography, Yakoob Khan allows us free entrance to his dominions by three routes,—one giving access to Jellalabad, another to Cabul itself, and a third to Candahar, and to the great route across the Helmund to Herat. Not only is he not to molest us in our possession of any of these routes, but he is not even to tax us, his right of levying duties upon imports and traders arriving from the south being totally and per- manently surrendered. No Douranee Prince, having made those cessions, can maintain his independence, if the Indian Viceroy chooses to take it away ; and Yakoob Khan obviously is not going, just at present, to make the effort. By Article IV. he admits a Resident into his very capital, who is to be accompanied by a fitting escort, who will, from the necessity of the case, and in conformity with Indian precedent, be assigned some quarter which he will rule according to British law, and who will, under Article Ill., direct the entire foreign policy of the Afghan Monarchy towards all its neighbours, whether Euro- pean or Asiatic. The dependence is theoretically complete, and as we pointed out last week, the British control is certain to extend to every detail of administration, for if we are to control the foreign policy of Cabul, we must maintain a continuous dynasty there ; and if we maintain it, we must prevent it from becoming too hateful in the eyes of its own subjects. We must, for our own sake, protect the people against too much pillage, and for the sake of votes in Parliament prevent Yakoob from killing too many people out of pure caprice. In fact, we must, in the last resort, govern Afghanistan, whether we like it or not, and that country is reduced in reality, and in the eyes of the world, into a vassal State.
If that result approves itself to the British public, we have nothing to say, or rather it is of no use saying the only thing we could say,—namely, that we have no more right to ter- minate the independence of Afghanistan in this way than to terminate the independence of Switzerland ; but we do trust that the public will understand what the result means. It means that the frontier of India has been pushed 500 miles nearer to the Caspian, and within 150 miles of the new boundary of China ; that it has been brought into direct contact with Bokhara, and that it marches for nearly 200 miles with that of Persia. The ancient barrier of the Suleiman has ceased to exist, and the new frontier, so far from being 4. scientific," is absolutely unknown alike to Afghan officials and to German geographers. There does not live the man who could say, within 10,000 square miles, what the Douranee Empire really is, or at what point throughout its vast circumference it begins and ends. Yet throughout that enormous territory and along that endless boundary, we—these thirty millions of befooled taxpayers, in these two Islands—are responsible for all Foreign Affairs. If a rascally Afghan collector in Herat tortures Persian wool-dealers, in police-courts where we have about as much control as in Tinibuctoo, the Court of Teheran has right of remonstrance with Lord Salisbury, and Malcolm Khan may threaten reprisals on British Parsees
in Bushire. If a clan leader defeated in Kuldja flies into Badakshan, the Marquis Tseng may ask for his ex- tradition, and may threaten, if it is refused, to stop the exportation of tea. If the Governor of Balkh squeezes Russian traders passing through with goods for Jellalabad, as he would be certain to do, Count Schouvaloff must deliver a stiff demand for redress in Downing Street, with the remark that British subjects trade in safety at Novogorod. None of these complainants are bound to weary themselves with in- effectual applications to Yakoob Khan. We have in the most public manner, by solemn Treaty in the face of the whole world, assumed the responsibility for the foreign affairs of Afghanistan, and cannot refuse the consequent liabilities, any more than we could have refused, before its cession to Greece, to be respon- sible for the Septinsular Republic. Indeed, we are not sure that, in justice, our responsibility ought not to go farther, and we to protect all Afghans in Persia, China, or Russia, as we do now protect, even to the extent of using force, all Indian Mahommedans making pilgrimage to Mecca. That certainly,
would be a pleasant addition to the duties of the Foreign Office. Protecting Levantines is troublesome enough, as Lord Palmerstoij knew, but protecting Afghans, the boldest ap:Ipost adventurous of wanderers, in all the citiea. of Northern, Asia, would, if we once attempted. it, overburden, even, British diplomacy. Of course we shall not attempt. it, but we must discharge our liabilities to foreign nations, and to them we are avowedly, responsible fox all that happens to foreigners in Afghanistan, as well as for every boundary, dis- pute which a proud, semi-barbarous Court, elated with the irresistible strength behind it, may choose to raise in any corner of half-unknown dominions. That is tha first conse- quence of what the Telegraph, would call this ." magnificent. Peace, extorted by our conquering hosts from the ruler . of Cabul."
The second is like unto it. We have mad .a peace with Yakoob Khan which is.ridiculous, unless Yakoob Khan reigns in Afghanistan, and consequently we must enable him to reign there. This is no theoretic or far-away necessity, but is already upon us. in the most unmistakable form. If we retire from Candahar, Ayoub Khan, of Herat, Yakoob's brother and most formidable competitor, will, it is telegraphed:, seize the city for himself, and the Treaty, qua Candahar, and Pisheen, and that side of Afghanistan generally, becomes waste-paper, as the new ruler will not be advised" by the Resident at Cabul. Consequently, we can only surrender Candahar to Yakoob Khan, and as he is, not ready to take it, and could not keep it if he had got it, till his army is re-formed, we must keep it for him. That is to say, we must keep a war garrison in Candahar for an indefinite time, at our own expense, in life, if not in money also, for the benefit of Yakoob Khan ; must, in fact, go on being at war in Afghanistan, for the sake of peace. with Cabul. Is.,not that a delightful result of success ? It is just one inatance of a pro- cess which, if Yakoob Khan turns out to be weak, may have to be repeated all over Afghanistan. It is not only. perfectly possible, but it is very likely that we may, as the first-fruits of peace, have to march upon Cabul to seat.Yakoob Khan on his throne, and leave 5,000 men for a year or so as a guarantee that he shall not have to fly before some Pretender, whose first claim to reign will be that he will not admit a British Resident, but will treat the Treaty of Gundaniuk as waste-paper. It is nonsense to say we can abandon Yakoob Khan and still reap all the fruits of the Treaty. We must either enable him to enforce it, or allow it to be careened,— that is, must either guarantee him against rebellion, or allow that the Treaty is an absurdity ; that we attempted too much, and that rebel Afghans must make any arrangement with Russia, or Persia, or China .that they choose.
And the third consequence ia worse than all. Unless. we are gravely mistaken—and we heartily hope we may prove to be mistaken—this Treaty compels us to slaughter down several Hill clans, for the terrible offence of having.believed that the word of the Indian Viceroy would be kept. It is, we believe, undisputed that the clans which claim the Khyber Pass asked and received, from us £12,000 for our free pas- sage, under an understanding that we should chastise Shere Ali and then return.. We have now, confiscated the Khyber Pass, which no more belongs to the. Ameer than to Presi- dent Grevy, and are going to stop there in perpetuity. The clans who have been deceived, who are fanatically proud of their ancient wardship of the. Passes, and who will be deprived of their only cash revenue, the tolls paid by the traders as black-mail, will be certain to resist the new arrangements, and must be, and will be,, shot down till they consent to be quiet. We have no particular objection to their being shot. They are plunderers, interrupting the commerce of the world, and after fair notice are liable, in the general interest of humanity, to be forcibly reduced, to order ; but to shoot them because we have broken. faith with them is intolerable; and will, we fear, seem, intoler- able to the Afreedees in our own ranks. Even if this statement is inaccurate—and part of it rests on the authority of Mr. Scott, the surveyor of the Hills,, who writes in Black-wood's Magazine for May—we shall still have to bridle not only these tribes, lint all the tubes along the three routes, with all their allies, including, sooner or later, the.whole popu-.. lation of the Hills., There is no way out of that necessity, if we are to render the Passes as safe as theyare required to be, by our new commercial arrangements, by our own honour, which will not, allow of brigandage on our .own soil, end, by the necessity for maintaining, that line of, telegraph, which is to, be immediatelyextended from Lahere, to the Residency of Cabul, and which, we venture to predict, within two years will have cost a life a yard.
And all this weight of responsibility is undertaken for what? In order that Afghanistan may be as much under British control as two years ago, the Czar, through Baron Jomini, formally hoped and proposed that it should become. So far from humiliating Russia, we have carried out the pre- cise plan which, whether in frankness or in dissimulation, Czar Alexander proposed to Lord Derby.
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