By Zarrar Ahmad Niazi
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As telecommunications, tourism and trade make the world a smaller place, languages are dying at an alarming rate
Sitting in a circle with a dozen other members of the native American Tlingit (pronounced klink-it) tribe, Jon Rowan, a 33-year-old schoolteacher, mutters in frustration: "We're babies. All we speak is baby gibberish." The group is gathered at the community centre in Klawock, a town of some 800 people on the eastern fringe of Prince of Wales Island. In the Gulf of Alaska, some 40-km off the Alaskan coast, Prince of Wales Island still survives in a state of pristine natural beauty. But this idyllic stretch of land is home to at least one endangered species: the Tlingit language.
R
owan and his fellow tribesmen meet every other week in sessions like this to learn their native tongue before the last fluent tribal elder dies. But as Rowan's frustration indicates, the task is made more difficult because Tlingit is becoming extinct. Forty years ago, the entire tribe was fluent in the language, a guttural tongue that relies heavily on accompanying gesture for its meaning. Now it is spoken only by a handful of people through out southern Alaska and portions of Canada, nearly all of who are over the age of 60. Since Tlingit was not originally a written language, Rowan and company are trying to record as much of it as possible by translating just about anything they can get their hands on in to Tlingit, from Christmas carols like jingle Bells to nursery rhymes such as Hickory Dickory Dock.The plight of Tlingit is a small page in the modern version of the Tower of Babel story-with the plot reserved. The Old Testament describes the first, mythical humans as "of one language and of one speech." They built a city on a plain with a tower whose peak reached unto heaven. God offended by their impudence in building something to rival his own creation, punished them by shattering their single language in to many tongues and scattering the speakers. "Therefore is the name of it called Babel," the Bible says, "because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth."
Today, this Diaspora of language is being pulled back. Mass tourism is shrinking the world, bringing once distant peoples face to face. Telecommunications technology are providing people from Peru to Pennsylvania with access to identical information and entertainment, while consumers from Bangkok to Brussels go to the same shops to purchase the same products from the same multinational corporations. All are conversant in the universal language of popular culture and commercial advertising. Much of the world, it seems, is coming to resemble a kind of new Babel, a cozy little global village of common understanding.
By ZARRAR AHMAD NIAZI
The trend of language endangerment has never been so alarming as in the last 200 years. There is hard evidence that number of languages in the world is shrinking: of the roughly 6,500 languages now spoken, up to half are already endangered or on the brink of extinction.
More conflicts have been created between the world languages than ever before, causing languages to disappear at an increasing rate. According to an estimate the coming century will see either the death or doom of 90% of mankind's languages. When a language dies, it forebodes the death of the culture, world-view and aspiration of a speech community.
T
he problem of language endangerment in Pakistan is no less than any other part of the world. The 6 classified and 8 unclassified languages in Pakistan have the total number of speakers in the range of few thousand to 60 millions. Minority languages are most prone to endangerment. The linguistic majority (Punjabis) in Pakistan tends to deprive members of the minority groups of their legitimate linguistic and cultural rights. Such a mind-set aims at killing a language without killing its speakers.Although Urdu, not Punjabi is the official language of Pakistan along with English, any demand made by Pashtoons for their legitimate linguistic, identity and cultural rights are met with strong opposition from Punjabis. Pashto, which is one of the 6 classified languages and second biggest language after Punjabi is made suffer deprivation and even endangerment in some areas. Despite the fact that Mianwali and Attok were the districts with large Pashtoon population, in 1901 when British establishment in India carved out N.W.F.P (NorthWestern Frontier Province) of Punjab, they put the both districts with Punjab. Pashto, which was once the main source of communication in these regions, has become extinct in most parts due to the bureaucracy and Punjabi influence. Pashto has been denied even minimum rights and privileges in its home Province N.W.F.P. According to the census nearly 80 per cent of the population of N.W.F.P. retained Pashto as their mother tongue where as 15 per cent Hindco and 5 per cent claimed Saraiki as their mother tongue. And yet Pashto is not used as a medium in primary school or as an official language. Only in some government schools it is taught as an optional subject at primary level.
Pakistan stands tall among the nations of the world. It was created in the name of Islam and it belongs to no one but the people who live in it. Pakistan is unified by religion- A unique Pakistani form of Islam. Pakistanis are neither one linguistic group nor a single race. It is not a new thing; almost every country in the world consists of more than one nationality. No matter whether its America or Britain, Spain or Czechoslovakia, Russia or China, India or Indonesia they all have different ethnic, religious and linguistic groups. There are many different groups of people who live side by side in Pakistan. Word Pakistan is not reserved for any of these nationalities but it is the name of the union which each of these nationalities joined on the basis of equality. Islam is the only and the strongest bond that holds Pakistanis as a single union. Unfortunately Pakistan is a country where native languages suffer deprivation and are prone to extinction. Soon after its creation Pakistan was taken over by a particular group of imported bureaucrats, who implicated the people of Pakistan in self-made issues, exploited sectarian and ethnic diversities and suppressed political freedom. They controlled the print and electronic media and imposed a system that was contrary to the local culture and values. This group and their local followers who were not interested in anything but money and power have been denying Pakistani nationalities. Punjabis are in majority in Pakistan and yet, Pakistani Punjabis must be the only group in the world that has a dismissive-even derogatory-attitude towards their own language. They are not only cynical about the idea of renaming N.W.F.P., Pashtoon and Pashto; they have a negative attitude towards their own language too. They are proudly dumping their own language in favour of Urdu and it is due to the influence of those bureaucrats who were imported during and after the partition.
Love for one's native language is a universal phenomenon. At minimum, a language is a mark of personal as well as national identity. Urdu is the national language of Pakistan and the only source of communication between the different groups of Pakistanis but one can not deny the importance of local languages. There is no doubt that Urdu is developing as a Pakistani people's language, but it should be developed alongside multilingualism. Pakistanis from different linguistic backgrounds should have opportunity to get education in their mother tongues as well as in Urdu. "Monolingualism is a disadvantage like illiteracy. Bilingualism should be regarded as an educational norm".
Race, language and land are three basic and most important elements of a nation. In this respect Pashtoons are a complete nation. A language is not safe unless it is recognised as a national and official language in a country or a state. In Afghanistan leaders were traditionally Pashtoon and the term 'Afghan' was itself seen as synonymous with Pashtoon. The people of ethnic minorities were originally from Central Asian States and came to Afghanistan as refugee. The Dari (Persian) speaking minorities, who were alien in Afghanistan, instead they should have learnt the national and majority's language, Pashtoon had to learn their language to communicate with them. Pashtoon rulers had also been unfair with their mother tongue and did not do any thing for the propagation and preservation of Pashto. Due to the irresponsible attitude of the Afghan rulers towards their own mother tongue 'which is not understandable to me' Pashto suffered heavy losses. Pashtoons, who lived in big cities like Kabul, Herrat, and Mazar-I-Sharif etc, forgot their mother tongue and started speaking Dari. Dari became official language of Afghanistan along with Pashto. The situation got alarming but no lessons were learnt.
Zahir Shah, his predecessors and successors turned a blind eye towards this issue of high importance. Pashto became limited to small cities in Southeast and rural Afghanistan while Dari thrived and became language of the educated class in Afghanistan. Now Talibans who are mainly Pashtoon and present leaders of Afghanistan have got a chance to do some thing for the revival of Pashto in whole Afghanistan. They can revert the situation by making Pashto the only national language of the country that every Afghan must be able to read, write and speak. They should also make the Pashto the only medium in school, college and university. Dari should be taught as a compulsory subject in Dari speaking provinces and an optional & elective subject in whole Afghanistan. That is the only way Pashto could survive in the following century and beyond. Dari (Persian) will not be affected after these changes in the educational system as it is already official language in Iran and Tadjikistan which are the main source of inspiration for Persian speaking minorities. Afghanistan is the only country where Pashtoons are in majority, Pashto literature and books published in Afghanistan, print and electronic media of Afghanistan will not only inspire the Pashtoons in Pakistan but through out the world. When Pashto is strong in Afghanistan it will be strong every where.
Pashtoons in Pakistan also need to work hard. They should not only work towards the preservation of their tongue in Pashto speaking areas but they must also do some thing for the revival of Pashto in the areas like Hazara Division and Dera-Ismail-Khan of N.W.F.P. and Attok and Mianwali districts of Punjab which are attached to N.W.F.P., where majority is Pashtoon but apart from a few most have forgotten their mother tongue (Pashto). The Pashtoons should also reclaim Attok and Mianwali districts that were given to Punjab by alien's (British) government.
Apart from what I have proposed above, we need to do a lot more to combat with the future challenges. Languages, like all living things, depend on their environment to survive. When they die out, it is for reason analogous to those that cause the extinction of plant and animal species: they are consumed by predator tongues, deprived of their natural habitats or displace by more successful competitors. In this type of linguistic natural selection, though, the survival of the fittest is not determined by intrinsic merits and adaptability alone; the economic might, military muscle and cultural prestige of the country in which a language is spoken play a decisive role. A language's star rises and falls with the fortunes of its speakers. In this day and age of super-sonic motor cars and manned flights to outer space and rockets to Saturn, my Pashtoon brothers are engaged in tribal warfare and honour killings. Where different nations are planing to send missions to other planets we are not able to make a typewriter to word process our beloved tongue. As the only remaining superpower, the United States is now at the zenith of its economic and cultural hegemony. English therefore thrives as the world's lingua franca while languages of the weaker nations succumb to pressure from mightier competitors. Pashto and Urdu can not survive in the coming century unless we transform them in to the languages of science and technology, and that is not possible unless we change our attitude.
In 1898, when Otto von Bismarck was asked what in his opinion was the most decisive event in modern history, the German statesman replied: "The fact that North Americans speak English." Asked this same question a hundred years from now, who knows that some Afghan, Pakistani or Indian politician may not reply: "The fact that so many people in these countries take pride in speaking English."
He is not a Pashtoon who does not give a blow in return for a pinch.
(
Pashtoon proverb)
Who are the people who have fought the soviet Army? Of a pre-war population estimated in 14-18 million range (probably about 16 million), the major ethnic group was the Pashto-speaking Pathans of the east and south (about 55 percent of the population). Afghanistan's leaders were traditionally Pashtoons, and the term 'Afghan' was itself originally seen as synonymous with Pashtoons. Divided in to tribes and clans, predominantly Sunni with some Shia. The Dari-speaking Tadjiks of the north and west were about 23 per cent of the population. They lack the Pashtoon's tribal division. While Pashtoons feel kinship with brother Pashtoons in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan (which has led the Afghan government's irredentist claims on all the land to the banks of the River Indus), the Tadjiks' fellows were in the one of the six Soviet Union's Muslim republics Tadjikistan. The Turkomen and Uzbeks of the north each speak their own Turkic language. Many of these people including Tadjiks were originally from what is now Federation of Independent States, and their families were driven out by the Soviet war against them in the 1920s and 1930s. Pashtoons are the original Afghan and Pashto is the language of Afghanistan.
I
n 1979 Soviet forces invaded the country in order to prevent the fall of a Soviet puppet regime there. Afghans do not accept authority easily, and they accept authority from out side only under coercion. Three wars, innumerable skirmishes and thousands of assassinations and death followed the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839 before the British realised that a policy of laissez-faire was the most effective way of dealing with the inhabitants. Despite their sophisticated weaponry, the Russians discovered that the problems the British came up against 140 years ago were not simply an accident of history but stemmed from the harsh realities of life and the values of the inhabitants of the unique region, the North-West Frontier and Afghanistan.Kipling's famous lines of despair, written on behalf of the British soldier, apply as much to Greeks of Alexander the Great, who died there before them, as to Russians who arrived later:
When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
An' the women come out to cut up what remains'
Jest roll to your rifle an' blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
The Russians discovered the hard way lessons learned by the British during more than a century of conflict. Russians lost the war and withdrew their troops in 1989. Although long and gruelling, the Afghan Guerrilla war became the Soviet's Vietnam and ultimately played a role in the dissolution of the Soviet Empire.
THE GREATEST PASHTO POET
Russian hegemony over areas of Central Asia began in earnest in the nineteenth century. During the previous two centuries, empire building in the region had been largely in the hands of the Persians to the west and the Mughals, based in Dehli, to the east. As the Persians and Mughals vied for supremacy, history was a confusion of loyalties and struggles.
W
hile some of the western Pashtoon were fighting alongside Safavid rulers of Persia against the Mughals, others could be found in the Mughal armies fighting their fellow Pashtoons during attempts to regain territories around Kandhar and in the eastern Afghanistan. Other tribes attempted to stay neutral until economic pressers persuaded them to join one side or the other. The Mughals had already discovered that the most expedient method of controlling the unruly Pashtoons was to pay subsidies to the tribes them to attempt military subjugation. But even the vast amounts paid out by the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb in the middle of the seventeenth century were no guarantee of peace, and in the later part of his region the Pashtoon threat to his Empire was considerable as the Mughal armies suffered a series of humiliating defeats. This was an era of glory for the Pashtoons and is familiar to them today through the poetry of Khushal Khan is renowned as the greatest of all Pashtoon poets, the 'Shakespeare of the Frontier'. He also epitomised those personal characteristics that his fellow tribesmen so admired: he was a strong leader, a warrior and a man of great honour as well as a consummate poet:My sword I grit upon my thigh
To guard our nation's ancient fame;
It's champion in this age am I,
The Khattak Khan, Khushal my name.
Khushal Khan was the conscience of his people. During one campaign, when the Yusufzai Pashtoons refused to help the Khattaks and their other allies, he wrote:
The Afghans are far superior to the Mughals at the sword,
Were but the Afghans, in intellect, a little discreet,
If the different tribes would but support each other,
Kings would have to bow down in prostration before them.
But whether it be concord or strife, or folly or wisdom,
The affairs of every one are in the hands of the Almighty.
Let us see what the Afridis, Mohmands, and Shinwaris will do;
For the Mughals are now lying encamped at Nangrahar.
I alone, amongst the Afghans, grieve for our honour and renown;
Whilst the Yusufzais at their ease are tilling their fields.
They who now act so dishonourably, and so shamelessly,
Will, hereafter, the upshot of their own acts perceive.
In my poor judgement, death is more preferable than life,
But the memory of Khushal will long, long endure!
Khushal Khan was descended from a long line of warrior chiefs. His father was killed in a battle against the Yusufzais, which no doubt contributed to Khushal Khan's jaundiced view of them. By the seventeenth century Khattaks were a formidable force whose allegiance was of great importance to the Mughals. Like his father before him Khushal Khan at first accepted Mughal wealth in return for protecting and controlling the main road between Attock and Peshawar, which meant collecting the tolls from those wishing to cross the river Indus. His tribe flourished and benefited from this allegiance and Khushal Khan continued to accept Mughal hegemony. He even took a Khattak force to fight for the Mughal Emperor Shah jahan during disturbance in Turkestan and Badakhshan. He later wrote that his main reason for supporting the Mughals was to use them in his life rivalry with the neighbouring Yusufzai tribe. Local rivalries were of for greater importance than any Pashtoon nationalism. By gaining the favour with the Mughals, he was able to capture Yusufzai land to the north and prevent Yusufzai retaliation.
Khushal Khan had supported Shah Jahan and continued that support for Shah Jahan's son and heir Aurangzeb until, for some reasons that remain confused, Aurangzeb had Khushal Khan arrested and imprisoned. On his release from prison in 1668, nearly five years after his arrest, Khushal Khan became one of the leaders of a tribal rebellion against the Mughals that was remarkable for its success and for the temporary unity it encouraged between several rival Pashtoon tribes.
When' in the seventeenth century, a woman of the Safi tribe was insulted by soldiers serving the Mughals, the inevitable consequence was that Safi tribesmen killed the soldiers. The Mughals in their turn immediately demanded retribution from the Safi chiefs and from nearby vassal tribesmen, demanding that the Pashtoons responsible for killing the soldiers should be captured and handed over for punishment When this was not forthcoming, the Governor of Peshawar set out with a large force to teach Safi and their tribal allies the Mohmands, Afridis and Shinwaris, a lesson. The Mughal army was defeated with a reported loss of 40,000 men. With in two years the whole Frontier was a blaze and by 1674 the Emperor Aurangzeb had to go there in person to attempt to crush Pashtoon opposition to his rule. But by then, vassal tribes such as Khattaks and Niazis, seeing Pashtoon successes and Mughal vulnerability, began to shrug off their old loyalties to the Mughal empire and joined in the revolt. Khushal Khan, still bitter from his earlier imprisonment, led his tribe against the Mughals that year and recorded the event in his diary and poems.
Khushal Khan's greatest battle was that mentioned in the poem as the third affair, when, with Afridis, he attacked and captured the fort at Nowshera. Much of the rest of his life was spent in 'lesser triumphs' against the Emperor's forces, although the strain of attempting to maintain some unity between his own followers and other Pashtoon tribes eventually created a bitterness and disillusionment that was then transferred to his poems.
The tenuous unity, to which Pashtoon success in battle can be attributed, collapsed as inter-tribal feuds and rivalries were slowly renewed, encouraged by the Mughal Emperor's astutely distributed bribes. Khushal Khan Khattak retired from the battlefield in disgust and used his pen to attack the weakness in his own society with same fervour with which he had previously used his sword. His description of Pashtoon foibles provide insights in to the Pashtoon Character and are as much a reflection of Pashtoon society today as in the seventeenth century.
On Khushal Khan's retirement from active chieftanship, his many sons began fighting for the leadership of the Khattak tribe, and the bickering often broke out in to open warfare. Eventually one son, Bahram, regarded by his father as a degenerate, climbed to the top of the pile, having successfully had another brother, Khushal's favourite, arrested and imprisoned by the Mughals. He sent a son with some armed men to capture Khushal Khan, but when the 77-years-old patriarch saw the party of men approaching he drew his sword and called out: 'Whoever are men amongst you, come to the sword if you dare.' The party is reported to have returned, ashamed, to Bahram.
Undaunted, Bahram again turned to the Mughals for help, and the governor of Peshawar promised him troops to capture the old man. Before Bahram could do so, Khushal Khan fled in to Afridi territory where he died a year later, an exile from his own tribe. As with the other events of his life, Khushal Khan penned his disappointment in a bitter poem:
The art of chieftanship thou hast not learned, Bahram,
In thy time thou hast dishonoured the chiefship;
For the rest count not thy name among my sons'
That is the last prayer breathed by Khushal the Khattak.
FIRST AFGHAN KING
In normal circumstances Pashtoon tribal does not make for national unity. This was as true in the eighteenth century as it is today. Of the two Pashtoon tribes, the Ghilzai and the Abdali, the Ghilzai in particular had scored spectacular military successes against the might of the Mughal Empire, but they could never administer and control the areas that they managed to conquer. In fact, despite the formidable fighting qualities of the Pashtoon, it was a chief of the Afshars, a Turkish tribe in Persia, who took advantage of the chaos left when the Mughal empire began to crumble.
N
adir Khan crowned himself Nadir Shah and began consolidating his insecure position by expanding from Persia eastwards towards the Pashtoon areas. One of his earliest and most serious problems was how to deal with the Pashtoon tribes and their antagonism towards any prospective conqueror. However Nadir Shah exploited Pashtoon weaknesses so effectively that, by his death in 1747, Pashtoons were not only his trusted followers but also formed his personal bodyguard. His own kinsfolk and other Persian tribes he regarded as a threat. He played on the rivalries between the Ghilzais and Abdalis, using the latter to fight against the former. He exiled whole sections of them and other tribes and then incorporated many of the chiefs from both tribes into his Persian army.In 1747 Nadir Shah was assassinated, leaving the Pashtoons in his army heavily outnumbered and under great threat from the Persians. The Pashtoon chiefs met and held a jirga to try to find some form of leadership and a common policy to regain their lands in Afghanistan and keep the Persians out. The jirga chose 23-year-old Ahmad Khan. He was young, a good warrior, and came from one of the smaller clans of the Abdali, and was thus regarded as less likely to be a threat to the powerful chiefs of the larger clans.
Ahmad Shah became King of a people whose lives were governed by this established tribal system, which is still very persistent up to this day. He was elected by representatives of the western tribes, whom Ghubar lists as follows: 'Nur Mohammad Khan Mir Afghan, leader of the Ghilzais; Mohabat Khan, leader of the Popolzais; Musa Khan, leader of the Ishakzais; Nasrullah Khan, leader of the Nurzais; Jamal Khan, leader of Barakzais; and others'. Although the majority of the chief who elected him was from the Abdali and Ghilzai subtribes, non-the less other [non-Pashtoon] minorities were also represented, such as the Qazilbash and the Turkomans. The new King was well aware of the jealousy and antagonism existing between tribes, and he never tried to interfere in their local matters. He brought representatives of the khans and maliks [chief, usually land-owning] to his council of nine elders. This council, which was one of the most democratic features of his governmental system, was infect representing the whole tribal network. Its members could be elected or re-elected as seen fit both by the King himself and by the people they represented. Ahmad Shah consulted this council on many important matters, such as the raising of taxes, the army, or declarations of war. Having had the consent of this body, his action was thus very much in line with public opinion. As an Afghan himself, he knew exactly how far he could go, and never attempted to violate any tradition, even though it might be hindering the fulfilment of his ambition for a strong [Pashtoon] nation.
Finally, but of a vital importance, Ahmad Shah exemplified to his fellow Pashtoons all that an ideal Pashtoon should be. A good warrior, religious, generous, strong, he was described by a contemporary as: 'Tall and robust, and inclined to being fat. His face is remarkably broad, his beard very black and his complexion moderately fair. His appearance upon the whole is majestic and expressive of an uncommon dignity and strength of mind.' He was a man to whom being a Pashtoon was more important than the trapping of decadent kingship--trapping which to his fellow tribesmen were more associated with the Persians or Mughals. His well-known statement, 'Nowhere in the world can replace the ground on which one crawled in childhood' ,stamped him as being a Pashtoon first and an empire-builder second. He was a man of charisma, who, like the famous Khattak chief Khushal before him, was able to express some of his Pashtoon qualities in poetry:
By blood, we are immersed in love of you
The youth lose their heads for your sake.
I come to you and my heart finds rest
Away from you, grief clings to my heart like a snake.
I forgot the throne of Delhi
When I remember the mountain tops of my Pashtoon land
If I must choose between the World and you,
I shall not hesitate to claim your barren deserts as my own.
A part of his strength was his modesty. He did not surround himself with the trapping of pomp like so many other Asian monarchs of his time; indeed he did not even have a crown. He claimed to be working as the servant of God and could rely on his devotion to Islam as a further strengthening of his political portion:
I capture every province with the aid of God:
It is with his help that I go everywhere without failure.
Yet I, Ahmad, consider the world worthless and unimportant.
I shall leave the world behind and go to the next, armed only with my faith.
When Ahmad Shah moved eastwards through the Khyber Pass, he was welcomed by the eastern Pashtoon tribes. Wazirs in the south, Yusufzais in the north, and powerful Afridis, Mohmands, Shinwaris, Niazis and Khattaks in between all offered allegiance. It was a unique alliance that was regarded as the most remarkable achievement of his age. Indeed, on Ahmad Shah's gravestone were carved the words:
Ahmad Shah Durrani was a great king!
Such was the fear of his justice, the lion and
The hind lived peacefully together.
The ears of his enemies were incessantly deafened
By the noise of his conquests.
Under no other leader have such disparate tribes united before or since.
From the auspicious beginning of his reign until his death twenty-five years later, Ahmad Shah moulded a major Pashtoon empire, which stretched from Sabsavar in Persia in the west to Srinigar in the east, from Balkh in the north to Karachi in the south. He showed the Persians, Indians and the empire building British that the Pashtoons were a nation and a political threat to be feared and opposed.
Ahmad Shah died at the age of 51. After his death, the resurgence of traditional tribal rivalries, no longer kept in check by a leader's charisma, enabled the old enemies of the Pashtoons--the Sikhs, Turkomans, Persians and Kashmiris--and even other Pashtoon tribes to nibble away at the short-lived empire.
Oh, Ahmad, life passes by for every man;
In other times, [Pashtoons] will take pride in the memory of your sword.
If my sword thunders, brightening the darkness with its lightning gleam,
It is my love for my country that triumphantly conquers in every direction.
Before the death, Ahmad Shah attempted to find the right successor, a son to preserve the unity of the tribes. But the inevitable process of fusion and fission had already begun. Louis Dupree aptly described this process when discussing Afghan affairs of the nineteenth century:
A strong man would rise and unite several tribes into a confederation and expand it as far as his military prowess, political intrigues, and boudoir proclivities (i.e., marrying daughters or sisters of conquered leaders to himself, or to his sons) would allow. At the death (or even before) of such charismatic leaders, his sons, brothers or other close kin would contest for power, fissionable exercise which broke up the empire into tribal units.
Ahmad Shah rejected his eldest son and most obvious heir because, he claimed, he was unnecessarily violent and was not respected by the tribes. He had more faith in his second son, Timur, who was reluctantly accepted by the tribal chiefs following his father's death. But even among his own tribe, the Durranis, Timur did not have the kind of support that his father had enjoyed. Although Timur appeared to be competent administrator, he did not have his father's taste for expansion and conquest. The different tribes lapsed in to their traditional habit of fighting independently and by the time the British had decided an 'Afghan policy' was essential for the well-being of India, the 'Kingdom of Kabul' was both smaller and less stable. Ahmad Shah's twenty-five years of Pashtoon glory had left the illusion of an ordered kingdom. It took the British decades to understand the reality.
Bibliography:
THE STORY OF THE
NORTH-WEST FRONTIER (Andre Singer)
THE STORY OF THE NIAZI TRIBE (S. Malik)
WAR IN A DISTANT COUNTRY (David C. Isby)
THE GUARDIAN ( John Carvel)
THE ASIAN AGE (Raja Ram Mehrotra)
THE NEWS (K. Zaidi)
PASHTOON TARIKH KAY AINEY MANE (Bahdur Shah Kaka-khel)
TARIKH-I-FARISHTA (I. Farishta)
DAILY JUNG
TIME (James Geary)
THE DIVAN OF KHUSHAL KHAN KHATTAK (Khushal Khan Khattak)
FORTY-THREE YEARS IN INDIA (George Lawrence)
AHMAD SHAH DURRANI 1722-1772 (Nabi Misdaq)
