Hashim Khan and Shah Mahmud Khan: the uncles who governed Afghanistan, 1929–1953

At a glance

• Mohammad Hashim Khan and Shah Mahmud Khan were brothers of Nadir Shah and uncles of King Zahir Shah. Hashim was prime minister from Nadir's takeover in November 1929 until May 1946, and Shah Mahmud from 1946 until Daoud replaced him in September 1953. [6, 7, 9]

• Adamec gives Hashim's birth year as 1886. He died on 26 October 1953, a few weeks after handing the office on. Shah Mahmud died in December 1959. [7, 9]

• Under Hashim, Pashto was proclaimed an official language, Afghanistan stayed neutral in the Second World War and, under British and Soviet pressure, sent most of its Axis residents away in 1941. [6, 7]

• Under Shah Mahmud, Morrison-Knudsen finished the Helmand dams, an outspoken parliament and press were allowed and then suppressed, and Kabul campaigned for Pashtunistan. [7, 9]

Two brothers in the 1929 campaign

Gregorian names four brothers of the Musahiban family who led the opposition to Bacha Saqqao: Nadir, Hashim, Shah Wali and Mahmud. [6] Adamec calls Hashim a half-brother of Nadir. [9] Nadir had resigned as Afghan envoy in France and retired to Nice, where, Gregorian writes, Hashim and Shah Wali joined him. [6] Adamec's entry for Hashim has him leaving his post as minister at Moscow in July 1926 to join Nadir at Grasse, and leaving Marseilles with Nadir and Shah Wali on 8 February 1929. [9] Shah Mahmud was already in Afghanistan. Dupree has him caught in Kabul by Bacha Saqqao's seizure of the throne and made governor at Gardez, and Adamec says Bacha sent him as an emissary to the tribes of the east and south. [7, 9] Adamec has him joining Nadir in Khost in March 1929. [9]

The first attempts failed. Dupree writes that Hashim was driven back across the border and interned at Quetta, and that Nadir twice moved on Kabul and twice withdrew, with Shah Mahmud leading the army each time, before a third army of Mangal, Jaji, Jadran, Ahmadzai and Tota Khel Waziri tribesmen, with Darwesh Khel Waziris from the British side, was raised. [7] The story of the campaign belongs to Mohammad Nadir Shah.

When Nadir took the throne he made the family his government. Fraser-Tytler lists Hashim and Shah Mahmud as his prime and war ministers. [5] Adamec says Hashim reached Kabul on 9 November 1929 on his appointment as premier and minister of the interior, and that Shah Mahmud was appointed war minister that month. [9] Gregorian's list puts Shah Wali at war and Shah Mahmud at the interior. [6]

The uncles take over, 1933

On 8 November 1933 Nadir Shah was shot dead at a school prize-giving in Kabul. Hashim was away on a tour of the northern provinces. Shah Mahmud, the war minister, was in the capital with the army, and the heir, Zahir, was nineteen. [5, 7] Fraser-Tytler writes that by the precedents of Afghan history Shah Mahmud would have imprisoned his nephew and taken the throne, and that "he did none of these things". [5] Dupree writes that family solidarity and dynastic survival overrode any ambition the uncles had. [7] Zahir Shah became king, and his uncles governed.

Dupree dates Hashim's premiership from 1933 to 1946, then adds that "in reality" he had been chief adviser to Nadir Shah from 1929. [7] Gregorian says the real power lay with the three uncles, "particularly" Hashim, who as prime minister took complete control of domestic and foreign policy. [6] Fraser-Tytler calls him the virtual ruler for upwards of fourteen years. [5]

The sources describe the man differently. Fraser-Tytler, who writes that he took part in some of the events he tells, calls Hashim a man of high personal integrity who believed in plain speaking and resolute action, "respected and feared", and generally popular with tribal and religious leaders, though his hatred of corruption and his ruthless treatment of inefficiency made him many enemies. [5] Adamec's Who's Who calls him a good administrator who was austere and tough with the people, and notes that he never married. [9] The modernists of the 1940s, Gregorian reports, called his government "paternalistic and autocratic". [6]

Hashim also had views about the way to modernise. In a 1937 interview quoted by Gregorian he said the government was spending on public education a sum equal to half its war budget, and added: "We must transform the thoughts of the Afghans before we can build an ultra-western capital, as Amanullah tried to do. We saw only the outward forms of modernization." [6] See Amanullah Khan for the king whose fall brought the brothers to power.

Pashto as the language of officials

The language policy is the part of Hashim's rule that touches Pashtun identity most directly. Gregorian quotes him in the same 1937 interview: by 1938 Pashto was to become "the language of our officials, doing away with Persian. Our legends and our poems will then be understood by everyone. We shall draw from them a pride in our culture of the past, which will unite us." [6]

Gregorian says the government proclaimed Pashto the official language in 1937, to give the Afghans a distinct national language and to consolidate ties with the Pashtuns across the frontier. [6] The site's article on Pashto gives 1936 for the royal decree, following Charles Kieffer. The two dates are one year apart and the sources do not explain the gap. The newspaper Habl-ul-Matin had argued, Gregorian reports, that Pashto was spoken by a minority and that the government should encourage the tribesmen to learn Persian instead. [6]

Teachers took rapid Pashto courses, officials were required to attend night classes, and the Ministry of Education prepared Pashto textbooks and grammars into the early 1940s. [6] There was talk in 1937 of writing Pashto in the Latin alphabet, which never went beyond talk. [6] The programme ran into a shortage of teachers and the dominance of Persian in the main cities. [6]

Encyclopaedia Iranica adds the institutional side. The Kabul Literary Society, founded in 1930 to promote modern Persian literature, kept going through the 1930s. In 1937 the minister of education, Mohammad Naim Khan, began a policy of promoting Pashto as the national language, and in 1940 the society was formally replaced by the Pashto Society (Pashto Tolana). [10] Dupree uses the name Pashto Tolaney for the Pashto Academy of his own day, directed by Sadiqullah Rishtin, which he describes as systematically replacing foreign words with Pashto and inventing compounds, such as torghunday, "a black mound which flies up in the sky", for rocket. [7]

Banks, roads and German engineers

Gregorian describes the economic policy as "pay-as-you-go": develop the country's resources, avoid heavy debt and avoid major concessions to foreign firms. [6] The tool was the Bank-i-Milli, formed in 1932 with 35 million afghanis and headed by Abdul Majid Zabuli. Its capital grew a hundredfold between 1932 and 1938, and the joint-stock companies in its orbit controlled, in Gregorian's figure, as much as 80 per cent of the export-import trade. [6] The government's own bank, Da Afghanistan Bank, was set up to reduce that dependence. Dupree dates its incorporation to 1938 and Gregorian to 1939. [6, 7]

Gregorian counts nearly 2,000 miles of roads laid between 1933 and 1946, so that for the first time the northern provinces could be reached from Kabul by car, though until the late 1940s most trade still went by caravan. [6]

For machinery and expertise the government turned to Germany, Italy and Japan. Dupree writes that by 1935 the Afghans had agreed to accept help from these three countries because they thought them the least likely to disrupt things at home. [7] Fraser-Tytler puts the Germans at perhaps 150 by the late 1930s, building hydro-electric installations, textile and woollen mills, cotton gins and sugar-beet plant. He thought the choice unfortunate in hindsight and the aim of self-sufficiency in machinery questionable. [5] Dupree is harsher: he writes that the German, Italian and Japanese work was of no material consequence, with small dams and bridges that washed away in the first spring floods.

Neutrality and the demand of 1941

On 17 August 1940, Dupree writes, the king issued a farman proclaiming continued neutrality. [7] On 9 and 11 October 1941 Britain and the Soviet Union demanded that Afghanistan expel all non-diplomatic Axis personnel, some of whom, Dupree writes, had been causing trouble and casualties along the frontier. [7] The demand came about six weeks after the two powers had invaded Iran on 25 August. [7] In July 1941 Afghan border guards had shot two German agents on their way to the Faqir of Ipi, killing one, and Hashim had conveyed his regrets to the Germans. [6]

Hashim called a loya jirga. Gregorian reports that it agreed to comply but declared Afghanistan's determination to keep strict neutrality, independence and territorial integrity. [6] Dupree says it decided to resist any further interference from either side by force of arms. [7] The two accounts fit together: the demand was met, and the next one was to be refused. According to Dupree, of the 180 Germans in Afghanistan only 10 stayed to assist the German ambassador, Hans Pilger. [7] Gregorian judged the jirga a timely move that gave a national mandate to Hashim's foreign policy and let him push through a conscription law for men over seventeen and a special tax for the army. [6]

The change of 1946

Gregorian describes wartime hardship for the Afghan masses and a new group of modernists, trained in Europe, Turkey and the United States and largely from the most influential families. They proposed land for poor peasants and the growth of light industry and pressed for an end to Hashim's regime. There were reports of plots and of arrests of journalists and writers, and even of the deputy prime minister. [6] In May 1946 Hashim, already in failing health, resigned. His brother Shah Mahmud succeeded him and announced an ambitious programme of development. [6] Fraser-Tytler counts that appointment among the two events of importance in the first post-war years. [5]

Adamec's entry for Shah Mahmud, who was known as Ghazi, "the warrior", records a soldier's career: he commanded troops on the Peiwar front in 1919, governed the Eastern Province from 1926, and in 1931 drove Ibrahim Beg across the Soviet frontier. [9] He was in the United States in 1950 and 1951. [9]

The Helmand valley

The Helmand project began under Hashim and was pressed hard by Shah Mahmud's government. Negotiations with Morrison-Knudsen began in late 1945 and led to Morrison-Knudsen Afghanistan Inc., headquartered in San Francisco. The firm's estimate was $10.7 million for surveys and roads, and $63.7 million for two dams and a canal system. [7] Costs grew. By September 1949, Dupree writes, $20 million of the Afghan foreign-exchange surplus had passed to the company, and Zabuli, then minister of national economy, asked the Export-Import Bank for $55 million. The bank asked for a Helmand Valley Authority on the model of the Tennessee Valley Authority and in November 1949 approved a $21 million loan. [7]

The Boghra canal system was finished in 1951, the Helmand Valley Authority was created in July 1952, and the Arghandab Dam, 145 feet high and 1,740 feet long, was completed ahead of schedule. [7] The Kajaki Dam, 300 feet high, was inaugurated in April 1953. [7] Dupree's judgement is mixed. The Afghan government had talked the firm out of soil and ground-water surveys that later proved critical, Afghan engineers were used as administrators, and only 170,000 acres received adequate water, most of it already farmed. [7]

The Liberal Parliament, 1949 to 1952

Dupree writes that Shah Mahmud, encouraged by Western-educated young Afghans, made modest attempts at free elections, and that the parliament of 1949 had a hard core of 40 to 50 reform-minded members out of 120 who questioned ministers about their budgets. [7] Several ministers refused to answer, citing articles of the 1931 constitution. [7] A press law followed, and with it three opposition papers, each with a circulation of about 1,500: Watan, edited by Mir Ghulam Mohammad Ghubar; Angar, published in Persian and Pashto by Faiz Mohammad Angar, whom Dupree calls a noted Kandahari advocate of Pashtunistan; and Nida-yi-Khalq. [7]

A political brotherhood, Wikh-i-Zalmaiyan, "Awakened Youth", was founded in 1947. Dupree adds that in the Kandahari Pashto where the movement began the name is Wish-i-Zalmaiyan, the same kh and sh difference the Pashto article describes. [7]

The government's patience ran out. In 1951 it dissolved the student union, and several student leaders fled to Pakistan, killing a border guard on the way. Before the 1952 elections it closed the non-government papers and arrested about 25 liberal leaders. [7] Of those jailed, about half agreed to give up opposition and some later held posts under Daoud; others stayed in prison and died there, and the king released the survivors in 1963. [7] Adamec's account is shorter: Shah Mahmud allowed substantial freedom of speech and press, students and parliament became political forces, and he turned to more authoritarian measures when the attacks on his government grew. [9] Dupree adds that the experiment had frightened the royal family, many of whom remembered 1929. [7]

Pashtunistan

The question grew out of the end of British India. In 1944, Dupree writes, the Afghan government reminded the British in a letter of its interest in the Pashtuns on the Indian side of the Durand Line, and was told that the line was an international boundary. [7] Fraser-Tytler records that a high official in Kabul had long before put the Afghan fear in a sentence: "We know what the Durand Line is, but what about the Gandhi line?" [5] When the 1947 referendum offered the North-West Frontier Province only India or Pakistan, Afghanistan backed the Khan brothers' call for a third choice, independence, and argued that the tribal agencies, with their separate agreements with the British, should have been treated like the princely states. [7] The referendum itself is told in Partition and the 1947 NWFP referendum.

Afghanistan then cast the only vote against Pakistan's admission to the United Nations in September 1947, and withdrew the objection later that year. [7] On 12 June 1949 a Pakistani aircraft bombed the village of Moghulgai, 2,100 yards inside the Afghan border, by accident according to Pakistan and on purpose according to the Afghans. Kabul called a loya jirga, which met with the National Assembly and on 26 July voted national support for "Pushtunistan" and declared the Durand Agreement, the 1905 pact, the 1919 and 1921 treaties and any other treaty bearing on the Pashtuns to be illegal and dead. [7] The Afghanistan Analysts Network gives the same decision in a line. [8] The Durand Line article sets out how each side reads the treaties. In 1950 and 1951 Afghan-backed lashkar columns, one under Wali Khan Afridi, crossed the line, which Kabul denied sponsoring and called a matter of "freedom fighters". Pakistan answered with a blockade of Afghan transit goods and, for about three months in 1950, a stop on petrol. [7]

The record of Shah Mahmud's own words comes from Washington. On 8 June 1951 the Prime Minister spent three hours on the question with Mr McGhee of the State Department at McGhee's farm in Virginia. According to the American memorandum, Shah Mahmud said Afghanistan wished no additional territory, only self-government and better living standards for the Pashtuns, and he called the Durand Line "an artificial boundary", largely drawn across mountain crests. [1] The memorandum records that he admitted that more than half the Pashto-speaking people lived outside Afghanistan, and that he warned that if the Pashtuns were abandoned the Afghan rulers "might be overthrown by a popular revolution". [1] McGhee answered that Afghanistan could not support a separate Pushtoonistan, Pakistan would not accept it and the United States could not help. [1] A State Department memorandum of 28 November 1953 states Pakistan's position: the Durand Line is a legal boundary, and Afghan interest in the Pashtuns east of it is intervention in Pakistan's domestic affairs. It records that British, Iranian and Saudi efforts to bring the two governments together had failed. [2]

Pakistan's officials put their case to Washington in the same years. In November 1950 Foreign Minister Zafrullah Khan and the Secretary-General, Mohammad Ali, pressed the State Department for a clear statement, like the British one, that the United States would support the Durand Line as valid. They feared that Kabul would read talks as a sign that Pakistan was giving way on its stand about an international boundary. [3] In January 1951 Mohammad Ali told American officials that the line was "a question of fact only" and did not involve a policy decision, that Pakistan would not even discuss giving up territory east of it, and that talks would break down unless the Afghans understood that the boundary could not be called in question. [4] The Americans declined. They said their recognition of Pakistan in 1947 already implied acceptance of the line, and that they would consider making their position explicit if talks broke down over it. [3, 4]

September 1953

The handover was a family decision. Dupree writes that Daoud and his brother Naim, sons of Sardar Mohammad Aziz, came under their uncle Hashim's tutelage after their father's death, and that Hashim "taught the boys the harsh facts of Afghan political life". [7] On 20 September 1953, with the knowledge and approval of the royal family, Daoud, then commander of the Central Forces in Kabul, became prime minister. No blood was shed, though he arrested some outspoken critics. [7] Dupree lists four problems that had led him to act, among them the slow progress of the Helmand project, a tendency of Shah Mahmud's government to lean towards the West, and "softness toward the 'Pushtunistan' problem". [7] The Afghanistan Analysts Network writes that Daoud later "picked up" the Pashtunistan idea and that he waged a propaganda war, sent the army into the tribal agencies, added a national Pashtunistan holiday and named streets in Kabul and Jalalabad after it, before dropping the issue. [8] The rest of that story is in Mohammad Daoud Khan.

Hashim Khan died on 26 October 1953, five weeks after Shah Mahmud left office. [7, 9] Shah Mahmud lived on to December 1959. [9] Dupree sums up the years of the uncles in one line: the "great experience in development and democracy had either failed or slowed down by 1953". [7]