Intrigue in Kabul: A glimpse into Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan

AM has recently published the second section of our Archives Direct collection Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan, spanning the years 1923 to 1949. The British Foreign Office documents which make up this resource throw a spotlight on nearly every aspect of life in Afghanistan during this period, when efforts at modernisation came into conflict with traditional power structures and ways of life.

As a small state sandwiched between Russia and British-ruled India, Afghanistan had long been subject to the buffeting of international events over which it could have little influence; however, this situation did enable its government to maintain neutrality as World War Two approached, which was a rarity in an Asia still dominated by the great European empires.

Like other neutral wartime capitals, Kabul was a hotbed of intrigue among the assembled diplomatic corps, and the document FO 371/34932 from late 1943 contains a diverting snapshot of events of the time in the form of records of conversations between G. F. Squire, the British minister (equivalent to a modern ambassador) to Afghanistan, and his Italian opposite number, Signor Quaroni. That summer, Italy had switched sides in the war, with Mussolini dismissed and arrested and an armistice signed with the Allies. Quaroni was thus free to inform the British about clandestine activities he and the local German diplomats had engaged in in support of the Axis war effort.

The British were, of course, aware that Quaroni was under no compulsion to tell them anything he (or his government) did not want known or which could jeopardise the Italian position in Afghanistan in future. For example, he went into some detail about how the Afghan government’s relations with the Axis powers evolved with their perceptions of Soviet designs on Afghanistan; but when he provided a list of Afghan informants he had been using, it contained no officials or dignitaries, some of whom the British knew to be working for the Italians. But he was willing to discuss local figures who were opposed to the government, such as the Faqir of Ipi (Mirza Ali Khan Wazir), a regional leader and Pashtun nationalist whose followers had long conducted a campaign of guerrilla warfare against the British in India from Afghan bases. His relations with the Faqir mainly consisted of financial help, but another Italian, Signor Anzilotti, had managed to embarrass the Afghan government by making a 22-day journey to visit the Faqir, disguised as a Pashtun, despite a 150,000 afghani (about £12,000 at the time) bounty on his head. The Italians also gave the Faqir two personal gifts – a light machine gun and a cyclostyle machine, a precursor of the photocopier.

Quaroni, perhaps understandably, also rained down insults on the quality of the staff of the German legation: they were sufficiently “boneheaded” to believe their own propaganda, and one of them had such poor spoken Persian that it was impenetrable to anyone who did not already understand German. That said, he did reveal that the Germans had managed to keep one of their personnel, one Zugenbuhler, who was not on the official diplomatic list, secret from the British for two years, admitted in the file to be an “absurd error” 

For more information about Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan, 1834-1949 section II, Afghanistan From Civil War to World War Two, including pricing, please request a demo.

The document discussed in this article is FO 371/34932, ‘Axis activities in Afghanistan’ (1943), which is available open-access for 30 days.