'The Middle Eastern question or some political problems of Indian defence' [‎204v] (413/616)

326 AFGHANISTAN AS A MILITARY STATE
question was subordinated to the one great purpose he
had in view. That he was not indifferent to frontier
questions per se he took care to show us when the
Durand boundary between Afghan and British territory
had to be traced out, not on paper, but on the spot.
But the Penjdeh incident left him cold ; he showed
little enthusiasm for the strategic frontier we secured
for him on the Pamirs; for he dreaded international
complications which would have delayed and hampered
his work of internal reconstruction.
In short, as the result of twenty years' effort he was
able to bequeath to his son a new Afghanistan widely
different from the loose aggregate of unruly tribes
which constituted his precarious kingdom when, after
ten years' exile, he first set foot again in Kabul in 1880.
Whatever difficulties Habibullah may still have to con
tend with, it may safely be said that they will be rather
of his own creation than the outcome of organic con
ditions such as his predecessors had invariably to deal
with on their accession to the Durani throne. He
found the whole machinery of government in working
order, and his father, who during his last years had
delegated to him an increasing share of his authority,
had initiated him, at least, into the technical working
of it. The weak point of the late Ameer's system is
that he has made Afghanistan a 44 one man show."
No one in the country has any power whatever except
the Ameer himself. Whether Abdurrahman succeeded
in imparting also to his son something of the genius
which, in Oriental countries especially, constitutes the
indispensable driving power of so highly centralised
a system of government yet remains to be seen.
Abdurrahman was one of the greatest men of his
time, and he was able to run the machine he created