It is "all against all," in these valleys. The two khans who had been
arrested would have fled to the hills. They knew they were to be
punished. Still they dared not leave their stronghold. A neighbour, a
relation, a brother perhaps, would step into the unguarded keep and hold
it for his own. Every stone of these forts is blood-stained with
treachery; each acre of ground the scene of a murder. In Barwa itself,
Umra Khan slew his brother, not in hot anger or open war, but coldly and
deliberately from behind. Thus he obtained power, and the moralist might
observe with a shudder, that but for the "Forward Policy" he would
probably be in full enjoyment to-day. This Umra Khan was a man of much
talent, a man intellectually a head and shoulders above his countrymen.
He was a great man, which on the frontier means that he was a great
murderer, and might have accomplished much with the quick-firing guns he
was negotiating for, and the troops he was drilling "on the European
model." The career of this Afghan Napoleon was cut short, however, by
the intervention of Providence in the guise or disguise of the Indian
Government.
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