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EX-KING OF AFGHANISTAN

cause, but it worked its full effect. Allah wished that
there be less feringhe about. It was the duty of the
humble Afghan to do his bit. ...

Even recently there have been cases of murder of
white men in Afghanistan purely from religious motives.
Fanatics still exist who have been biding their time for
a target of one of the hated foreigners, in order to com-
mit themselves to AUah after his dispatch, with the full
confidence of heavenly approval and the assurance of
Paradise in the hereafter.

The mullahs, with or without their tongues in their
cheeks, were the cause.

Untouched by civilisation in one of the last " for-
bidden " countries in the world, the peasants gained
their knowledge only through the mouths of the local
priests. Travellers' tales were notoriously exaggerated,
and all travellers were liars. It had therefore become
the custom for the mullah of the district to become the
purveyor of news for a large circle of people, and it may
be taken for granted that the news did not suffer in
picturesqueness by passing through his head.

He " coloured " news as cleverly as any newspaper
editor.

But it was over the subject of women and their free-
dom that the mullahs were chiefly agitated during the
first years of Amanullah's rule. The mullahs rightly
believed that their power to a great extent depended
on their suzerainty over the female side of the house-
hold. With a wife to preserve from the temptations of
this world and the ferocity of highly-sexed neighbours,
no man would willingly agree to a relaxation of the
strict rules guarding his household. The dreaded pros-
pect of a loosening of the bonds which held Afghan
women, thought the mullahs, would mean a lessening
of their own powers. They urged resistance to the new

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