AFGHAN MOVE BY SOVIET

Horowhenua Chronicle, 23 November 1939, Page 8

AFGHAN MOVE BY SOVIET

MINIMISED BY BRITAIN Whitehall authorities are undisturbed by reports of Russian troops moving towards Afghanistan (says a message to the Christian Science Monitor). It is true that a Russian threat to advance through Afghanistan upon India was, for a generation preceding the World War, a continual bogy to successive British Administrations in India. Indeed, Whitehall's case for making India pay for maintaining as it has done a powerful army was long based almost entirely upon that possibility. A Russian force actually reached Afghanistan in 1875. Prime Minister Gladstone prepared for war, and finally the King of Denmark was called in to arbitrate the dispute. Berlin's anti-British propaganda has seized upon this situation, and much money and enterprise have been expended in Kabul, where German air communications, business houses, and so-called educational institutions have been developed upon a scale quite di» proportionate to the economic needs of Afghanistan. This country, although as large as France, possesses only 11,000,000 inhabitants, who are mostly peasants with a characteristic Central Asian outlook. Afghans Firm On Freedom

The Soviets of late years have been less active in Afghanistan than the Germans, but if there should now be active Russo-German co-operation against Britain, then the way has been prepared for use of Russian pressure in that region. It is regarded as significant, howc er, that although in the past British relations with both Russia and Afghanistan have often been strained, this threat has never yet become more than suppositional. In the first place the Afghans themselves are a brave and warlike people intensely determined not to submit to foreign invasion. Their young King Zahir Shah, advised as he has been by his uncles, who are brothers of the late Ameer Nadir Shah, has in the six years he has been upon the Kabul throne shown himself & strong and prudent ruler. He has been determined to uphold the integrity of his country in close accord with the British, whose own position behind the incredibly difficult mountain barrier Separating India from Afghanistan has been made almost impregnable with permanent fortifications. Region Of Frequent Forays It is true that this mountain barrier is itself inhabited by independent tribesmen able to muster in all about a quarter of a million Moslem riflemen, whose periodical forays into the settled districts of India on the one side of them and Afghanistan on the other have long immobilised considerable forces —Afghan as well as British—to keep them in order. But this, while it has meant considerable burdens upon Indian and Afghan taxpayers, has been more a nuisance than a danger, since these tribesmen, difficult as they may be to control within their Own borders, have been quite unqualified to face even small police forces once they enter more settled regions. It always has been possible in the past tTTErefore to barricade them for a time if troops garrisoning their borders have had to be withdrawn for duty elsewhere. Counteracting Propaganda

The stirring up of discontent in India by enemy propaganda among the masses is a more serious danger to British interest in the Orient. Delhi authorities often hp„ve been criticised for the inadequacy of their countermeasures in this connection. To this, however, they recently have been waking up. Their "criminal intelligence" staff Is large and competent. In the World War this organisation, under the late Sir Charles Cleveland, proved able from the very start of hostilities to put its hands upon the prime movers in such discontent. The chief measures taken were to intern large numbers of suspects, and when this had been done the situation was easily kept in hand for the duration of the war. Afghanistan is slowly emerging from Oriental medievalism, and some interesting progress is being made there in building roads, setting up factories, and also in starting a twice-weekly airplane service between it and Germany. But the whole thing is on a very small scale so far. Most of it is the work of Germans, of whom there are about I25«Mn Afghanistan, also of Russians, of whom there may be a dozen, and of a few Japanese and half a dozen Britishers.