Afghan Assessements of the Southern Turkmans Territories's State Affiliation during Russian-Afghan Demarcation 1884-1888

Abstract

In the 1880s the northwestern part of the Russian-Afghan border was completely determined in defining which the parties faced significant contradictions. In St. Petersburg, an "ethnographic" principle of delimitation was developed. According to it in order to ensure the security of this frontier, it was important to unite the Turkmens under their rule, which meant the inclusion of the territory close to Herat into Russia. The strategic importance of this Afghan city in the context of the eventual campaign of Russian troops in India forced the British to counteract such a development of events in every possible way. As a result, they developed a "political" principle of demarcation, according to which London insisted that the Turkmen lands belong to Kabul. These disagreements are usually considered exclusively within the framework of the confrontation between Russia and Great Britain in this region (the Great Game). With such an approach, the role of the Afghans in this process has so far been ignored by researchers. The Dari-language source “Siraj at-Tawarikh” cites many documents showing that on the very start of the work on establishing the western part of the Russian-Afghan border in Kabul they considered the southern Turkmen lands an integral part of Afghanistan. Thus it can be concluded that the Afghans claimed rights to the disputed lands not under duress by the British but, on the contrary, the Afghan assessments of the state ownership of these territories formed the basis of the British negotiating position which allowed London to fight for moving the border as far north as possible from Herat.