AFGHANISTAN

91

that her army could not be held together without liberal
yearly contributions from India. Doubtless every year of
peace makes greatly for the increase of her internal wealth
and national growth, but the views of the Kabul Government,
 under Abdur Rahman, on the subject of revenue,
taxes, and trade imports, have not been conducive to commercial
 development. The trade of Afghanistan, such as
it is, sets southward rather than northward for the reason
that the Central Asian States and districts north of Afghanistan
 produce much the same marketable commodities that
Afghanistan itself produces, and that they trade through
Afghan territory to India. The heavy duties levied by the
Amir’s officials at frontier posts have forced a good deal of
this Central Asian trade westward lately, so that carpets of
Turkestan, for instance, find their way to the Quetta
market through the ports of the Persian Gulf rather than
through Kandahar and Chaman. Doubtless there is much
unnecessary loss to the country through similar extortion
on the northern routes ; but in spite of commercial stagnation,
 the great fact still remains that the late Amir set
himself to work with energy at the mastery of some, at
least, of the first principles of national development. He
has made roads, built bridges, erected buildings, and encouraged
 irrigation, and he was, to the day of his death,
busy in connecting the uttermost parts of his kingdom
by passable roads through districts which have been
hitherto regarded as impracticable. The question then
arises whether Afghanistan can ever be rendered selfsupporting
 and independent of India ; whether her army
(which we cannot regard with indifference so long as it
constitutes a fighting factor between British India and
Russia) can be paid and fed by the country it is raised to
serve ; whether Afghanistan could, to put it shortly, be
rendered a financial success. Under a strong Government,
 and favoured by peace, there is little doubt that it
might be so, although it is not in many directions that her
capabilities for production could be largely extended. In
the northern districts of Afghanistan, in the basin of
the Oxus. in Badakshan and Turkestan, limited space for