The manifesto listed ten grievances. Five of them concerned women -- their education, their visibility, their changing status under King Amanullah's modernizing reforms. But years later, the Shinwari themselves would insist the 1928 revolt 'was not so much anti-Amanullah as against the local tax-collectors at Jelalabad.' Whether the rebellion that besieged Jalalabad in November 1928 was a cultural backlash or a tax revolt -- or, more likely, both at once -- it became the spark that set Afghanistan's civil war alight and eventually brought down a king.
Amanullah Khan had been pushing Afghanistan toward modernity with an urgency that unsettled the country's tribal foundations. His reforms touched everything from education to conscription, and the policy that most inflamed the eastern tribes was Hasht Nafri -- compulsory military recruitment of one man in every eight. To the Shinwari, a fiercely independent Pashtun tribe straddling the approaches to the Khyber Pass, this was intolerable interference. On November 14, 1928, a lashkar of roughly 300 Shinwari fighters attacked and looted government buildings at Achin and the town of Pesh Bolak. They cut the telegraph and telephone lines between Dakka and Jalalabad, halted motor traffic on the road, and laid siege to the provincial capital. The rebellion had begun with a few hundred men. It would not stay small.
Once the lines were cut, the only connection between Jalalabad and the outside world was by airplane. The government in Kabul dispatched troops, munitions, and Russian-piloted bombers to break the siege. By the end of November, the Shinwari had been joined by the Khugianis and some Mohmands, expanding the investing force considerably. A government sortie on December 1 drove the rebels back temporarily, but they returned. On December 5, they launched a full assault on the city -- and were repulsed with 800 casualties. Yet the rebel numbers kept growing. By mid-December, an estimated 10,000 fighters ringed Jalalabad. Then came the battle at Nimla, twenty-seven miles to the west, where Khugiani fighters surrounded and defeated a government column, capturing its supplies and disarming 1,000 tribal reinforcements headed for the besieged city.
As the siege ground on through December, Amanullah's mother, Sarwar Sultana Begum, flew into Jalalabad to rally the garrison and the civilian population. It was an extraordinary act -- a queen mother entering a besieged city by air to stiffen its resolve. Meanwhile in Kabul, a far graver threat was developing. The Saqqawist movement was closing in on the capital itself, forcing the government to divert resources away from relieving Jalalabad. The eastern province would have to be dealt with through negotiation, not reinforcement. The man chosen for this task was Ali Ahmad Khan, a former governor of Kabul, dispatched with troops and money to bring the rebels to terms.
Ali Ahmad Khan arrived in Jalalabad and opened negotiations with the Shinwari. By the end of December, talks were progressing. On January 4, 1929, the Shinwari signed a treaty and lifted the siege. The terms were never publicly disclosed. The court historian Fayz Muhammad wrote that Ali Ahmad Khan 'managed to pacify the rebels, winning over the savage Shinwaris to the amir with cash and other gifts.' But the resolution carried a strange undercurrent. When the city gates opened, Ali Ahmad Khan entered accompanied by rebel leaders. Afghan soldiers kept their weapons; tribal levies were dismissed. Then something remarkable happened: influential men of the Jalalabad area -- the Naqib Sahib of Charbagh, the Chaknaur Mullah, the Hadda Mulla -- reportedly signed a paper declaring Amanullah a kafir and Ali Ahmad Khan their king. A pagri was tied around his head in a coronation ceremony. Whether Ali Ahmad Khan was restoring order on Amanullah's behalf or scheming for his own power was unclear even to those who worked alongside him.
The suspicion that Ali Ahmad Khan was playing a double game found its sharpest expression in the actions of Haji Mohammed Akbar, the official overseeing frontier tribal affairs, who had participated in the negotiations. Disgusted by how the talks were conducted, he left Jalalabad for Peshawar and ultimately joined Amanullah in Kandahar, distancing himself from whatever Ali Ahmad Khan was becoming. The siege was over, but the civil war was only beginning. Amanullah would abdicate within weeks, driven from power by the forces his modernizing ambitions had unleashed. Jalalabad -- besieged in 1842 by Afghan forces fighting the British, and now besieged in 1928 by Afghan tribesmen fighting their own king -- once again proved to be the place where Afghanistan's internal fault lines rupture first. The city sits at the junction of mountain passes and river valleys, a natural chokepoint where control of the country has been contested and lost across centuries.
Located at 34.43N, 70.45E in the Jalalabad valley of eastern Afghanistan. Jalalabad Airport (OAJL) is immediately adjacent to the city. Kabul International Airport (OAKB) lies roughly 80 nm west through the mountain passes. The Khyber Pass and the Pakistan border are approximately 45 nm east. Best viewed from 12,000-15,000 ft AGL. The city occupies a broad, irrigated valley along the Kabul River, visually distinct as a green zone amid brown mountain terrain. The road to Dakka and the Khyber runs east from the city through increasingly narrow terrain.