sought to carry him into the war against the Anglo-Russian entente. He was still sticking loyally to the British when Czarist Russia fell in 1917 and all of Central Asia fell with it into the most complete confusion. North of him, Bokhara, a smaller country which adjoins the Afghan frontier for nearly half its length, had been nominally independent under the rule of its Emir, Said Mir Alim Khan, in Old Bokhara City, but actually ruled by the Czarist Resident in the Russian cantonment of New Bokhara. The Kerensky Cabinet at Petrograd continued this regime, but Soviet Russia recalled the Resident and left the Emir in control. The mutual abrogation of the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1907 had the effect of leaving both Bokhara and Afghanistan in enjoyment of actual independence. The Young Uzbeg Party in Bokhara immediately began an agitation for the introduction of Parliamentary government, but the Emir Said Mir Alim lost no time in discovering new friends at Merv where the Government of India's East Persia Cordon had set up one of its "Afghan Consulates-General under armed guard."
It had never been possible for the British to dictate their own terms to Afghanistan as they did to Persia after the Russian retreat, for the Afghans are made of sterner stuff. Neither the Uzbegs of Bokhara to the north nor the Punjabis of India to the south have shown much love for the Afghans. As for the Persians, the Afghans could doubtless do what they pleased with them. But with the dispatch of the East Persia Cordon to Meshed and Merv, Said Mir Alim of Bokhara and Habibullah of Afghanistan reached an understanding
