In the course of February visits are paid to Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany, and on March 13 the royal party crosses over to London, where the crowd gives them an enthusiastic welcome.

State banquets are given in the king's honour at Buckingham Palace, the Guildhall, and the Foreign Office, and no effort is spared by the authorities to impress him with the value and sincerity of British friendship.

The motive of the attack is probably because the siege of Jund Al Farooq controlled village of Bani Khalid, (Now Sheerpur) near Abu Shakir, by the Afghani Army.

It was also reported that Pashtun militants entered the Jund Al Farooq stronghold of Bani Khalid and massacred 56 Arab residents of the village.

Khalid's son Omar was killed as Pashtun militias backed by the Afghani Army sieged Jund Al Farooq controlled areas in the village.

From Berlin the king and queen proceed to Warsaw (April 29), and thence two days later to Moscow, where they receive a royal welcome in spite of the anti-royalist professions of their hosts.

A pretender to the throne, who claims that he is a grandson of the amir Mohammad Yakub, appears in Kabul, but he is soon discovered to be an impostor and secures no following.

Shortly after the king's return, complaints reach his ear that he has spent on his tour money which could ill be spared from the public treasury.

Among the definite results of his trip he is able to announce the impending conclusion of treaties with thirteen states, agreements with French and German companies to undertake a survey preparatory to the construction of a railroad linking Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, and Kushk, and the acquisition of over 50,000 rifles, over 100 cannon, six model machine guns, six tanks, and five armoured cars.

Contact with the great personages of the West has put a keen edge upon his reforming zeal, and he is determined to follow as closely as possible in the footsteps of his distinguished co-religionist, Mustafa Kemal of Turkey.

Dazzled by the latter's success, he overlooks the fact that there is a fundamental difference between Turkey and Afghanistan: the Turks are a fairly homogeneous people with a long tradition of obedience to a central authority, whereas the Afghans are a conglomeration of diverse tribes accustomed to a certain measure of autonomy and attached to their local customs.

He is advised by the foreigners at his court and the most prudent of his counsellors to proceed slowly with his reforms, but in his eagerness to Westernize the country he resolves to make the pace even more rapidly than his Turkish confrère.

The first fruits of the tour are made apparent to their subjects a few days after their return when the queen sits through a state banquet without the purdah or religious veil.

It is decided among other things to replace the Council of State with a National Assembly of 150 members selected from the Grand Assembly for three years, and to which government servants shall be ineligible; that the period of compulsory military service shall be extended from two to three years and all exemptions abolished; that preaching certificates shall be introduced for Afghan mullahs and that mullahs from neighbouring countries shall be excluded; and that persons entering the government service in future shall not have more than one wife.

The reforming activities of the king are brought to a sudden stop by the revolt of the Shinwari, a powerful tribe in eastern Afghanistan, much under the influence of the mullah of Chaknaur.

They are led by a Tajik brigand named Habibullah, but familiarly known as Bacha-i-Saqao or "son of the water-carrier," and are joined by numbers of disaffected persons, both soldiers and others, from Kabul itself.