With the opening months of 1919 Bolshevist activity throughout the Near and Middle East became increasingly apparent. The wave of rage and despair caused by the Entente's denial of Near Eastern nationalist aspirations[299] played splendidly into the Bolshevists' hands, and we have already seen how Moscow supported Mustapha Kemal and other nationalist leaders in Turkey, Persia, Egypt, and elsewhere. In the Middle East, also, Bolshevism gained important successes. Not merely was Moscow's hand visible in the epidemic of rioting and seditious violence which swept northern India in the spring of 1919,[300] but an even shrewder blow was struck at Britain in Afghanistan. This land of turbulent mountaineers, which lay like a perpetual thundercloud on India's north-west frontier, had kept quiet during the Great War, mainly owing to the Anglophile attitude of its ruler, the Ameer Habibullah Khan. But early in 1919 Habibullah was murdered. Whether the Bolsheviki had a hand in the matter is not known, but they certainly reaped the benefit, for power passed to one of Habibullah's sons, Amanullah Khan, who was an avowed enemy of England and who had had dealings with Turco-German agents during the late war. Amanullah at once got in touch with Moscow, and a little later, just when the Punjab was seething with unrest, he declared war on England, and his wild tribesmen, pouring across the border, set the North-West Frontier on fire. After some hard fighting the British succeeded in repelling the Afghan invasion, and Amanullah was constrained to make peace. But Britain obviously dared not press Amanullah too hard, for in the peace treaty the Ameer was released from his previous obligation not to maintain diplomatic relations with other nations than British India. Amanullah promptly aired his independence by maintaining ostentatious relations with Moscow. As a matter of fact, the Bolsheviki had by this time established an important propagandist subcentre in Russian Turkestan, not far from the Afghan border, and this bureau's activities of course envisaged not merely Afghanistan but the wider field of India as well.[301]