Frontier Policy
And for my own part I believe this is the best solution. We must not expect a millennium on the North-West Frontier. The tribal lion will not lie down beside the district lamb in our time, and we must deal with the problem as best we can in accordance with our means, and to this end my views are briefly as follows:—
(1) We should do everything possible to provide the younger trans-border tribesmen with all honourable employment for which they are suited: service in the army, in the frontier civil forces, and in the Indian police or similar forces overseas, and we should give labour and contracts as far as possible to tribesmen for public works in their vicinity. For the problem is largely economic. Unless the lion gets other food he is bound to cast hungry eyes on the lamb.
(2) We should do all that is possible to establish friendly relations with the tribal elders through selected and sympathetic political officers, to give them, by means of subsidies for service, an interest in controlling the hot-bloods of their tribe, and, where possible, to give them assistance in education and enlightenment. We must remember that we have duties to the tribes as well as rights against them.
(3) We should extend the khassadar or levy system; that is, we should pay for tribal corps to police their own borders, arming themselves and providing their own ammunition and equipment. In this way we give honourable employment and secure an effective safeguard against raiders without pouring more arms into tribal territory.
(4) We must have efficient irregular civil forces, militia, frontier constabulary, and police, well paid and contented.
(5) We should revert to the old system of a separate frontier force in the army, specially trained in the work of guarding the marches. Those who remember the magnificent old Punjab frontier force will agree with me in deploring its abolition in pursuance of a scheme of army reorganisation.
(6) We should improve communications, telephones, telegraphs, and lateral M.T. roads.
(7) We should give liberal rewards for the interception and destruction of raiding gangs, and the rounding up of villages from which raids emanate.
(8) We should admit that the Amir of Afghanistani for religious reasons exercises a paramount influence over our tribes, and we should get him to use that influence for the maintenance of peace on our common border. It has been the practise of our statesmen to adopt the attitude that because the Amir was by treaty precluded from interfering with our tribes, therefore he must have nothing to do with them. This is a short-sighted view. We found during the Great War the late Amir’s influence, particularly over the Mahsuds, of the greatest value, when he agreed to use it on our behalf.
(9) Finally, there is a suggestion afoot that the settled districts of the North-West Frontier Province should be re-amalgamated with the Punjab. I have shown, I think, clearly, how inseparable are the problems of the districts, the tribal area, and of Afghanistan; and any attempt to place the districts under a separate control could only mean friction, inefficiency, and disaster. The proposal is, indeed, little short of administrative lunacy. There is, however, an underlying method in the madness that has formulated it, namely, the self-interest of a clever minority, which I need not now dissect. I trust that if this proposal should go further it will be stoutly resisted.