Four guns, Peshawar Mountain Battery. Three guns, Hazara Mountain Battery. Guides Infantry. 4th Sikh Infantry. 1st Punjab Infantry. 3rd Punjab Infantry. 4th Punjab Infantry.
The enemy had evidently expected the advance upon Maidani by the Zakha gorge, where most of the defenders had taken post, and the defences at Gandiob were incomplete, consequently the resistance was comparatively feeble; the heights were taken with but small loss, and after destroying the defences, the force returned unmolested to its camp at Gandiob. Next day the advantage gained was followed up; the bulk of the force returned to Maidani, marched down the valley near to the Zakha exit, and crossed over the range into the Durnani Valley, where the night was passed; a large amount of Kabul Khel stock was captured, and on the return to Shiwa, whither the camp had been moved from Gandiob, representatives of the clans came in asking for terms. The Utmanzais were directed to give up two of the murderers or the actual leader of the gang. On the 29th the main body moved to Spinwam, whence the tribesmen could more easily be coerced, while the remainder marched up the river nearer to Biland Khel. The tribesmen now brought in a man who had harboured the murderers, and on the 2nd January the troops moved back to Karera in the Kurram, having now satisfactorily settled with the Wazirs on the left bank of that river.
On the 4th January, while two battalions and a mountain battery remained on the right bank of the Kurram to keep open communications, the Brigadier-General marched to Sappari with the Hazara Mountain Battery, a detachment of Sappers and Miners, the 3rd and 6th Punjab Infantry, and one company 24th Punjab Infantry. There was no opposition, the Ahmadzai maliks were told they must assist in the capture of the murderers, and the force was then broken up. As might, however, have been expected, the dispersal of the troops did not facilitate the attainment of the object for which the expedition had mainly been undertaken; but eventually, through the personal influence of Lieutenant-Colonel Reynell Taylor, the Commissioner, the tribesmen were induced themselves to assemble a force, and capture and bring in one of the murderers, who was ultimately hanged on the very spot where he had committed the crime.
Trouble in 1869
The next occasion when we came in contact with the Darwesh Khels was in 1869, when in retaliation for an attack made upon a party of them by the Turis, they came down upon the village of Thal, and carried off about 7000 head of cattle. They refused restitution, but on Lieutenant-Colonel Keyes, commanding the Kohat district, collecting and moving a strong force out to Thal in April, the chief men of the division implicated tendered their submission and paid up the fines demanded. In the year following, the Muhammad Khel section of the Ahmadzai, hitherto a well-behaved community, began to give a good deal of trouble. Beginning with a grievance about a fine, and a judgment against them in regard to water-rights—Oliver tells us that across the border more than half the trouble arises about women, money, land or water—it culminated in ambuscading and shooting down seven sepoys of a party marching from Bannu for the relief of the Kurram outpost, by a raiding party of 140 Muhammad Khels. The section concerned was at once outlawed; all members found in British territory were arrested, and their lands in the Bannu district were sequestered until the whole clan submitted, and gave up the men who had committed this last outrage. This they refused to do, and for some fifteen months they lived among other clans, who sympathised with, and befriended them in their exile. They committed several further raids, but eventually expressed their anxiety to come to terms and surrendered unconditionally. Their six headmen were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, and the fines inflicted on the section had to be paid up before they were permitted to return to their holdings in British territory. Nor did the lesson taught end here; every division which had harboured or befriended the Muhammad Khels was called to account, and punishments suitable to the degree of their offences were inflicted.
For some years after this the Darwesh Khel Wazirs gave but little trouble, but this unusual abstinence was not due to any consideration for the British Government, but was necessitated by the tedious war they were engaged in against the Mahsuds, and which endured—to the general disadvantage of the Darwesh Khels—until September 1878, when the feud was patched up.
On the outbreak of the war in Afghanistan a convoy route was opened between Thal and Bannu, and which, following for the most part the line of the Kurram River, passed through the independent territory of the Utmanzais and Ahmadzais; it had been traversed during the Kabul Khel expedition of 1859, but had not since been used by us. Many detachments and contingents of all arms marched by this route during the winter of 1878–79, and Wazir camels were extensively used in the carriage of supplies for the Kurram Valley Field Force. For assisting in these arrangements, allowances amounting to Rs. 1000 per mensem were made to the more important Utmanzai and Ahmadzai chiefs, and the route remained open until the latter part of March 1880, when, in view of a fanatical excitement fanned by the Mullah Adkar, the road was closed.
During the time the Thal-Bannu route was in use, the number of offences or raids committed was particularly small, considering the number of valuable convoys passed through; but almost immediately the road was closed, a serious raid was committed on a Turi caravan near Thal by a mixed band of Darwesh Khels, Mahsuds and Dawaris, and on a Khattak labour camp on the Thal-Kurram road. A few weeks later—on the night of the 1st–2nd May—a determined attack was made on the military post at Chupri, eight miles to the north-west of Thal, garrisoned by fifty bayonets and thirty sabres. The raiders were some 200 men of the Darwesh Khels, Mahsuds and Dawaris; and forty of these, having by some means gained access to the enclosure of the post, inflicted upon our troops a loss of eleven killed (including a British officer), and sixteen wounded before they were beaten off. No reparation for this outrage ever appears to have been exacted.
Expedition of 1880
Expedition against the Malik Shahi Wazirs, October 1880.—By October 1880, the fines due from the Kabul Khel and Malik Shahi Wazirs had amounted to a considerable sum, chiefly on account of thefts committed by them in the Kurram and near Thal during the Afghan war; and there appearing to be some difficulty in collecting the amount, a force, under Brigadier-General J. J. H. Gordon, C.B., entered the Kabul Khel Hills on the evening of the 27th October. The force was composed of: