For this duty forty men of the 14th Sikhs, with their jemadar, and sixty of the Kashmir Rifles, with a native officer, were placed under command of Lieutenant H. K. Harley, 14th Sikhs, with orders to leave the fort at 4 p.m. by the east gate, rush the summer-house, and hold it on the enemy’s side, while the rest of the party destroyed or blew in the mine gallery. The summer-house was taken with a loss of two men killed, the defenders—some thirty Pathans—bolting to the cover of a wall and opening fire from thence upon Harley’s party. Leaving some men to keep these in check, Harley led the remainder to the mine shaft, just outside the summer-house. Thirty-five Chitralis, armed with swords, came out and were at once bayoneted. Harley now cleared the mine, arranged powder and fuse, but it was untamped and the charge exploded prematurely; none the less the effect was excellent, the mine being burst open right up to the foot of the tower, and lying exposed like a trench. Two prisoners were brought in, two of the enemy were killed in the mine by the explosion, two Pathans were shot in the summer-house, and many of the enemy were shot down by the covering fire from the walls of the fort. Harley’s party had eight men killed and thirteen wounded.

The enemy now seemed to have made their last effort; they had learnt that the defenders were still able to assume a vigorous offensive, and they knew that help was drawing nearer from the direction of Gilgit. On the night of the 18th–19th the investing force quietly withdrew and abandoned the siege; Sher Afzul and the Jandol chiefs fled that night to Bashkar and Asmar, and on the afternoon of the 20th the Gilgit force marched in.

During the siege the loss of the garrison of Chitral fort amounted, exclusive of the casualties on the 3rd March, to seventeen killed and thirty-two wounded.

CHAPTER IX.
MOHMANDS.[[83]]

The Mohmands are divided into two main branches, the trans-frontier or Bar (hill) Mohmands and the cis-frontier or Kuz (plain) Mohmands, and both belong to the Ghoria Khel branch of the Afghans, who, when driven from their holdings on the head waters of the Tarnak and Arghastan Rivers by the Tarin Afghans, emigrated eastwards, at the commencement of the fifteenth century, by way of Ghazni, Kabul and Ningrahar. The Bar Mohmands separated from those of the Kuz branch at Dakka, the latter going to the Peshawar Valley, while the former made for the original Gandhar and took possession of the hills which they still occupy. Thus separated, the two branches have long since lost touch with each other.

Speaking generally, the country of the trans-frontier Mohmands extends from a little south of the Kabul River, on the line Girdi Kats to Fort Michni on the south, to Bajaur on the north. On the east it is coterminous with the Peshawar district from Gandi, three miles north of Jamrud, to Fort Abazai, and along the right bank of the Swat River about twelve miles above Abazai. On the west it is bounded by the Kabul Tsappar Range and by the Kunar River, which constitute the dividing line between the Mohmands under British and Afghan spheres of influence, for by the Durand Agreement of 1893 the Mohmand country, which from the days of Ahmad Shah had been more or less subject to the Kabul rulers, was divided between the British and the Afghan Governments. The settlements of the cis-frontier Mohmands lie immediately south of Peshawar, and are bounded on the north by the Bara River, on the west and south by the Aka Khel and Adam Khel Afridis, and on the east by the Khattaks, their country being some twenty miles long by twelve miles broad. The greater portion of this is irrigated by the Bara River, is very productive, and its inhabitants for the most part fairly well to do.

In regard to the circumstances attending the partition of the Mohmand country, the author of Afghanistan wrote as follows in the United Service Magazine of April, 1908: “At the period of the Durand Mission the Government of India laid claim to the entire region—Bulund Khel, Mohmandstan, Asmar and Yaghistan, the latter embracing Chitral, Bajaur, Swat, Buner, Dir, Chilas and Waziristan. The Amir put forward a demand for Chageh in Baluchistan and the Asmar Valley, which he had previously occupied, and objected to the British pretensions. In point of fact, the rights of the Government of India had been already established by conquest and by moral superiority, since this zone, the home of border ruffians, had always required the watchful initiative of a strong Government.... Ultimately, after long discussion, the negotiations concluded, when it was revealed that at needless sacrifice the Asmar Valley, commanding the approach to the Pamir-Chitral region and south-eastern Afghanistan, and of great importance to strategic considerations on the Indian frontier, had been surrendered to the Amir, the Birmal tract separated from Waziristan, and an ethnic absurdity perpetrated where the Mohmands’ country had been divided by the watershed of the Kunar and Panjkora Rivers.”

The Mohmand Boundary

On the 12th June, 1894, Mr. Udny, the Commissioner of Peshawar, who had been nominated as chief of the Mohmand Boundary Delimitation Commission, issued a proclamation to “all Bajauri, Mohmand and other tribes inhabiting the country towards the Indian Empire from the Kabul River to the southern limit of Chitral,” giving what he called “a brief sketch of the boundary.” He stated that “whereas the kingdom of Great Britain has agreed that his Highness the Amir should retain in his possession the country of Asmar on the north of Chanak, situated on the Kunar River, or the River of Kashkar, the boundary demarcation will commence from Chanak in a south-westerly direction up to Kunar, and at a distance of a few English miles from the bank of the Kunar River towards Bajaur. From Kunar the boundary line goes southwards, and, taking a bend, ascends the hills close to Satala Sar, which hills divide the watershed between the Kunar and Panjkora rivers. From Satala Sar the boundary passes over the crest of the hill, on one side of which the waters flowing from the Dag Hills fall into the Panjkora River, whilst the waters on the other side passing through the Satala Valley, fall into the Kabul River. And in the centre of this hill lies the kotal of Satala. The extreme end of the boundary touches the Kabul River, in the vicinity of Palosi. From a review of the above details, you will understand that, in addition to the countries watered by the Kunar River which lie towards the limits of the Indian dominions, his Highness the Amir has agreed not to interfere in all that country, the eastern waters of which fall into the Panjkora River, nor to interfere or stretch his hand in that quarter of the Mohmand country, the waters of which fall into the Kabul River below Palosi.”

When, however, Mr. Udny met in August at Jalalabad the Sipah Salar, Ghulam Haidar, the Amir’s representative, it seemed that the Amir intended to repudiate the Durand Agreement, so far as it concerned the Mohmand and Bajaur country; the proposed partition of Mohmand spheres of influence was rejected, it appearing that the Sipah Salar, on behalf of his master, claimed to exercise jurisdiction over the Mohmands right down to the Peshawar Valley. A solution of the difficulty was, however, found, and Colonel Sir T. Holdich has something to tell us about it in his Indian Borderland, where he writes: “It was impossible to give any effect to the agreement of 1893 without clearly ascertaining whether the geographical conditions of the country admitted of a direct interpretation. For the most part they did not. The boundary of the agreement was partly a geographical impossibility, but for a great part there was no obstruction in the way of carrying out its intention, except a new and varied interpretation which the Amir put upon the text of it.... A boundary was found between Afghanistan and the independent tribes to the east, from the Hindu Kush to a point in the Kunar Valley from whence it diverged to Lundi Kotal; and although at that point it had to be temporarily abandoned, and has remained undemarcated, enough was secured to lead up to a better geographical knowledge of the whole position, on the basis of which it was possible to effect a subsequent agreement which has rendered actual demarcation through the Mohmand country unnecessary,” in spite of the fact that no part of the boundary defined south of the Hindu Kush was the actual boundary of the agreement.