It had been arranged that the force from Lundi Kotal should start six hours previously, and it was hoped that by this time it was in a position to enable it to cut off the enemy’s retreat. The Dakka force advanced to the attack covered by the fire of the four guns, and the heights were taken without any very serious opposition, the enemy evacuating one position after another, until, utterly routed, they fled down the reverse slopes towards Kam Dakka. As soon as the guns of the Lundi Kotal column were heard, about 5 p.m., Colonel Boisragon pressed on and joined hands with Brigadier-General Doran, commanding the troops from Lundi Kotal, in Kam Dakka. In the meantime the enemy had made good their escape, either towards Rena or across the river.
Brigadier-General Doran had left Lundi Kotal at 4.30 a.m. with the undermentioned troops:
Two guns 11–9th Royal Artillery. 20 sabres 17th Bengal Cavalry. 200 bayonets 5th Fusiliers. 200 bayonets 25th Foot. 30 bayonets Madras Sappers and Miners. 300 bayonets 1st Madras Native Infantry.[[97]] 200 bayonets 4th Madras Native Infantry.[[98]] 300 bayonets 31st Punjab Native Infantry.
Progress, via the Inzari Kandao, was very slow, the troops could move only in single file, the battery mules could hardly be got along, some baggage animals fell over the precipices and were lost, and the rearguard was sixty-seven hours in covering seventeen miles. The gorge of the Shilman Gakhe was forced after but a feeble resistance, and eventually Brigadier-General Doran was able to join Colonel Boisragon as already related; but all the baggage of the Lundi Kotal column, owing to the extraordinary difficulties of the road, did not reach the bivouac until the morning of the 18th. Meanwhile, on the 16th January, 500 men had been passed over the river on rafts and destroyed the village of Rena, whereafter the columns returned unmolested to Dakka and Lundi Kotal.
The operations, though a failure in regard to combination, had not been without effect; the tribesmen had suffered a severe defeat and had sustained many casualties; and nearly all the clans having been represented in the force opposed to us, the moral effect of the defeat was felt throughout the tribe, and for some months the Mohmands remained quiet. The success of Ayub Khan at Kandahar excited a rising which collapsed on the news of his subsequent defeat, and during the next sixteen years or more there was no recrudescence of large-scale trouble among the Mohmands on our border.
Partition of their Country
The difficulty of restraining and punishing the Mohmands had for years been intensified by the doubts which existed as to the respective spheres of influence of the British and Kabul Governments; it had been hoped that the Durand Agreement of 1893 had helped to smooth these difficulties away; but the Agreement, although apparently concurred in by the Amir, did not commend itself to his judgment on reconsideration, so far at least as the partition of control over the Mohmands was concerned. At last in 1896 the Government of India, with a view of terminating a state of indecision which had become intolerable, resolved to make an attempt to bring certain of the Mohmand clans more immediately under British control. The efforts made in this direction were so far successful that, despite certain hostile influences—religious and political—the Halimzais, Tarakzais, Utmanzais, Dawezais, and also the Pandiali sections, were held to be henceforth in British territory, and seemed themselves cordially to concur when the new arrangement was announced to them.
When the frontier disturbances commenced in 1897 the above-named clans evinced no disposition to take part, although the Hadda Mullah, an especially notorious agitator, himself lived in the Mohmand country and had acquired a commanding influence over the clans, with some of whom he was said to have helped to defend the Malakand in 1895; and when in July the rising occurred among the men of Swat, some of the leading Mohmands among our new subjects offered their assistance to the representatives of the British Government.
Eventually the Hadda Mullah succeeded in stirring up the tribesmen, who, while unwilling to assist their co-religionists in Swat, had no objection to raid in the vicinity of their own border; and accordingly by the 7th August information had reached the authorities at Peshawar that some 3000 Mohmands were marching from Gandab to attack Shabkadar. The General Officer commanding at Peshawar proposed reinforcing Fort Shabkadar with regular troops, but this proposal was negatived by the Commissioner, who was in hopes that the Halimzais, who had so recently accepted our protection, would be able and willing to prevent the advance of the raiders.
It was, however, speedily apparent that measures so heroic were quite beyond the power of the Halimzais; they temporised, they gave information of the hostile movement, but they did not oppose the forces of the Hadda Mullah; and eventually, as was almost to be expected, many of the Halimzai fighting men enlisted under his banners.