The Kambar Khel is numerically the most powerful of all the Afridi clans, being able on emergency to put 10,000 armed men in the field; they belong to the Gar political faction. This clan is very migratory, occupying in the hot weather the Kahu Darra and the valley of the Shalobar River, which joins the Bara River at Dwatoi, and moving in the winter to the Kajurai Plain and to other minor settlements. This clan is very strongly represented in the Indian Army and Border Militia.
The Kamrai or Kumar Khel form but a small clan, Samil in politics, having its settlements in the extreme west of the Bara Valley, and also moving down to the Kajurai Valley to the west of Peshawar in the winter months. Their fighting men number no more than about 800.
Their Holy Places
The Zakha Khel owe their undoubted importance to their geographical position in Afridi-land, rather than to the number of armed men they can turn out—probably not less than 6000. Their holdings stretch diagonally across the Afridi country from the south-east corner of Maidan to the Khyber Pass; they are the wildest and most turbulent amongst their tribe, and their land being unproductive they depend a good deal upon raiding and blackmail for their livelihood, are “the wolves of the community,” and since—at any rate up to recent times—“they lent no soldiers to the ranks of the British army and had no pensions to lose,” the Zakha Khels have always been more ready to give trouble than the rest of their fellow-tribesmen. They hold, moreover, some five miles of the country lying on either side of the road in what Warburton calls “the real Khyber proper,” from the Shrine of Gurgurra (the sloe-tree)—where a small post is held by the Khyber Rifles—to Loargai in the Shinwari country. Of this shrine Warburton tells the following story of the manner in which the Zakha Khels managed to remove the reproach which had been levelled against them, i.e. that their country possessed none of the ziarats, or sacred shrines, to the memory of saints or martyrs. “The Zakha Khel Afridis,” writes Warburton, “bear a most unenviable name as being the greatest thieves, housebreakers, robbers and raiders amongst all the Khyber clans, their word or promise never being believed or trusted by their Afridi brethren without a substantial security being taken for its fulfilment. Naturally a race so little trusted were not fortunate enough to possess a holy man whose tomb would have served as a sanctuary to swear by, and thus save the necessity of the substantial security. One day, however, a Kaka Khel Mia came into their limits with the object of seeking safe conduct through their territory to the next tribe. They received him with all politeness, but finding in the course of conversation that he was of saintly character—a holy Kaka Khel Mia—they came to the conclusion that he was just the individual wanted to put their character for truthfulness on a better footing. They therefore killed him and buried him, making his tomb a shrine for all true believers to reverence, and a security for themselves to swear by.”
Oliver caps this story with another of the same character: “A Mullah was caught copying the Koran. ‘You tell us these books come from God, and here you are making them yourself. It is not good for a Mullah to tell lies’; so the indignant Afridis made another ziarat for him.”
It is only quite within recent years that the Zakha Khels have taken to military service, and even now the number enlisted in the regular Indian army is relatively small, the majority preferring service near their homes and joining the Khyber Rifles. In politics the Zakha Khels are Samil.
The Sipah is only a small clan, Samil in politics, and cherishing a standing feud with the Aka Khels. Their main settlements are in the upper portion of the Bara Valley, with the Zakha Khel bordering them on one side and the Kambar Khel on the other, while they also have settlements in the Kajurai plain, where is their notorious rifle factory at Ilmgudar.
Ranken defines the tribal limits in the Khyber Pass as follows: “The Kuki Khels from Jumrud to where the Mackeson road begins; the Sipah Afridis from the beginning of the Mackeson road to Shagai; the Kambar Khel from Sultan Tarra to the white mosque of Ali Musjid; the Malikdin Khel from the mosque to Gurgurra; the Zakha Khel from Gurgurra to the Kandar ravine near Garhi Lalabeg; and the Shinwaris westward of Torkhan.”
The Khyber Pass Afridis
The above-mentioned six clans are known collectively, as already mentioned, as the “Khyber Pass Afridis.” British connection with them commenced as far back as 1839, when a Sikh force under Colonel Wade, and Shah Shuja’s contingent with British officers, forced the Khyber—of which the actual defile may be said to be in the hands of these half-dozen clans. “In our earlier Afghan campaigns they fully maintained their ancient fame,” writes Oliver, “as bold and faithless robbers, but from the time the Punjab was annexed, up to the second Afghan War, their behaviour was, for Afridis, fairly good. In 1878 some of the clans took sides with us, and some with the Amir, necessitating a couple of expeditions into the Bazar Valley,” and during the two phases of the campaign not less than 15,000 fighting men were required to keep open our communications with India by the Khyber route, despite the arrangement which had been come to with the clans bordering on the Khyber, and which will now be described.