When, in 1878, the Government of India called upon the Commander-in-Chief to put forward proposals for the conduct of a campaign in Afghanistan, Sir Frederick Haines offered the suggestion, inter alia, that “a demonstration should be made early in the operations of an advance by the Khyber, by encamping out a certain proportion of the Peshawar troops, making arrangements with the Khyberis for their passage through the pass.”[[103]] In consequence of the above, Major Cavagnari was instructed to come to a friendly understanding with the Khyber Pass Afridis, and to arrange for the passage of troops through the defiles at certain rates. Major Cavagnari based his estimate of the money payments to be made to the headmen of the clans, on the sums paid by Colonel Mackeson for the same purpose during the latter period of the first Afghan War; and he finally compounded with the six clans of Khyber Afridis for a payment of Rs. 5950 per mensem, which sum was willingly accepted. When, in September 1880, northern Afghanistan was finally evacuated by our troops, the Indian Government, recognising the undesirability of maintaining any regular force in the Khyber, expressed a wish to hand the pass over entirely to the independent charge of the neighbouring clans, provided some wholly satisfactory arrangement could be come to for keeping the road open, and for safeguarding the caravans passing to and fro between Afghanistan and India. Early in 1881 a complete jirgah of all the Khyber clans assembled in Peshawar, and an agreement was arrived at whereby the independence of the Afridis was recognised, and they engaged, in consideration of certain allowances, to maintain order throughout the Khyber; the Government of India reserved the right of re-occupation of the pass, and was to take all tolls; the Afridis providing a force of Jazailchis paid for by the Indian Government, and were to deal by a general jirgah with all offences committed on the road. The allowances were fixed at Rs. 85,860 per annum for the six clans immediately concerned with the policing of the pass, and for the Shinwaris of Loargai; and a further sum of approximately the same amount was guaranteed by the Government of India for the upkeep of the Jazailchis—since improved into the Khyber Rifles—a body about 550 strong. As a set-off against these money grants the tolls on caravans amounted to some 60,000 rupees per annum. The allowances then granted are to-day substantially the same; the pass is again in charge of the Khyber Afridis, and is again guarded, from Jumrud to Lundi Kotal, by the Khyber Rifles, who have, however, been completely reorganised, and are now a body 1700 strong, with six British officers.
The Khyber
Of that portion of the Khyber which is under our own control the following description is given by Warburton: “The main road from Peshawar to Kabul passes through Jumrud, going almost due east to west. After leaving Jumrud it passes through an easy country, having low hills on the left hand side, and about the third mile it enters the hills at an opening called Shadi Bagiar. A ridge from the lofty Ghund-ghar on the left runs down to the road, and faces a similar ridge coming down from a prolongation of the Rhotas Range. The highway runs for a short distance through the bed of a ravine, and then joins the road made by Colonel Mackeson in 1839–42, until it ascends to the Shagai Plateau on the left hand side, and here Ali Musjid is seen for the first time. Still going westward the road turns to the right, and by an easy zigzag descends to the stream and runs along its side, and below Ali Musjid goes up the waterway. The new road along the cliff was made by us in 1879–80, and here is the narrowest part of the Khyber, not more than fifteen feet broad with the Rhotas hill on the right hand fully 2000 feet overhead. Still progressing, at about 400 yards from Ali Musjid, on the left hand side, three or four large springs issuing from the rock give the whole water supply to this quarter. Between two and three miles comes the Malikdin Khel hamlet of Katta Kushtia; soon after Gurgurra is reached, and then we are in Zakha Khel limits in the real Khyber proper, until we come to the Shinwaris of Lundi Kotal, or more properly Loargai. The valley now widens out, and on either side lie the hamlets and some sixty forts of the Zakha Khel Afridis. Here, there is no stream, and the residents have to depend on rainwater collected in tanks. The Loargai Shinwari Plateau is some seven miles in length, and there is its widest part. Just here above Lundi Khana, the old road was a very nasty bit.... From Shadi Bagiar to Lundi Khana the pass cannot be more than twenty miles in a direct line. When the first detachment of our troops returned from Kabul,[[104]] they marched from Ali Musjid along the bed of the stream, by Lala China, Jabagai, Gagri, Kaddam, ‘the real gate,’ and Jam, villages of the Kuki Khel Afridis, to Jumrud; but Colonel Mackeson, finding this way extremely difficult and unsuitable for guns and wheeled traffic, made an excellent road from Ali Musjid to Fort Jumrud through the hills, the same that we now use.”
The Trans-Frontier Khyber
The trans-frontier portion of the Khyber route to Kabul is described by Oliver as follows: “Over the Lundi Khana Pass, called the Kotal,[[105]] the road rises by a steep ascent between steep cliffs less than 150 feet apart, and down again till the Valley of the Kabul River is reached at Dakka.... At Jalalabad—ninety miles from Peshawar—the cross ranges of hills are, for a change, replaced by a well-watered fertile stretch of country, a score of miles long by a dozen wide, dotted with towers, villages and trees; and where the Kabul River—that has all along had to struggle through mere cracks—becomes a broad clear stream 100 yards wide. Thence the route lies through a thoroughly unattractive country again, over long stony ridges, across rocky river beds, varied with an occasional fine valley like Fathabad, or an oasis like Nimlah, to Gandamak, which, by way of comparison with what is beyond again, is a land flowing with milk and honey; for on by Jagdalak and the Lataband Pass, or Tezin and the Khurd Kabul, is a wild waste of bare hills, surrounded by still more lofty and forbidding mountains. The teeth become more closely set together; the road narrower; the stony ridges change to bleak heights from 7000 to 8000 feet high, the river beds, deep valleys, or narrow defiles, like the fatal Jagdalak, almost devoid of verdure, and into whose gloomy ravines the winter sun can hardly penetrate—these are the outworks that have to be negotiated before the gardens and orchards, the bazaars and forts of Kabul, can be approached.”
The Aka Khel clan occupies the hills to the south-west of Peshawar between the Bara River and the country of the Adam Khels, also the Bara and the Waran Valleys. It was in the Waran Valley and in the house of that firebrand among the border clergy, Saiyid Akbar, that there was found, during the course of the Tirah expedition, the whole of the inflammatory correspondence which had passed between the Afridi maliks and mullahs prior to and during the Pathan revolt of 1897. This clan is Samil in politics and can put 4000 armed men in the field.
The Adam Khels
The Adam Khel clan is located in the hills between Peshawar and Kohat, being bounded on the north and east by the Khattaks, on the south by the Bangash, and on the west by the Aka Khels (their deadly enemies), and by the Orakzais. They are one of the most powerful and numerous of the Afridi clans, have a great reputation for bravery, and can bring into the field 6500 fighting men, who, moreover, are unusually well armed, with rifles stolen from our cantonments and with those they manufacture themselves at their factories in the Kohat Pass. They are to a small extent cultivators, but their chief occupation is carrying salt from the mines; while the allowance they receive from the Indian Government for keeping open the Kohat-Peshawar road is an assistance to their revenues, an allowance which has been paid them since the days of the Sikh governors of Peshawar. The Adam Khels do not belong to either of the two great political factions. From the situation of the Adam Khel country, and owing to the fact that their very existence is dependent upon their trade with British territory, this particular clan is very susceptible to a blockade and can consequently be easily brought to terms. Nearly all the trouble we have had with the Adam Khels in the past has been due to disputes about the salt tax, or about the maintenance of a practicable road through the Kohat Pass. This short cut from Peshawar to Kohat has a certain strategic value; by this road the two frontier garrisons are no more than thirty-seven miles apart, and only ten of these are in independent territory, while round by railway, via Khushalgarh on the Indus, the distance is 200 miles. Two divisions of the Adam Khels are the actual keepers of the pass, and though we pay, and have paid for years, a considerable subsidy, until comparatively lately we were not allowed to make a road, or even to remove the boulders that obstructed the path. From about 1865 onwards the question of the construction of a road practicable for wheeled traffic was continually raised, and was as often dropped in face of tribal opposition. It was one of the main objects of the expedition of 1877, but was given up by Lord Lytton to avoid “breaking the spirit of the clan,” who evinced their gratitude the year following—that of the Afghan War—by threatening to close the road to us. This threat came, however, to nothing, and the pass formed, throughout the campaign, an unmolested and important means of communication between Peshawar and Kohat. Water is very scarce in the pass, the supply being dependent mainly upon tanks.
During the risings of 1897–98 the Adam Khels remained perfectly quiet, and troops constantly used the pass, through which at last, in 1901, a metalled cart road was made.