The Zakha Khel and Kuki Khel continued to give trouble, and maintained their reputation as the most inveterate and audacious of robbers, whose depredations up to the very walls of Peshawar, and even within the city and cantonments, have been notorious since the days of Sikh rule. In those days, moreover, the Sikh governors cultivated methods of repression and punishment such as we have never practised. In General Thackwell’s diary, dated Peshawar, 23rd November, 1839, he writes, “Called on General Avitabili to take leave. They say Avitabili is a tiger in this government, he has been known to flay criminals alive and to break the bones of poor wretches on the wheel previous to hanging them in chains, and at our conference to-day very gravely wondered we did not put poison in sugar to send in traffic among the Khyberees.”
In December 1874, the bandmaster[[113]] of the 72nd Highlanders, stationed at Peshawar, was carried off by some Zakha Khel raiders and taken to the Khyber, being subsequently released uninjured; and during the operations against the Jawakis in 1877–78 the Zakha Khels sent to their aid a contingent of from 300–400 men, who fired on some British troops in the Kohat Pass and then turned back.
Expedition of 1878
Expedition against the Zakha Khels of the Bazar Valley, December 1878.—From the very commencement of the second Afghan war in 1878, the Afridis of the Khyber Pass began to give trouble. At the end of November a signalling party on the Shagai Heights, east of Ali Musjid in the Khyber, was attacked by some Kuki Khels from the village of Kadam, two men being killed and one wounded, but for this outrage punishment was inflicted by the tribal jirgah. Annoyance did not, however, cease; our communications in the Khyber were continually harassed, and the camp at Ali Musjid was fired into regularly every night, the culprits belonging chiefly to the Zakha Khel clan. One or two small raids upon tribal villages proving ineffectual, a punitive expedition into the Bazar Valley was decided upon, the troops composing it being drawn from the 2nd Division of the Peshawar Valley Field Force, the headquarters of which were then at Jamrud, and from the 2nd Brigade of the 1st Division then at Dakka. The following composed the two columns:
JAMRUD COLUMN.
3 guns, D/A. R.H.A. 300 bayonets, 1/5th Fusiliers. 200 bayonets, 51st Foot. 1 troop, 11th Bengal Lancers. 1 troop, 13th Bengal Lancers. 500 bayonets, 2nd Gurkhas. 400 bayonets, Mhairwara Battalion.
DAKKA COLUMN.
2 guns, 11/9th R.A. 300 bayonets, 1/17th Foot. 41 bayonets, 8th Company Bengal Sappers and Miners. 263 bayonets, 27th Punjab Native Infantry. 114 bayonets, 45th Sikhs.
The Jamrud column, starting at 5 p.m. on the 19th December, and moving by Chora, a village inhabited by friendly Malikdin Khels, reached Walai in the Bazar Valley by midday on the 20th, and from here communication was established with the Dakka column, which had then reached the Sisobi Pass[[114]]—about three miles to the east—and expected to effect a junction with the Jamrud Column next day.
On the 21st the Jamrud Column marched to China, and visited every village of any importance in the valley, destroying all the towers, returning that night to Walai, and withdrawing thence unopposed to Ali Musjid on the 22nd.