For the defence of the border, and to prevent the incursion of armed robbers, the system generally followed—with some recent modifications—has been the maintenance of a line of fortified posts along the frontier, garrisoned by regulars and militia. In the year 1884 there were fifty-four such posts situated in the Hazara, Yusafzai, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Rajanpur districts, and of these sixteen were held by the Punjab Frontier Force, twenty-six by militia, and the remainder by combined parties of both militia and regulars. In those days the Punjab Frontier Force was generally responsible—a responsibility which endured until 1903—for the military defence of the frontier, with the exception of the Peshawar district. The force was approximately 15,000 strong, and consisted of four regiments of cavalry, the Guides (cavalry and infantry), four mountain batteries, one garrison battery, and eleven infantry battalions, the whole commanded by a Brigadier-General. At that time it was immediately under the orders of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Punjab, but it was a few years later placed under the Commander-in-Chief in India. With the gradual extension of the frontier, and the general forward movement made within recent years, it became apparent that the Punjab Frontier Force could no longer remain a local and also a border force, and that in any comprehensive scheme of frontier defence other regiments of the Indian army must take their share. In 1903, then, the Punjab Frontier Force was abolished.
Under Lord Curzon’s rule in India a change was inaugurated in the system of frontier defence. Regular troops have been gradually withdrawn, as far as possible, from advanced trans-frontier positions, and have been concentrated in large centres within easy reach. Their places on the border have been taken by various corps of militia, military police, and levies raised locally; communications have been improved; strategic railways have crept further forward; another bridge has been thrown across the Indus; and the frontier is now defended by the Peshawar and Quetta divisions and the Kohat, Derajat and Bannu brigades, moveable columns being held always ready to move out at a moment’s notice from Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan. The general sphere of action prescribed for each of these columns is as under:
| Peshawar Column, | The Khyber and the Malakand. |
| Kohat Column, | The Kurram. |
| Bannu Column, | The Tochi. |
| Dera Ismail Khan Column, | Waziristan. |
It remains to note the manner in which offences committed by independent tribes across the border are punished. The most simple way of dealing with a refractory tribe, and in many cases the most effectual, is to inflict a fine and demand compensation for plundered property or for lives lost. When the tribe is dependent upon trade with British territory, or when a portion resides within British limits, or is easily accessible from the plains to an attack by a military force, the demand for payment of fine or compensation is generally acceded to, and, being paid, the tribe is again received into favour. Should the demand be refused, hostages are demanded, or members of the tribe and their property found within British territory are seized, until such time as the compensation and fine are paid. Against some tribes, as in the case of the Afridis of the Kohat Pass in 1876–77, a blockade is an effective measure of punishment. It can, however, only be employed against such tribes as trade with British territory, and, while it lasts, any member of the offending tribe found within our border is at once seized and detained. This means of punishment has often been found effectual, and if effectual, it is preferable to a military expedition, which often leaves behind it bitter memories in the destruction of property and loss of life. Last as a measure of punishment comes the military expedition, which is only resorted to in exceptional circumstances, and when every other means of coercing a hostile tribe has failed.
Coercive Measures
The necessity, in certain circumstances, for military expeditions has been admitted by the civil authorities of the Punjab in the following statement made in 1864 by Mr. Davies, Secretary to the Punjab Government: “The despatch of an expedition into the hills is always in the nature of a judicial act. It is the delivery of a sentence, and the infliction of a punishment for international offences. It is, as a rule, not in assertion of any disputed right, or in ultimate arbitration of any contested claim of its own, that the British Government resolves on such measures, but simply as the only means by which retribution can be obtained for acknowledged crimes by its neighbours, and by which justice can be satisfied or future outrages prevented. In the extreme cases in which expeditions are unavoidable, they are analogous to legal penalties for civil crime—evils in themselves inevitable from deficiencies of preventive police, but redeemed by their deterrent effects. Considerations of expense, of military risk, of possible losses, of incurring antagonism and combination against us on the part of the tribes, all weigh heavily against expeditions; and to set them aside, there must be irresistible obligation to protect and to vindicate the outraged rights of subjects whom we debar from the revenge and retaliation they formerly practised.”
At the present moment rather over 9000 Pathans are serving in our militias, border military police and levies, while considerably more than 10,000 are in the ranks of the regular regiments of the Indian army; a certain number, too, are serving in the forces maintained by native chiefs. Considering the readiness with which the Pathan accepts military service, it cannot be said that these numbers are high, but the fact would seem to be that while some tribes are supplying us with more recruits than they can well afford, others have scarcely been drawn upon at all, and many races along the Pathan borderland remain still altogether unexploited.
The N.W.F. Province
[[3]]The North-West Frontier Province is, with the exception of Behar, Chota Nagpur and Orissa, the youngest of the provinces into which British India is divided, while in respect of population and extent of territory administered according to British law, it is also the smallest. It lies between the 31st and 36th degrees of latitude and the 69th and 74th degrees of longitude; its total length, as the crow flies, is over 400 miles, its average breadth is from 100 to 150 miles, the total area comprised within its limits being roughly 38,000 square miles. Only 13,000 square miles, however, are under full British law and administration, and 25,000 square miles are occupied by tribes who are under British political control, but who maintain their internal or municipal independence. The British territory part of the province is divided into the five districts of Hazara, Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan, whose western boundary, known as the administrative border, is a sinuous line extending for some 600 miles. On the other side of this administrative or inner provincial border dwell the municipally independent tribes who are under the political control of the Chief Commissioner, a control which he exercises with the aid of the officers in charge of the political agencies, viz. Swat, Dir and Chitral, the Khyber, the Kurram, and Northern and Southern Waziristan. These agencies have been described as the tentacles of civilised order, stretching into a mass of barbarism and savagery; and the remainder of the space beyond the administrative border and as far as the “Durand line” or “the outer provincial border,” separating the British and Afghan spheres of influence, is occupied by the independent tribes. The length of this outer border cannot be less than 800 miles.
The population of the five British districts is about 2,200,000, and of the outer portion of the province probably a million and a half.