Even colonial troops dreaded Waziristan

Jonathan Lessware
Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 01. 2009 1:09AM UAE / October 31. 2009 9:09PM GMT

Internally displaced Pakistani men, fleeing from military operations against Taliban militants in South Waziristan, wait for their turn at a relief distribution point in Dera Ismail Khan on October 31, 2009 Farooq Naeem / AFP

A young British army officer deployed to the town of Tank on the edge of South Waziristan in 1919, described the posting in a memoir as “the worst station in British India”. Capt Francis Stockdale recalled the area, known by colonial troops as “Hell’s door knocker”, as a place where hostile tribesman “waited, watched and pounced”.

When the Pakistan army launched its long-awaited military campaign into South Waziristan last month, it was taking the fight against militants into a region no government has ever been able to bring under control.

The fiercely independent Mehsud tribes, who live across two-thirds of the territory, long proved to be a thorn in the side of the British Empire. Colonial forces spent decades engaged in periodic clashes with the Mehsud.

After the signing of the 1893 Durand Line treaty, which arbitrarily drew the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan that still stands today, South Waziristan officially fell under British rule.

Humayun Khan, a former Pakistani foreign secretary and diplomat who served in a number of posts in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North West Frontier Province, said the reason for British interest in South Waziristan was two-fold.

“Firstly, it was a wedge between the agency of Kurram to the north and the agency of Zhob in Balochistan to the South, both of which had been brought under a loose British control. Secondly, the passes into the Tochi Valley in North Waziristan and the Gomal Valley in South Waziristan were seen as possible routes for a military campaign in case the defence of British India demanded a pre-emptive move into Afghanistan.”

Because they were so cut off from civilisation, the tribes of South Waziristan had developed an “insular tribal culture with primitive traditions”, Mr Khan added. “They were governed by the tribal code of Pukhtunwali, which had three basic pillars – revenge, asylum and hospitality.”

Political agents were appointed to the region and the special importance of Waziristan was acknowledged by the appointment of a resident in Dera Ismail Khan to deal with the tribes.

At the start of the 20th century, the British built roads connecting the garrison of Razmak with the camp at Wana and the road linking Razmak with Jandola. This, Mr Khan said, brought them into more contact with the Mehsud, who had previously been inaccessible and left to their own devices.

For about 50 years, there were armed clashes between British India and the Mehsud, Mr Khan said. The British launched military operations against the Mehsud in 1894-5. At the turn of the century the tribe raided Dera Ismail Khan, sacked the town of Tank and threatened Bannu. Repeated military operations were undertaken by the British between 1900 and 1920, and in the 1930s the Mehsud joined an anti-British revolt that continued until independence in 1947.

“They had given the new British administration trouble from the very beginning and no less than four political agents were assassinated in the time the British stayed,” Mr Khan said.

Victoria Schofield, the author of Afghan Frontier: Feuding and Fighting in Central Asia, and an expert on the history of the region, said the Mehsud were the most difficult antagonists the British experienced on the frontier.

“These people would come down from the mountains to raid what they would call the settled areas. They would normally take guns and livestock so the British would send in a punitive column to punish them,” she said.

Schofield said the British tried to work within the tribal system. A malik, or elder, would be responsible for his men and if there were transgressions, the Malik’s tribal subsidies would be withheld or he might be forced to punish them.

South Waziristan’s challenging mountainous terrain has not only made the region difficult to penetrate, but dictated the way battles have been fought.

Jules Stewart, whose books include The Savage Border: The Story of the North West Frontier, said the Mehsud are mountain fighters rather than a disciplined army. “What they want to do is draw you into their strongholds. They are not so good at fighting in the open ground.”

To help them in their battles, the British flew bombing campaigns from 1919 onwards to try to suppress the Mehsud.

“The tribal men hate it. They consider it unsporting,” Stewart said. These raids would often be preceded by an aerial drop of leaflets warning of the impending bombing raid.

After 1947 the army was withdrawn from the tribal areas, but the political agent system remained in place. The Mehsud were largely left to their own ends and there were no more military clashes with the Pakistani state for nearly 50 years.

jlessware@thenational.ae