"مذكرات الخدمة السياسية الهندية - صيغة بقلم المقدم ل. أ. ج. بينهي، ضابط الإمبراطورية البريطانية" [و‎‎١‎٨] (٤٤/٣٥)

bought back from the Sultan of Muscat and Oman by the new
State of Pakistan and is now part of the Baluchistan Province
of Pakistan.
An amusing sideline on this story is that the writer in his
capacity as Secretary to the A.G.G. in Baluchistan in about
1939 drafted a report to the then Government of India support
ing the claim of the Khan of Kalat for the Gwadur enclave to
be returned to Kalat State as it had only been lent to the
one time Sultan of Muscat to help him while in exile in
Baluchistan, and some years later, about 1949, after indepen
dence , the writer as Secretary to the Resident (subsequently
Ambassador) in the Persian Gulf at Bahrain under the British
Foreign Office drafted a similar report to the F.O. emphasising
the Sultan's claim to the territory!
At the beginning of 1943 ‘the Khan of Kalat, Ahmed Yar Khan,
who was of a somewhat mercurial nature, had had enough of the
writer under the mistaken impression that he was biassed in
favour of the tribal chiefs as against the rights of the Khan
himself. A change was therefore made and Major Norman Ramsey
was appointed Wazir-i-Azam and the writer was posted as
Political Agent in Sibi, a post which he had always desired
as the Sibi District was the most widespread and versatile
District in the whole of Baluchistan.
I held the post of Political Agent Sibi for a little more
than two years during which I toured the whole of the tribal
area. This of course was 100% Baluchi tribal area, run as
semi-self-administrating tribes with their own rulers, gener-
*
ally either Sardas or Nawabs and under the direct general
supervision of the Political Agent in Sibi. These Rulers,
particularly the Bugtis, were notoriously autocratic and the
Nawab had full powers within his own tribal area except for
the death penalty. Any cases between one tribe and smother
or its individual members were decided at joint jirgas at
certain fixed times of the year. Many of these joint cases
were between tribes of Baluchistan and those of Sindh or
Punjab provinces which had joint bodi-es. £rc->v.
It is interesting to note here that these tribal areas which
were attached to Pakistan after Independence v/ere absorbed,
and lost their internal powers. In fact they have become,
according to Press reports, almost Communist and are a