Scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about Afghanistan [‎79v] (162/312)

It is the same cry that has gone up from
the sons of the soil wherever the Englishman
has put his foot in India. Peace follows our
footsteps, and, as if some great natural law
were asserting itself, order and quiet settle upon
the land. But there is not a race in India out
of Bengal to whom tranquillity is not irksome,
and a long interval of settled government hate
ful. The old men taunt the young that they
can cypher better than their fathers, but cannot
ride so well, and among the youth there is always
a party that is fascinated by the belief that the
spear and not the pen should be the emblems
of government, and that bull-hide shields are a
more proper defence for men than codes of law.
But British rule, though it settles upon a district
as lightly as snow, freezes as hard as ice. And
under it, let the restless spirits fret and gall as
they Vill, the people find their fingers numbed
when they put hand to sword, and the sluggish
blood does not thrill to the rumour that the
country side is up. The comforts of peace
always use solid arguments when they appeal to
men and women—and, on the other side, what is
there ? Picturesque warfare, with poverty and
wounds and death, the severing of home ties, the
destruction of home itself. This is no fanciful
case, but the actual fact for all British India.
The Sahib comes one day among the fields with
his accountants and his draughtsmen, and there
is much writing and little talking, and the next
day his tents are gone. But a sheet of paper is left
behind, with the head man of the hamlet, and one
of their number has been taken into the service
of Government as a village watchmant There are
no other signs of authority visible, but the word
goes round that it will not do to trifle with the
Sahib's arrangements. On the paper is shown
each man's field, and it has a number, and though
filching from a neighbour's land can no longer
be indulged in, there is a compensating advan
tage to each man in the security that his own
cannot be filched frem. So the old stone
boundaries, that have hitherto never had rest
from month to month, find grass growing up
round them, and every man points to them as if
they were the eternal hills—for are they not all
marked upon that paper? Here and there a
turbulent soul suggests that the new regime is
dull, but he finds to his surprise that the others
consider it comfortable. So he grumbles at the
want of enterprise in the present day, and at the
slothful spirit that has come over the once law
less district, but he acquiesces in it. And as it
has always been so is it to-day, for England can
never be at rest in the East. " The old men tell
us," say the mountaineers, " that the time is not
far distant when the hills shall know us no
more." And the old men are right, for " where
the plough comes the wolf must leave "—or else
turn watch-dog. The lesson will be a difficult
one to learn, but other wild and stubborn races
have already learnt it at our hands, and in time
the hill men will too. Confirmed in possession
of the lands they have seized, they will be for
bidden to take more, and the same paralysing
influences of a secure life and settled regime
will overcome them as they have the fighting
races of the plains of India. Though proud to
madness, patriotic as no other race on earth is,
and united among themselves clan by clan, they
present to civilisation no insuperable difficulties,
while from the simplicity of their manners,
hospitality to the stranger, and sincerity to him,
in spite of force and corruption, there is much to
encourage those who say that the English cha
racter will win eventually esteem and respect.
In our issue of yesterday we sketched the
Waziri as he is seen at home, and now, returning
to the frontier line, from the Thai to theJKhyber,
we would attempt to individualise the Uthman
Kheyls and the Ahmadzais. With one or other,
or both, we are already neighbours, from Bannu
up into the Peshawur district, and they will be
among the first whom it will be necessary, in
view of using the passes, to bring into our ser
vice. The Uthman Kheyls hold the Ghwalari Pass,
where the Gomul river, rising in Cabul, issues
from the Suleiman range upon British India.
Much of the trade of Central India used to find
its way by this road into Cabul, and the Uthman
Kheyls drew a large income from the black mail
they levied and the plunder they took in addi
tion from the caravans. But the traffic has of
late years found other and safer channels, and
the hill-men may, therefore, be said to subsist by
their flocks and by robberies committed upon
such travellers as unlucky chance has brought to
their mountain pastures. The Ahmadzais are
more amenable, by circumstances of position, to
British influence. Their head-quarters are,
vaguely, the Salt Range, and their offshoots have
struck into distant districts. Thus, tempted by
the pasturage of the prairie upland known as the
Thai lands, that spread out at the mouth of the
Kuram Pass, where the river of that name enters
British India, they came down years ago in force.
Before their black blanket tents the native tribes
retired, leaving them in sol® possession. But
with the return of summer the love of home
revived, and striking their vast camp the horde
retired through the Kuram Valley to their own
i hill domains. But the easy life of the plains had
already won their hearts, and the next wint6r saw
them again darkening the Thai. And so for
several successive years they drove down their |
herds of broad-tailed sheep, their goats and |
camels, to the luxuriant pasturage, withdrawing |
when the spring weather told them that the hill-1
sides were green again, bnt every" year more and
more stayed behindhand from a pastoral life
turned to agriculture. Growing strong among
their neighbours, they pushed their landmarks
forward, and so rapid was their advance that
had not the British appeared upon the scene the
Ahmadzais would have been now upon the
western banks of the Indus. The tribes they
drove before them and subdued they
despised, as well as they might, for in the
strong, straightforward character of the Ah-
madzai there is nothing that sympathises with
the Afghan traits of the people they found in
possession of the Thai. For these lands were
once part of the Cabul kingdom, and into them
have drifted one colony after another, all the re
fuse of that medley of clans we call "the
Afghans," meaning thereby the subjects of the
Ameer of Cabul generally and not the Afghans
proper) 1 the dominant community of that country.
The invading Ahmedzais found therefore in
the pastures a horde of savages in constant
petty .strife among themselves, without even
tribal cohesion or any patriotic sentiment, and,
calling them cowards and liars, -they seized their
fortified villages and terned into tenants the
men they had met as landlords. They thus be
came, on the advance of the British frontier,
British subjects ; and, confirmed in their pos
sessions, have given frequent proof that a just
administration, promptly severe and forgiving
easily, can influence them for good. All over
India it is found that when two magistrates are
sitting together—a European and a native—the
former has all the work ; for, given the choice,
no Indian, whether Hindu or Mahommedan,
will go to his countryman for justice in prefer
ence to the Sahib, and the hill-men of the fron
tier are no exception. This, at any rate, proves
that the English character commands respect
for its impartiality in judgment and desire for
equity among the poor wild creatures of the
border marches. Nor in visiting them does the
European find j>ny of that ferine shyness which
characterises the hill-men on the hills. The
woman remains standing at the tent door to
watch the naked children tumbling on the
ground, and the shaggy dog at her side guarding
| the flock that has been left at home in its
| charge, betrays no alarm at the presence of
j the stranger. The fierce looking jezail-armed
' herdsman on the bill si de hard ly turns
to notice "the passer by. The girls trudg
ing from the springs behind the donkeys laden
with water skins offer the stranger drink, and
the laughter round the wells is not hushed at his
approach. And yet this is the tribe that in the
disturbances known as the Mahomed Kheyl re
bellion of 1870-71 illustrated by dreadful out
rages the violent contrasts of the hill-man's cha
racter. The Mahomed Kheyls are a branch of
the Ahmadzais, and, having settled at the passes
leading into fertile Dawar and Khost, made an
honest income enough by escorting caravans
through the defiles.
Being thus in sole possession of the right
of way they were- held answerable by the
British Government when the district came
under our management for all depredations
and disturbances. In return they held their
lands at a nominal rent, and enjoyed the
privilege of nominating a certain number of
persons to the frontier militia. Their chief was
a man of the best type of the Ahmadzais, and
during his lifetime there were no complaints ;
but he died, and the tribe drifted back into law
lessness. They had no grievance against man,
but nature had been hard upon them, and a year
of drought had made them discontented. This
feeling they demonstrated by a villainous out
rage. Selecting the night of the regular relief
of the British outpost of E^uram, they waylaid
the relieving party, and as the soldiers were
passing heedlessly along, fired a' volley into them
from a few yards distance and fled. Seven men