Few people here in England reading of raids on the North-West Frontier
in India realise the full horror of these outrages. What generally
happens is that in the small hours of the morning, a wretched village is
suddenly assailed by a gang of perhaps 50, perhaps 200, well-armed
raiders, who put out sentries, picket the approaches, and conduct the
operation on the most skilful lines. The houses of the wealthiest men
are attacked and looted; probably several villagers are brutally
murdered--and probably one or two unhappy youths or women are carried
off to be held up to ransom. Sometimes the raid is on a larger scale,
sometimes it is little more than an armed dacoity. But there is nearly
always a tale of death and damage. Not infrequently, however, our
troops, our militia, our frontier constabulary, our armed police, or the
village _chigha_ or hue-and-cry party are successful in repelling and
destroying the raiders. Our officers are untiring in their vigilance,
and not infrequently the district officers and the officers of their
civil forces are out three or four nights a week after raiding gangs.
Statistics in such matters are often misleading and generally dull, but
it may be of interest to state that from the 1st April, 1920, to the
31st March, 1921, when the tribal ebullition consequent on the third
Afghan war had begun to die down, there were in the settled districts of
the North-West Frontier Province 391 raids in which 153 British subjects
were killed and 157 wounded, in which 310 British subjects were
kidnapped and some £20,000 of property looted. These raids are often led
by outlaws from British territory; but each tribe is responsible for
what emanates from or passes through its limits--and when the bill
against a tribe has mounted up beyond the possibility of settlement,
there is nothing for it but punitive military operations. Hence the
large number of military expeditions that have taken place on this
border within the last half century.
Now this brings us to the question so often asked by the advocates of
what is called the Forward policy: "If the tribes give so much trouble,
why not go in and conquer them once and for all and occupy the country
up to the Durand line?" It sounds an attractive solution, and it has
frequently been urged on paper by expert soldiers. But the truth is that
to advance our frontier only means advancing the seat of trouble, and
that the occupation of tribal territory by force is a much more
formidable undertaking than it sounds. We have at this moment before us
a striking proof of the immense difficulty and expense of attempting to
tame and occupy even a comparatively small tract of tribal territory in
the Waziristan operations. Those operations have been going on for two
and a half years. At the start there were ample troops, ample equipment,
and no financial stringency. The operations were conducted, if a layman
may say so, with skill and determination, and our troops fought
gallantly. But what is the upshot? We managed to advance into the heart
of the Mahsud country on a single line, subjected and still subject to
incessant attacks by the enemy; but we are very little nearer effective
occupation than when we started; and now financial stringency has
necessitated a material alteration in the whole programme, and we are
reverting more or less to the methods whereby we have always controlled
the tribes, namely, tribal levies or _khassadars_ belonging to the
tribe itself, frontier militia or other armed civil force, backed by
troops behind.