And for my own part I believe this is the best solution. We must not
expect a millennium on the North-West Frontier. The tribal lion will not
lie down beside the district lamb in our time, and we must deal with the
problem as best we can in accordance with our means, and to this end my
views are briefly as follows:--
(1) We should do everything possible to provide the younger trans-border
tribesmen with all honourable employment for which they are suited:
service in the army, in the frontier civil forces, and in the Indian
police or similar forces overseas, and we should give labour and
contracts as far as possible to tribesmen for public works in their
vicinity. For the problem is largely economic. Unless the lion gets
other food he is bound to cast hungry eyes on the lamb.
(2) We should do all that is possible to establish friendly relations
with the tribal elders through selected and sympathetic political
officers, to give them, by means of subsidies for service, an interest
in controlling the hot-bloods of their tribe, and, where possible, to
give them assistance in education and enlightenment. We must remember
that we have duties to the tribes as well as rights against them.
(3) We should extend the _khassadar_ or levy system; that is, we should
pay for tribal corps to police their own borders, arming themselves and
providing their own ammunition and equipment. In this way we give
honourable employment and secure an effective safeguard against raiders
without pouring more arms into tribal territory.
(4) We must have efficient irregular civil forces, militia, frontier
constabulary, and police, well paid and contented.
(5) We should revert to the old system of a separate frontier force in
the army, specially trained in the work of guarding the marches. Those
who remember the magnificent old Punjab frontier force will agree with
me in deploring its abolition in pursuance of a scheme of army
reorganisation.
(6) We should improve communications, telephones, telegraphs, and
lateral M.T. roads.
(7) We should give liberal rewards for the interception and destruction
of raiding gangs, and the rounding up of villages from which raids
emanate.
(8) We should admit that the Amir of Afghanistani for religious reasons
exercises a paramount influence over our tribes, and we should get him
to use that influence for the maintenance of peace on our common border.
It has been the practise of our statesmen to adopt the attitude that
because the Amir was by treaty precluded from interfering with our
tribes, therefore he must have nothing to do with them. This is a
short-sighted view. We found during the Great War the late Amir's
influence, particularly over the Mahsuds, of the greatest value, when he
agreed to use it on our behalf.
(9) Finally, there is a suggestion afoot that the settled districts of
the North-West Frontier Province should be re-amalgamated with the
Punjab. I have shown, I think, clearly, how inseparable are the problems
of the districts, the tribal area, and of Afghanistan; and any attempt
to place the districts under a separate control could only mean
friction, inefficiency, and disaster. The proposal is, indeed, little
short of administrative lunacy. There is, however, an underlying method
in the madness that has formulated it, namely, the self-interest of a
clever minority, which I need not now dissect. I trust that if this
proposal should go further it will be stoutly resisted.