Learning from history

[HASEEB ANSARI]

Learning from history
By Ali Jan

Part - I

CCTV footage of a recent suicide attack targeting a convoy of the Frontier Constabulary’s commandant in Peshawar shows a man clad in white shalwar kameez waiting on the footpath. As the convoy slows down near a check post, he casually steps on the road and blows himself up – killing over a dozen and maiming many others. Fortunately for the FC commandant, he remained safe. Nobody could have guessed the ordinary looking man was a suicide bomber. This incident once again exposed the challenges in countering suicide missions.

A similar attack took the life of Safwat Ghayur, one of Pakistan’s best cops and the commandant of the FC at the time. Law-enforcement agencies, government officials and the ordinary public – all have borne the brunt of such attacks leaving thousands dead or crippled in the last decade. And the numbers are increasing, with no end in sight. What is fuelling this senseless mayhem? While everybody can disagree over the extent of it, most do admit that the American presence in neighbouring Afghanistan is fuelling the foreign jihad narrative. In their construct, Pakistan is an American ally and this they then use to justify their attacks on our country. With regard to the ongoing war in Afghanistan, some American generals have started echoing the words of their predecessors, the Russians, who declared their presence in Afghanistan an unwinnable war.

To face the future one needs to delve into history first – and learn from it.

On February 8 1872, the British Viceroy of India, Lord Mayo, was murdered by a convict serving a sentence at ‘Kala Paani’. The event sent shock waves throughout British India. Even more shocking was the discovery when it was revealed that the assassin, named Shere Ali, was an Afridi tribesman from Tirah valley. The authorities went to great lengths to hide the perpetrator’s Pakhtun ethnicity so as not to give an opportunity to their enemies to glorify the murderer of British India’s supreme official.

Shere Ali was an Afridi soldier in the service of the British mounted police. ‘Badal’ (revenge) is one of the core values of the Pathan code of Pakhtunwali. Although, there is a notion of ‘bakhana’ (forgiveness), a Pakhtun seldom forgives his enemy. It so happened that Shere Ali got involved in a personal blood feud in his village. Resultantly, the government sentenced him, which in his view was unjustified and he vowed vengeance against the ‘white man’ he reckoned had wronged him.

An obituary in a 1872 issue of Sunday Magazine, while referring to Shere Ali’s roots in the tribal territory, stated: “It is from this little corner of our many hundreds of miles of British Indian frontier that all the assassins of British officers have of late years come.”

Indeed for much of their presence in India, thousands of British were killed in everyday skirmishes, murders and raids mostly originating in the same border areas. Sometimes such everyday losses did not even rate a mention in the newspapers. On the contrary, high-profile assassinations received wider press. One such murder was that of Frederick Mackeson, commissioner of Peshawar. A tall memorial built at Company Bagh Peshawar in his memory, which no longer exists, bore the following inscription, “Here lies the body of Frederick Mackeson...who died Sep 14, 1853 of a wound inflicted by a religious fanatic.”

Remains of the British lie buried in surviving cemeteries in the tribal territory and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. By studying headstone inscriptions or memorial plaques it is possible to grasp the entire history of the border area without the need to labour through heavy history books. Here, carved on stone memorials, are names of fallen soldiers, civil and military administrators and those killed in action or at the hands of ‘ghazis’ and ‘fanatics’.

Peshawar’s St John’s Church has a tablet inscribed in memory of “Thomas Arbuthnot Ekins, Assistant Superintendent of Police, Peshawar, who was killed on Feb 7 1926 by an armed criminal”. Robert Roy Adams, an administrator was killed when he was returning from Peshawar city. His plaque in St Luke’s Church in Abbottabad states, “Deputy Commissioner...struck down by the hand of an assassin on Jan 22 1865 aged 43”.

An inscription on Michni Fort states: “Sacred to the memory of Arthur Boulnois (Bengal Engineers) who was killed near the Fort of Mitchnee by a band of Momunds on Jan 12 1852”. (He was shot while out riding by some Mohmands hidden in a tower, and his body was buried in one of the bastions of the fort).

Sometimes women also became victims. In the famous kidnapping case of Molly Elis by Ajab Khan, Molly’s mother was killed in the raid on Kohat Cantonment. The inscription on her grave reads: “Dearly beloved wife of Maj AJ Ellis foully murdered at Kohat on April 14, 1923, aged 46 years.” On his part, Ajab Khan justified his raid on Major Ellis’s home as reprisal against an earlier raid by authorities on his own home, which was taken as an unforgivable insult and a violation of the privacy and honour of the women in his family.

One grave in Peshawar cemetery is that of “Captain Cecil John Russel Fulford – Died May 4 1882. Aged 37 years of wounds inflicted by an Afghan assassin on April 20 1882.” Worthington Jukes, a missionary mentioning the incident in his memoir writes: “We were driving in the cantonments near the law courts on our way home, when I heard a shot, and very soon afterwards we overtook four natives carrying in a blanket Captain Fulford, who had just been shot by an Afghan fanatic owing to ignorant mullahs telling their fellows that to murder an Englishman was a sure way of getting into paradise...Assassin had immediately been shot dead in the lines of Native Regiment, and to act as a deterrent of such brutal and cowardly assassinations, his body was burnt in pigskin, by order of the civil authorities. The punishment was one which was most abhorrent to the Muhammadans, and according to their ideas, effectually prevented his getting to Paradise”. (Reminiscences of missionary work 1873-1890)

In the half century that the British administered the tribal areas, five political agents were killed in South Waziristan alone. One was shot out of vengeance by a Mehsud in May 1948 in his winter residence in Tank just when he was preparing to leave for England.

Such acts testify, as the examples cited above show, how the might of the British Empire was challenged relentlessly throughout its rule. British rule lasted from 1849 to 1947 in the frontier regions. Britain was a global power but its efforts to dominate this volatile region took a toll on it. The aforementioned incidents also demonstrate the mindset of the assassin. He knew exactly what he was getting himself into and in a way it was a suicide mission knowing there was going to be no return and there were going to be fatal consequences. The assassins were either immediately put to the sword, or shot in the premises of camps or cantonments or executed after a trial. There is no countering that mindset to this day.

To be concluded

The writer is a conservationist based in Peshawar. Email: alijan98@gmail.com