God's Terrorists

by Charles Allen

  Our journey to Kabul took us through country shattered by civil war and the depredations of the warlords. Every foot of the road had been fought over and the roadsides were littered with both buried mines and the graves of Taliban martyrs. Prominent among the latter was a whitewashed stone surrounded by green flags on poles and marked with a notice inscribed in Arabic which Rahimullah translated for me: ‘Hajji Mullah Burjan, military commander of the Taliban Islamic Movement, was martyred at this spot leading an attack against the miscreant and illegal Rabani forces at the Silk Gorge, while trying to bring sharia to Afghanistan.’ A year earlier Mullah Burjan had stood on this same spot being interviewed by Rahimullah and the BBC’s David Loyn before leading a suicidal attack against enemy tanks blocking the road.

  Wherever we went it was clear that the Taliban were the heroes of the day: they had brought peace to the land and restored the rule of law – and indeed there was a great deal to admire in them. The groups of black-clad militiamen who manned the check posts and who guarded Jellalabad’s one functioning hotel were disciplined and courteous, if strict in their demands. Those who were willing to talk to us came across as hardened campaigners, but with a naivety and a lack of curiosity about the outside world which reminded me of Red Guards I had met at the time of China’s Cultural Revolution in 1966–7. Where they differed markedly from the Red Guards was in their behaviour off duty, when, as often as not, they pulled out pocket mirrors, tweezers, eyeliner and various unguents and began preening themselves.

  Rahimullah’s explanation was that many of the Taliban were youngsters orphaned by war, who had been brought up and educated in the hundreds of religious schools set up in Pakistan with funds from Saudi Arabia. For many thousands of young Pathan boys the madrassah had been their home and its male teachers – men like Mullah Omar – their surrogate parents. Here the bonds and shared purpose had been forged which had given these ‘searchers after truth’ their extraordinary aura of invincibility, for the madrassah was not so much a school as a seminary, with a curriculum made up entirely of religious instruction and the study of the Quran. Here they had spent their adolescence rocking to and fro as they learned to recite by heart an Arabic text whose meaning they did not understand but which they knew conferred on them absolute authority in all matters governing social behaviour.

  Only once on our brief foray into Afghanistan did Taliban militiamen show us hostility, when we drove south from Jellalabad to the site of a famous Buddhist monastery from the centuries before the advent of Islam. Here we found unusually large numbers of armed guards, and were soon told to go back the way we had come. Only later did it become clear why: in 1996 Mullah Omar’s Taliban Government had given sanctuary to a Yemen-born Saudi national who had earlier helped channel vast sums of Saudi Arabian petro-dollars into the war against the Soviets. His name was Osama bin Laden and he had recently been joined by an Egyptian doctor named Ayman al-Zawahri.

  Kabul in 1997 was a city still racked by war, strewn with mines and unexploded ordnance, with entire suburbs roofless and deserted, inhabited only by pariah dogs. We very soon returned to Peshawar, where the contrast could not have been greater, for it was almost literally bursting with humanity: a city that had numbered no more than 250,000 souls when I first came through here in the early 1970s now held ten times that number. Then, it had consisted of two quite clearly demarcated areas: the old city, squeezed within walls laid down centuries earlier; and the civil station, set down outside the city walls in expansive British Raj pattern in the mid-nineteenth century. Now there was suburban sprawl on every side, but especially north of the Grand Trunk Road linking Peshawar to Nowshera and Islamabad. The ploughed fields of twenty-five years before lay under a shantytown of corrugated iron roofs and mud walls extending far across the Vale of Peshawar. This was the Afghan Colony, home to more than two million refugees.

  From Peshawar my travels took me northwards to Hoti Mardan, which stands almost at the centre of the Vale, bounded on one side by the mountain ranges of Swat and Buner and on the other by the Kabul and Indus rivers. Hoti Mardan is now the Pakistan Army’s Punjab Regimental Centre, but for well over a century it was the headquarters of that most famous of British India’s frontier regiments, the Queen’s Own Corps of Guides Cavalry and Infantry, formed by twenty-six-year-old Lieutenant Harry Lumsden in 1847 from volunteers drawn from the surrounding tribes. The first of these irregular soldiers were Yusufzai or ‘sons of Joseph’, a Pathan tribe originally from Kandahar in southern Afghanistan which had conquered the Peshawar valley and the mountains to the north at about the time that King Henry VII was establishing his Tudor dynasty in England and Wales. The Yusufzai today are one of the largest of the Pathan tribes and their territories extend northwards from the Kabul River for a hundred miles into the mountain fastnesses of Swat and Buner. They are honoured among the Pathans as the purest of their number in terms of their blood-line.

  The Yusufzai were of special interest to me as the first of the Pathan peoples to come into contact with the British when the East India Company pushed northwards across the Punjab in the 1840s. Because the British came to the Vale of Peshawar as conquerors of the Sikhs, who had long oppressed the Pathans, the Yusufzai greeted them as liberators when they took over from the Sikhs as governors of Peshawar city and began administering the surrounding countryside. The young British officers who came to speak to their tribal chiefs and clan leaders, the khans and maliks, were polite and friendly. Indeed, so upright and honest were they in their dealings that they were credited with a facial deformity that made it impossible for them to lie. These early political officers were also keen to know more of the ways of the Yusufzai and, moreover, they were recognised by the Pathans as Ahl al-Kitab, People of the Book, who shared with them the revelations of the early prophets – unlike the Sikhs, who were heathen kaffirs and proven enemies of Islam.

  The first agent of the British East India Company to arrive in these parts was the political envoy Mountstuart Elphinstone, leading an embassy to the Amir of Kabul in 1809. He found a lot to admire in the character of the Yusufzai and the other Pathan tribes: ‘They are fond of liberty, faithful to their friends, kind to their dependents, hospitable, brave, hardy, frugal, laborious and prudent.’ But Elphinstone came to Peshawar as a guest and potential ally, whereas the Britons who followed in his footsteps were agents of what is now termed imperial expansionism but was at the time called the Forward Policy, the extension of British India’s frontier beyond the Indus so as to leave no political vacuum for any other imperial power – such as France or Russia – to occupy. To Harry Lumsden and his fellow politicals the Pathans were potential subjects, and their strengths and weaknesses were seen in that light. Working alongside Lumsden at Hoti Mardan for many years was Dr Henry Bellew, attached to the Corps of Guides as their surgeon. Bellew was an outstanding linguist and got to know the Yusufzai well, later compiling an ethnographic study still regarded as a classic of its kind. Like Elphinstone before him, the doctor was impressed by the Pathans’ rugged individualism. ‘Each tribe under its own chief is an independent commonwealth,’ he wrote, ‘and collectively each is the other’s rival if not enemy . . . Every man is pretty much his own master. Their khans and maliks only exercise authority on and exact revenues from the mixed population . . . They eternally boast of their descent, their prowess in arms, and their independence, and cap all by “Am I not a Pakhtun?”’

  What Bellew and other British officials also discovered was that Pathan pride went hand in hand with Pathan violence. ‘It would seem that the spirit of murder is latent in the heart of nearly every man in the valley,’ observed Judge Elsmie when he came to write his Notes on some of the Characteristics of Crime and Criminals in the Peshawar Division of the Punjab, 1872 to 1877. ‘Murder in all its phases: unblushing assassination in broad daylight, before a crowd of witnesses; the carefully planned secret murder of the sleeping victim at dead of night, murder by robbers, murder by rioters, murder by poisoners, murder by boys, and even by w
omen, sword in hand . . . Crime of the worst conceivable kind is a matter of almost daily occurrence amongst a Pathan people.’

  The Yusufzai settled in the Vale of Peshawar and elsewhere in the plains could be coerced into paying taxes and accepting British authority, provided it was not too heavy-handed. However, their fellow-tribesmen in the mountains took a very different view. Like all the larger Pathan tribes, the mountain Yusufzai in Swat and Buner were divided into numerous sub-tribes and clans that were constantly at each other’s throats, but the moment the British so much as threatened to encroach these same sub-tribes and clans at once put aside their feuds to unite under one banner. They had united to resist the best efforts of the Great Mughal, Akbar, and they did the same with the British. There are places in those mountain strongholds overlooking the Vale of Peshawar whose names came to resonate loud and long in the British public consciousness because of pitched battles fought and hard won, among them ‘Ambeyla’ and ‘Malakand’.

  Dr Bellew saw the mountain Yusufzai at their best and worst, and, after many years of bitter, first-hand experience, concluded that their worst was pretty awful:

  The circumstances under which they live have endowed them with the most opposite qualities – an odd mixture of virtues and vices. Thus they are hardy, brave and proud; at the same time they are faithless, cunning and treacherous. Frugal in their own habits, they are hospitable to the stranger, and charitable to the beggar. The refugee they will protect and defend with their lives, but the innocent wayfarer they will plunder and slay for the pleasure of the act. Patriotic in a high degree, and full of pride of race, yet they will not scruple to betray for gold their most sacred interests or their nearest relations . . . Under no authority at home, they are constantly at feud with each other, and hostility with their neighbours. Murder and robbery are with them mere pastimes; revenge and plunder the occupation of their lives . . . Secure in the recesses of their mountains, they have from time immemorial defied the authority of all the governments that have preceded us on the frontier.

  The British soon concluded that not just the Yusufzai of Swat and Buner but all the Pathans in the mountains were best left alone. Recognising them to be well-nigh ungovernable, the British Government of the Punjab devised a system that reflected the realities of the situation. British rule was deemed to extend to the foot of the mountains and this was termed the ‘Settled Areas’; all the tribespeople who had their villages in this area were expected to pay their taxes and follow the Indian Penal Code, with some minor modifications. Beyond this belt of settled land was a second strip that extended deep into the mountains to the north and west; this became known as the ‘Tribal Areas’. Not until 1893 was a set frontier established between Afghanistan and British India, when the Durand Line was drawn up by a senior British official in consultation with the Amir of Kabul; today it forms the agreed frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This British legacy cuts right through Pathan territory and is arguably the most porous border in the world – and the most difficult to police. It always has been, and still is, a no-go area for outsiders.

  After wandering over the battlefields of Ambeyla (not to be confused with the town of Amballa, of which more later) and Malakand I moved on westwards to the hill country of Hazara. I had said my goodbyes to Rahimullah Yusufzai and was now travelling in a vehicle provided by another authority on frontier matters and tribal history, Bashir Ahmad Khan, former political officer and diplomat, whose Yusufzai Swati ancestors had long ago crossed the Indus to claim the delightful Mansehra Valley in upper Hazara. As well as briefing me before I set out, the ever-generous Bashir Khan had also provided me with a detailed set of notes on what I was to look out for.

  To get to Hazara I had to skirt the mountains of Buner, which as they approach the Indus Valley push southwards into the Vale of Peshawar to form a large spur shaped like a closed fist. This is the Mahabun Mountain: more accurately, a massif some thirty miles wide and fifteen deep made up of a jumble of mountain peaks linked by jagged ridges and riven by steep-sided valleys (see Map 2, ‘The Peshawur Valley’). Before the Muslim conquests it was venerated by Buddhists as Udiyana, the Paradise Garden, and by Hindus as the Great Forest (Mahaban), a favourite retreat of sages and hermits. Among Muslims, too, it had come to be regarded as a place of particular sanctity, so that many pirs (holy men) had been drawn to settle there. ‘It forms an important and striking feature on that part of the frontier,’ wrote John Adye, one of the first British officers to penetrate this mountain fastness in 1863:

  Its sides for the most part are steep, bare, and rugged, the higher summits being fringed with forests of fir, and in the winter capped with snow. There are, however, occasional plateaux of cultivation and numerous small villages belonging to the tribes, and in some parts dense forest runs down almost to the plains. The roads are few and bad – in fact, mere mule-tracks between the villages. The mountain on its eastern side is very abrupt, and is divided by the Indus from our province of Hazara; while all along, at the foot of its southern slopes, lie the plains of Eusofzye.

  ‘ The Peshawur Valley’: John Adye’s map of 1863 showing the Yusufzai country and Mahabun Mountain

  No fewer than six Pathan tribes and sub-tribes inhabit the Mahabun Mountain: the Yusufzai Chamlawals in the north-west; the Yusufzai Khudu Khels in the west; the Gaduns in the south; the Waziri Utmanzai in the south-east; the Yusufzai Isazai in the north-east; and, lastly, the Yusufzai Amazai sandwiched between the Chamlawals and Isazai.

  The south-eastern corner of the Mahabun Mountain, occupied by the Utmanzai, is the point where the Indus finally cuts through the mountains to debouch on to the plains. In the late 1960s the Government of Pakistan built the Tarbela Dam here, whose waters now extend northwards up the gorge for some miles. The road crosses the Indus just below the dam. At this point, according to Bashir Khan’s notes, I was to be aware that on the left side of the gorge looking up it – that is to say, on the eastern slopes of the Mahabun Mountain, and now all but submerged under the waters of the Tarbela Lake – was Sittana, which Bashir Khan described simply as ‘the site of the camp of the Hindustani Fanatics’.

  The term ‘Hindustani Fanatics’ meant absolutely nothing to me then. But it should have rung bells, because I was already aware from my researches that, before raising the Corps of Guides, Harry Lumsden had at the age of twenty-four led a force of three thousand Sikh infantry into northern Hazara, then nominally under Sikh control. He had faced stiff opposition from the local tribesmen, the Sayyeds of the Khagan Valley, whose resistance had been greatly strengthened by the presence of a small group of Hindustanis – not Hindus, as the word might suggest, but Muslims from Hindustan, the lands east of the Indus River. These Hindustanis, he noted in his report, had led the Sayyeds into battle and they had fought the fiercest. Several were taken prisoner and sent down under guard to Lahore, capital of the Punjab, where Harry Lumsden’s chief, Henry Lawrence, made them welcome and praised them for their courage. Nearly all were found to be plainsmen from Patna, a large town on the Ganges between Benares and Calcutta, and they were led by two brothers named Ali, also from Patna: ‘They begged for mercy and were permitted, under promise of future good conduct, to go to their homes in India.’

  And there were other clues I had missed – one of them set down in a fascinating document written by that delightful eccentric James Abbott, the first British administrator of Hazara, giving pen-portraits of all the tribal chiefs in the area with details of their dispositions and foibles. Abbott had attached a number of notes and postscripts, and one of these read, in part: ‘Khagan is important partly on account of its contact with independent states – but more, owing to the disposition of the Hindustanee fanatics, followers of Achmed Shah, to make it their place of arms . . . I understand that there are still some of the Hindustanees fostered there by Syud Zamin Shah, & that intercourse is maintained between the Syuds & the fanatics at Sittana.’

  Tucked away among Abbott’s numerous letters to Henry Lawrence in L
ahore were further references to this same ‘remarkable nest of Immigrants from Hindustan’ that I had earlier failed to note. Abbott had become convinced that some sort of secret supply chain had been set up, by which money, materials and men were being smuggled across the plains of India to Sittana. His men had intercepted messengers carrying letters concealed inside bamboo canes and with gold coins hidden under their waistcoats. Young Muslim men from Tonk, Rohilkhand and elsewhere in India were crossing the Indus River at Attock ‘disguised as beggars and students’ and then making their way north to the Mahabun Mountain, where they discarded their disguises and took up arms. At Sittana itself, large godowns (warehouses) were being built for the storage of grain, transported there by kafila (camel caravans). Over a period of four years, between 1849 and 1853, Abbott had become increasingly concerned by the growing threat these ‘enthusiasts’ posed to his neighbouring district of Hazara, and had asked for armed check-posts to be set up along the Indus. He had been told that there were no grounds for alarm, for ‘all the enemies of the British Government have recently been defeated’.