Shinwari

The Makhzan-i Afghani (1609–11) names Shinwari among the twelve sons of Kasi, of the Kharshbun line. Lee's copy of the Makhzan and the Khulasat al-Ansab say Kasi had no son of his own and adopted a brother's son, from whom the Shinwari descend. Ibbetson calls the Shinwari the only branch of Kasi's descendants still living as a tribe, and thinks they came into their present country with the Ghoria Khel.

Other accounts differ. Rose quotes Bellew for the view that the Shinwari came from Persia in the time of Nadir Shah. Bellew's own book of 1891 reports a belief that Nadir Shah settled them in the middle of the 18th century to guard the western end of the Khyber, but adds that the Shinwari themselves know nothing of such an origin and that their speech and customs are those of their Pashtun neighbours. An Intelligence Branch paper of 1888 records the tribe's own story: their ancestor, whose name they no longer knew, married the daughter of a Sayyid, and their old home was a place called Ghora Margha.^1,2,6,5,7

The Shinwari hold the northern slopes of the Safed Koh from the western end of the Khyber to the Khugiani country. The 1888 paper describes valleys running down from the snows (the Agam, Papin or Mazina, Kot, Mahman and Pesha or Nazian streams) with fortified hamlets of twenty to two hundred forts each, and a belt of bare hills towards the Bazar valley. Ibbetson gives four clans: Sangu Khel, Ali Sher Khel, Sepah and Mandozai. The Ali Sher Khel of the Loargai valley at Landi Kotal came under British control after the Treaty of Gandamak (1879) and lived by carrying goods between Peshawar and Jalalabad.

Raverty's route notes (1880) count about 12,000 families west of the Khyber and in the hills south of Ningrahar, many of them nomads, and 3,000 or 4,000 families settled in villages in the Shigal valley of Kunar, who obeyed the Sayyids of Kunar. Bellew reckoned the tribe at 15,000 families, largely muleteers who bred mules for their carrying trade.^6,7,4,5

Raverty's sources say the Shinwari, allied with the Afridi, gave the Mughal rulers of Delhi much trouble. When Nadir Shah invaded India, the Orakzai, Afridi and Shinwari held the Khyber against him, and he turned it by the Tsatsobi pass. Elphinstone (1815) counted the Shinwari as the smallest of the three Khyber tribes and the most obedient to the Durrani king, who paid the Khyber tribes pensions to keep the road open. The Imperial Gazetteer says the pass between Jamrud and Landi Kotal belonged at first to the Shinwari, Zakka Khel, Kuki Khel and Orakzai, and that the Mohmand, whose hereditary khans at Lalpura kept their forces together, wore down the disunited Shinwari.

In November 1841 Mohmand and Shinwari fighters attacked the British post at Pesh Bolak, and in 1842 a British brigade sent to punish the Shinwari and the men of Gulahi burnt 35 forts. Amir Sher Ali gave about 5,000 rifles to the Afridi and Shinwari jirgas shortly before the Second Anglo-Afghan War. In that war British columns fought the Ali Sher Khel at Maidanak in March 1879 and the Manduzai at Hisarak and Mazina in May 1880.^4,7,3,10,9

When Amir Abdur Rahman Khan took over the Khyber road, he gave its guarding to Mohmand khasadars and ignored the Shinwari claim to road allowances. A Shinwari jirga went to Kabul in October 1882 and came back with nothing, and the Sangu Khel began raiding the road in January 1883. The amir then demanded a third of the harvest as revenue, which earlier rulers had never taken from the Safed Koh tribes, and in April 1883 his general Ghulam Haidar Khan defeated the assembled tribe at Maidanak, killing 150 to 200, and burnt their forts and crops.

On 12 November 1928 fewer than three hundred men of the Sangu Khel and Ali Sher Khel raided Achin and the army post at Pesh Bolak, led by Muhammad Alam and Muhammad Afzal. Poullada sets out the rival explanations: a court intrigue by Ghulam Siddiq Charkhi (Ali Ahmad's account), a quarrel with Ghilzai nomads (Fletcher), British instigation (a belief common in Afghanistan), or rivalry with the Mohmand over border tolls (Morrish), which Poullada finds the most convincing. The Shinwari then rose in force and the Khugiani and tribes of Kunar joined them. Bombing of Shinwari villages by aircraft flown by Russian pilots did not stop the rising, which began the collapse of Amanullah Khan's government in 1929.^7,8