Zakha Khel

The 1910 Dictionary of the Pathan Tribes names six Khyber clans of the Afridi: Kuki Khel, Kambar Khel, Kamar Khel, Malikdin Khel, Sipah and Zakka Khel. It counts the Zakka Khel at 5,900 fighting men, in a tribe it puts at 32,900, and places them in the Khyber, Bazar, Bara and Maidan, 'diagonally across the whole Afridi country'. The same book lists them with the Samil political faction.

Ibbetson, writing in the Punjab census report of 1883, traces the Afridi to Burhan, son of Kakai, and says the Zakha Khel sept is the largest among the clans he groups under Ula Khel. The Imperial Gazetteer of 1908 estimated the Zakka Khel at 4,500 fighting men and the Dictionary of 1910 at 5,900. Both count men able to bear arms, not the whole population.^1–3

Based on: Colonial records

Ibbetson describes the clan as migratory. Its upper settlements lie in Maidan and Bara, and its winter quarters in the Bazar valley north of Landi Kotal and in the Khyber from Ali Masjid to Landi Kotal. The Imperial Gazetteer describes the Bazar valley as sterile between 3,000 and 4,000 feet, farmed only where hill streams irrigate village lands. An official report of 1908 adds that the cattle, sheep and goats of Bazar are kept in caves in winter.

The Dictionary of 1910 divides the clan into Budai and Nasruddin. Under Budai it lists the Annai and Pakhai among others; under Nasruddin it lists the Khusrogi. Each of these is split into sections down to families, with headmen named in the entries.^1–4

Based on: Colonial records

The Imperial Gazetteer records three British expeditions into Bazar before 1908. In 1878, during the Second Afghan War, attacks on the line of communications through the Khyber brought a punitive force, first Kuki Khel Afridis under Major Cavagnari and then a regular expedition in December. A second followed in 1879, after which the clan submitted. In 1897 two columns under Sir William Lockhart entered by the Chora and Ilacha passes and destroyed the principal villages.

The 1908 expedition has an official account compiled for the Army Headquarters in India. It says that from 1904 the Zakka Khel defied the Government, and that the other Afridi clans confessed they could not restrain them. It dates the trouble to the Afridi visit to Kabul in 1904, where the visitors were well received and allowed to buy arms, and to the stoppage of Afridi allowances that year. In the official telling the raids of October 1907 to January 1908 were led by Dadai and Multan of the Anai, Gul Baz, Muhammad Afzal of the Ziauddin and Usman of the Khusrogi, and included a raid on Peshawar city on 28 January 1908 by 60 to 80 men.

From June 1907, as the same account reports it, the Zakka Khel jirga that came to Landi Kotal asked that fines no longer be deducted from allowances, that its oath be accepted in every case, that the clan carry no responsibility for raiders passing through its country, that it surrender no offender, and that its members be free to go to Kabul and draw the Amir's allowances. The account says the jirga went home with nothing settled.^3,4

Based on: Colonial records

On 12 February 1908 the Chief Commissioner, Sir H. Deane, told a jirga of the other Afridi clans that only the Zakka Khel would be punished, and Major-General Sir James Willcocks marched from Peshawar the next day. London had allowed an expedition only on condition of no annexation or occupation of tribal land. The Indian Government put the clan at about 6,000 fighting men in the valley and sent two brigades. Before the troops arrived, according to the report, the Zakka Khel had begun moving families and flocks to Nangarhar (written Ningrahar) and Bara; the force reached Walai on the third day.

Fighting took place between 15 and 21 February. The official report counts at least 70 Zakka Khel killed, names 38 buried in Bazar, and admits that no full count of the wounded was possible. It says every fort and watch tower in the valley was razed and that the clan used up its ammunition and cash. It also reports that Sangu Khel Shinwaris, about a thousand men from Nangarhar and some Mohmands came to help, that Afghan volunteers and supplies arrived at the Thabai pass, and that probably no more than fifty Afridis from other clans fought against the troops.

The other Afridi clans offered mediation. Their jirga of about 400 men came to Walai on 23 February, met the Zakka Khel at Halwai on the 25th and 26th, and the Zakka Khel swore on the Quran to abide by its decision. On 28 February a document in Persian giving the terms, which made each Zakka Khel division answerable for its own people, was read in public jirga and accepted by General Willcocks. The troops left on 29 February. The historian Matt Matthews, summarising the British accounts, says the press called the campaign a weekend war, that the 800 men of the Khyber Rifles, some of them Zakka Khel, sealed the passes, and that the British lost three soldiers.^4,5

Based on: Colonial records · Modern scholarship