Back to the Frontier: PESHAWAR Sept 2001

Inhabited by fierce warlike tribes, the region that became known as the North-West Frontier has always guarded the western border of the sub-continent. The hilly, arid region that is now south eastern Afghanistan and north-western Pakistan has since ancient times been the Pathan’s homeland’ (Pukhtoonkwar)
The Pathans are one of the world’s great warrior races and yet the ‘jirga’ system, upon which their society is based, is one of the oldest democratic systems known to man.
The independent spirit of the Pathans was behind the immortal words uttered by the 17th century Pathan Poet, Khushal Khan Khattak when he resigned from the Moghul army: ‘So long as I was an officer, I was a servant; the office gone, I am a King!’

Imran Khan’s ‘Warrior Race: a journey through the land of the Tribal Pathans’ (Chatto and Windus, 1993) The Pakistani international cricketer getting in touch with his Pathan background.

Introduction & Overview 

The North West Frontier Province (NWFP) is the wild-west of Pakistan, part of the untamed, semi-autonomous FATA areas (Federally Administered Tribal Areas). Pathan culture is one of the oldest democracies, with the ‘Shura’ (village elders) system, and a strong tribal code ‘Paktoonwali’ with its emphasis on honour and shame, relationship and revenge, hospitality and hostility. Women are closely guarded and cocooned behind ‘chadar and chaar diwaar’ (cloth covering and 4 walls)

Steeped in history, this is where Churchill as a war correspondent took pot-shots at Hill Tribeman (as recounted in ‘My Early Life’). Untamed by the British Raj, it was a final outpost of the Empire before the Durand Line, running through Afghanistan along the line of the Oxus River (now the Amu Darya) separating the ‘British Lion’ from the ‘Russian Bear’. This is where the Great Game was played immortalised by Kipling’s Kim. Full of romanticism, adventure, treachery. Boy’s Own country.

Since the Russian Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, Peshawar has been also been ‘deluged’ with over a million Afghan refugees. It has been a hot-bed of intrigue, drug smuggling (Afghanistan is the World’s No. 1 producer of opium) and guns (Darra Village where any weapon can be copied and Kalashnokovs sells for a few pounds). This is all symbolised by ‘The Khyber Pass’, connecting Afghanistan and Pakistan.

35Km from the Khyber Pass lies Peshawar . The first Afghan refugees began trickling in, in mid 1978 and it soon became a deluge. As a result of the war, Peshawar began to establish itself as a principal humanitarian centre and launching pad for ‘diplomats, reporters, intelligent agents, war junkies, smugglers, drug enforcement officials and various travellers’. By the late 80s some 200 international agencies and NGOs had established operation bases in the town. ‘It had returned to some of the exhilarating frontier flavour of Kipling’s India’ Even today when the number of NGOs have been greatly reduced, ‘Peshawar will remain a Pakistani-Afghan commercial centre whether for licit or illicit trade’Peshawar is in effect a three-in-one town, the traditional Old City with its colourful and chaotic bazaars, the tranquil and clean Military Cantonment, with its gardens, sports centres and Institutions and University Town, the International expatriate and NGO hub.

Crosslines Guide to Afghanistan, op cit, pg 361

I spent 12 years in Pakistan, so I feel I know it well, maybe too well. But my time was spent mainly in Karachi in the South with nearly 3 years in Peshawar in the North. But the NWFP and the Afghans got into my system in a significant and powerful way.

Every time I return something strikes me. This last time it was the Red Mountain, which has sprung up in urban centres, a grotesque, luminescent model of the mountain nuclear test site, which enthralled the Nation on TV, as it glowed an angry red in response to the Indian atomic challenge. An effigy to Pakistan as a Nuclear Power.