Faqir of Ipi's Cross Border Nexus

A. R. Siddiqui

As a young Peshawar-based reporter of The Civil & Military Gazette, Lahore, I filed quite a few stories about the legendary Faqir of Ipi. Some would be based on available half-baked information, others on my own mental picture of him as a defiant warrior against the British. What bothered me as a refugee, fresh from my native Delhi (India) fired by burning love for Pakistan, was the Faqir's active hostility towards Pakistan.

The awe of the impending threat to the settled area, from the Faqir's tribals - mainly the Mahsuds of Waziristan - persisted even after the end of the Kafir-British Raj and establishment of Islamic Pakistan. It had been reason enough for one Brigadier Muhammad Ayub Khan (later, Field Marshal, Army Chief, and President) to thank God for an orderly withdrawal of his brigade from Razmak back to Bannu. I happened to be at Bannu Circuit House, along with Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan, the NWFP premier, as a part of his Press entourage, when a strikingly handsome and youthful officer entered the dining room with a brisk step to join us for lunch. It was on January 1, 1948, the fateful day when India referred the Kashmir issue to the UN.

The dashing officer was introduced to us as Brigadier Muhammad Ayub Khan, GOC (designate) East Pakistan. Talking about his rear-guard operation Brigadier Ayub said, that but for an odd attempt or two to 'booby trap' his men here and there by Ipi's hostile men the operation went off smoothly as planned. And thank God for that. Such had been the perception or vision of hostile action from Ipi's men. The reason why a defiant Islamic warrior like the Faqir should have pitted his band against the Islamic Pakistan, amongst other factors, was his own vision of the emergence of Pakistan as a rival force against his monopolistic claim as the sole Islamic warrior. In the words of Allan Warren the Faqir of Ipi's claim that Islam was in danger, even after the establishment of Pakistan rang hollow in the ears of many tribesmen. Religion as an 'important legitimiser' would be an issue no longer after a country and state had emerged in the name and on the basis of Islam.

In Waziristan all the Maliks and Khassadars were Muslims as well as a large section of the regular army. That compromised Ipi's claim as the sole defender of the faith in Waziristan, without either affecting or diminishing his hostility towards Pakistan. His only redeeming feature was that in no way would he actively associate himself with the Kabul-inspired Pukhtunistan bogey. Until his death on April 16, 1960, he went on to lead his band of tribal hostiles without creating any major problem for either the provincial or the central government. According to one theory the legend of the Faqir as an irreconcilable recalcitrant was kept alive by Qayyum Khan to keep the Centre in perpetual awe of the Frontier tribes whom Qayyum Khan alone knew how to handle and control.

Born in 1901, Mirza Ali Khan moved to Ipi, in the Tochi Valley in the mid-20s. He jumped into prominence in 1936 over the crisis triggered by the conversion and marriage of a 15-year-old Hindu girl Ram Kori, named and known as Islam Bibi, to a Pathan school teacher Syed Amir Noor Ali Shah of Bannu. A minor girl still, she was recovered and taken into custody. The school teacher was accused of abduction and arrested. The case reached the court in Bannu city 'amid a blaze of publicity.' The trial magistrate found no evidence to suggest that Islam Bibi left her home under compulsion. It was more than clear that she escaped and married Noor Ali Shah out of her own free choice.

Noor All Shah's claim to the girl's custody was dismissed as he could not prove 'legal marriage'. He received two years imprisonment for abduction.

The verdict 'enraged' the Muslims - especially the Daur tribesmen, Faqir Ipi's kinsmen, the Daur Maliks and mullahs left the Tochi far the Khaisora Valley to the south to rouse the Torikhel Waziris. Within a few days a lashkar of thousands of tribesmen was raised to launch the famed Khaisora campaign - the Frontier revolt of 1936-37. With the Faqir of Ipi taking up residence among the Torikhel, the area became the 'focus of political dissent' in Waziristan. On November 25, 1936, regular troops moved into the Khaisora Valley. They were grouped into two columns - the Razmak column (Razol) and the Tochi column (Tocol).

The government over-reacted to the tribal moves thus creating the setting for a sustained and bloody uprising - the first and the biggest of its kind - against the British in the words of the author: 'It took a government invasion of the Khaisora area to convert an embryonic insurgency that had given no sign of an imminent birth into a full-fledged revolt.' By mid-December the Afghans swelled the ranks of their cross-border kinsmen accounting for the 'largest constituent element of the Faqir of Ipi's force, their strength peaking at around 500...' The Afghan Volunteers (Mujahideen in the current idiom) included Zadrans, Tanis, and Gurbans of Khost (eastern Afghanistan abutting the Kurram Valley) and Ahmadzai Wazirs. There was 'nothing new' about the Afghan incursions into the British (now Pakistan's) tribal territory.

According to an official document (Operation NWF-1935-6) quoted by Warren, in 1935, the Afghan tribesmen had taken part in the Mohmand campaign and agitation against the plan to build a strategic road through Tirab. While the city-based (Kabul, etc.) Afghan army was in no position to control the Afghan warriors, the Afghan officials along the border 'often turned a blind eye to tribal movements across the Durand Line and the Afghan allowance-holders in Waziristan provided a whole network of contracts for tribesmen travelling to join the insurgency.'

The existing situation along the Pak-Afghan border does not seem to have altered much ever since by way of the free cross-border traffic, Interior Minister Moinuddin Haider in a recent statement admitted that the cross-border problems were of long-standing and not easily solved. He described the task of establishing and enforcing border control between the two countries as 'monumental'. He went on to add that everyone had got used to the 'open border'. While it is to be hoped that, "slowly and steadily we will gain control, it is not going to be easy to enforce this (border controls)." The minister's statement reflects critically on the existing state of Pakistan's relations with Taliban Afghanistan - something less than satisfactory. Of the cross-border smuggling and drug traffic, he said in unusually harsh tone that, "This is not good for Pakistan and we have to decide what is good for Pakistan. We have started talking straight to Afghanistan. Pakistan first... this is our only concern." History repeats itself especially in the case of two such countries as rooted in history as Pakistan and Afghanistan .

Afghanistan is yet to extricate itself from the vicious circle of its bitter and long-running civil war reducing its economy and society to shambles. Pakistan has its own handful of problems to tackle before meeting the challenge of under-development in right earnest. Mercifully for both, there is none possessed with the personal charisma and power of Ipi to capitalise on the existing cross-border issue and turn it into a cross-border conflict. Mullah Umar, the head of the Taliban state and undisputed national leader, is recognised as a moderate leader with none of the insurgent flamboyance and rhetoric of the Faqir. The Faqir had a "messianic dimension. To the more devout of his followers he was a mediator between the divine and the human." (Y. Talmon, Pursuit of the Millennium. The relationship between religious and social change, as cited by Warren). Apart from avoiding to lay any claim to a 'messianic dimension' or divine attributes, Mullah Umar stays at the distant Kandhar away from Kabul, the centre of governance. He also stays as a friend and ally of Pakistan. Let this be understood, however, that he is an Afghan after all with all the dormant Afghan fury and propensity for revenge.

A close study of Alan Warren's book should put us wise about the fragility of the Durand Line and intermeshing of the frontiers in a grave contingency involving the Pathans on both sides of the Divide. It would be quite worth the while of the Foreign Office mandarins and military experts at the ISI and Intelligence/Operations branches at the GHQ to make a close study of the book in the context of the evolving Pak-Afghan ties. From the present state of flux, exactly what would emerge eventually is difficult to forecast. Surprises are bound to be in store, however.

(The Faqir of Ipi and the British Army: The North West Revolt of 1936-37. By Alan Warren, OUP, Karachi).