NORTH-WEST FRONTIER

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 408, 15 April 1937, Page 2

NORTH-WEST FRONTIER

Strategic Khyber Pass. The North-West Frontier, where there have been several British casualties folio-wing an encounter with the followers of the Fakir of Ipi, is the most northerly part of British India. The defence of the frontier constitutes nine-tenths of the defence of India, and in the wild rocky region of the NorthrWest Frontier Province is the approach to the famous Khyber Pass, through which have come all India’s conquering invaders in the past. The province, which was founded In 1901, is composed of the former Punjab districts of Bannu, Kohat, Peshawar, Dera Ismp.il, the Hazara district, and the mountainous region near the border of Afghanistan inhabited by independent tribes. The Khyber Pass, which is now threaded by road and rail, is a narrow defile winding between cliffs of shale and limestone 600 to 1000 feet high, stretching up to more lofty nioun;ains behind. No other pass in the world has possessed such strategic importance or retains so many historic associations as this l gateway to the plain of India. The North-West Frontier Province differs from the old sir provinces of India in having been artificially built up out of part of a previous province tor a definite administrative purpose. The proposal to make the frontier districts into a separate province, administered by an officer of special experience, dates t|i<ck to the viceroyalty of Lord Lytton, who in a famous minute of April 22, 1877, said: “I. believe that our North-West Frontier presents at this moment a spectacle unique in the world: at least I know of no other spot where, after 25 years of peaceful occupation, a great civilised Power has obtained so little influence over its semisavage neighbours, and acquired so little knowledge of them, that the country within a day’s ride of its most important garrison is an absolute terra incognita, and that there is 'absolutely no security for British life a mile or two beyond our border.” Twenty-three years elapsed before Lord Lytton’s idea was successfully brought to completion by Lord Curzon.