PLOT FAILS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 September 1938, Page 7

PLOT FAILS

PLAN TO SEIZE AFGHANISTAN. BLOCKED BY BRITISH TROOPS. The British Army has just crushed a plot of Waziristan warriors to overthrow the reigning dynasty of Afghanistan and has seized the mysterious Syrian “Holy Man” behind it. Discovery of the plot was reported while British North-west Frontier detachments were already coping with another outbreak of this restless frontier tribe on the most northern frontier of India. It was announced recently that the fanatical leader of the Afghanistan plot, known as Shamipir, had surrendered at Wana, on India’s North-west-ern Frontier, and been taken to Delhi in a military airplane. It was understood he would be deported to Syria. His real name was said to be Saiyd Mohamed Sadi. Waziristan tribal levies which had been moving towards Afghanistan for a week have been • dispersed. Britain is bound by treaty to protect Afghanistan against invasion. When the plot was uncovered some observers believed it was connected with Moslem-fostered troubles in Palestine. Others attributed it to the desires of King Amanullah, who abdicated in 1929, to regain the Afghan throne.

A staff writer of the “Christian Science Monitor” comments: India’s North-west Frontier has once more boiled over. The trouble is located in a tangled mass of steep, barren mountains, all but inaccessible, separating from each other the comparatively civilised territories of Afghanistan and India. The disturbed region is about as big as Norway. It is inhabited by independent Moslem tribesmen, each of whom habitually carries a rifle. There are about 250,000 fighting men in the area, but only a few thousand of them are involved in the present disturbances, which are confined to parts of Waziristan, a country half as big as Switzerland midway along the border. The Waziris and their'intermingled tribal neighbours, the Marsuds, live under conditions which have changed little for centuries. Their relations with the villagers inhabiting the rich plains of India situated at the foot of their mountains resemble those existing between Welshmen and Englishmen, bordering upon one another in Saxon days. The tribesmen are mostly big, sturdy fellows, with ruddy faces and shaggy black beards. They wear either small cloth caps or voluminous turbans, and habitually appear swathed from head to foot in baggy garments formed of many yards of cotton piece goods so wound round their persons as to protect them from the burning midsummer sun and the winter blasts of their severe mountain climate.

Two schools of opinion exist in the Government of India’s headquarters at Delhi as to the best policy to pursue on this difficult frontier. One set of strategists would have India make itself responsible for the establishment of law and order throughout the entire region. The other would interfere as little as possible in this territory, confining action to repelling actual raids into India. Different Indian Viceroys and Commanders-in-Chief have tried varying methods. In practice something between the two extremes has been adopted. Endeavour has been made, by money subsidies and otherwise, to help whatever indigenous organisation has for the moment established itself among the tribesmen. Roads have also been built into the area, and when trouble has become serious military expeditions have been despatched there. The object of these periodical expeditions has been to punsh such marauding bands as may have attacked Indians or Europeans. In most cases such expeditions have had a certain amount of assistance from tribal groups antagonistic to those immediately responsible for raiding. In other and more frequent cases Moslem fanaticism in the face of invasion has swept away local tribal differences, with the result that columns sent into the area have been sniped at almost continuously whenever they have gone. It is recognised that punitive measures are objectionable alike from the humanitarian standpoint and from that of efficiency. On the other hand, so inaccessible is the region and so fiercely do the tribesmen resent any interference with their independence that anything of the nature of an attempt to administer the region permanently has been negatived by almost all the authorities who have had to consider it. The present leader of the marauding element troubling India’s Northwest Frontier is a Moslem priest known as the Fakir (religious mendicant) of Ipi. Some thousands of troops unsuccessfully sought for several months last year to round up both him and his following. But some hundreds of miles of motor roads were built along which were paraded mobile columns with light tanks and armoured cars, while airplanes co-operated overheard. These columns, also friendly local tribesmen who were employed upon road making—a well-paid job they much appreciated—were sniped at each night, a very considerable number of casualties occurring. Jirgahs (gatherings of tribal elders) were eventually got together, and they handed over a number of rifles as a penalty for past misdeeds, the columns being then withdrawn in the hope that raiding would cease. This hope has not been fulfilled, and military operations have recommenced.