Road to Torkham, Khyber Agency, Pakistan - December 2004

The road connecting Peshawar with Torkham, the border point with Afghanistan snakes through the Kyber Agency mountains. The Khyber Agency is a Federally Administered Tribal Area, of which there are 7 in Pakistan. These Tribal Areas are home to the fierce Pashtun tribes who only partially came under British influence pre-1947. The tribesmen resisted British conquest, who would then punish the tribes with their bigger and better equipped armies.
These tribal areas border Afghanistan and the people here share linguistic, cultural and religious ties with the vast majority of Afghanistan. Until today the number of Pakistani Government laws in effect here ae minimal. Interference can often lead to a backlash. It does not mean that the people here are not patriotic Pakistani's or anarchists but their cultural code of Pashtunwali is what rules here. Tribesmen reach a decision based on a Jirga - a tribal council - it is quite a democratic way of dealing with issues. The people here on the whole are very hospitable and truthful. Do not be suprised to see men with weaponry here - the Pashtun tribes men love weaponry and as women wear jewellery, the men wear weapons.

Its terrain is mostly rugged, barren, and arid. If the hills had any forestation in the past, today they are completely denuded by their reckless use and the subsequent soil erosion and adverse climatic changes. The poet Hafeez Jalandhri says "neither the grass hither nor the flowers bloom. But even the skies bow down to kiss this highland plume." And James W. Spain observed, "history hangs heavy on the Khyber and has left its mark upon its sombre stone. Ground into dust of the Pass is Persian gold, Greek iron, Tartar leather, Moghul gems, and Afghan silver and British steel. All have watered it with their blood." Interspersed among these dry and parched hills are narrow and shallow ravine and valleys inhabited by the local population, some of them living there from time immemorial while most of them would be subject to seasonal migrations to the more temperate plains in the unbearable winter. These valleys are irrigated by scant, intermittent rains and snowfall, and cultivated for food and fodder.