These tribesmen, it should be remembered, are all Muhammadans and fanatical in their faith and hatred of the infidel. Excepting in Baluchistan our government has never succeeded in taming them and to-day they are almost as irreconcilable as when we first mixed in frontier matters.And another delightful snippet:
The Mamunds ... had been left alone by our troops ... although they did much to merit severe punishment, and they simply joined in the present disturbances from that pure love of a fight which is second nature to the Pathan and becomes additionally attractive when the feringhee or infidel foe is the objective.The account is by H Woosnam Mills, and he is referring to the Pathan revolt in north-west India, 1897.
I have writen a longer piece, now up on Defence of the Realm ... but you do wonder why our own people cannot read a bit of history. They might actually learn something.
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