Third skirmish at Hafiz Kor

The British chronology of the war records under 9 October 1915 the “Second Affair of Hafiz Kor” on the North-West Frontier of India. The numbering needs explaining. The British called smaller engagements “affairs” and larger ones “actions”. The April clash was thus the first affair, and the great victory of 5 September was counted separately as an action. In our timeline, which numbers all the engagements at Hafiz Kor in sequence, the October one is the third. It should not be confused with the “third affair” of the British chronology, fought here only on 15 November 1916. The date also differs. The history of the Corps of Guides and an article by a participant published in 1916 in the journal of the officers of the Indian Army agree that the battle was fought on 8 October. By 9 October the assembled tribes had already dispersed to their homes.

A new gathering

The September defeat did not pacify the frontier. Mullahs were again calling the Pashtuns of the Mohmand tribe to jihad, and there was rivalry for influence among the mullahs themselves. According to a British officer who described these events, in October the tribes were joined by the Chaknawar Mullah, who had stirred them up in April and stood aside in September, and, with fewer men than before, by the Babra Mullah, leader of the September raid. At the beginning of October, according to British estimates, about 9,000 men gathered near Hafiz Kor, north of Peshawar. The commander of the 1st (Peshawar) Division, General Frederick Campbell, reinforced by an additional brigade, did not wait to be attacked this time. He decided to strike at the gathering himself near the fort of Shabkadar.

The battle

On the morning of 8 October three brigades advanced on Hafiz Kor: the 4th on the right, the 1st in the centre and General Nigel Woodyatt’s 3rd Brigade on the left. At about 9 a.m. the infantry occupied the plateau in front of the tribal positions without much resistance, after which the artillery began to shell the Mohmands on the ridges in front. The heaviest fighting fell to the Guides infantry, sent to a hill called Tower Hill to cover the left flank of the 1st Brigade. It came under heavy fire from a concealed ravine. Major Battye was badly wounded in the stomach while trying to carry away the bodies of two dead soldiers. The battalion lost seven killed and died of wounds and thirteen wounded, but left neither wounded nor dead in enemy hands. At about 4 p.m. the troops returned to camp. The losses of the whole division and of the Mohmands are not known. The British wrote only that the enemy had “suffered heavily”.

In this battle the British used armoured cars in real combat in India for the first time. According to an account published during the war, they proved their worth both in reconnaissance and in covering the movements of the cavalry.

End of the unrest

The most important of the Mohmand leaders, the Sufi Sahib, who had wavered throughout October and tried to come to terms with the British, went home immediately after the battle, and the next day the whole gathering dispersed. According to a wartime account this defeat practically ended the Mohmand risings of 1915. At the end of the month a column from Malakand also routed about 3,000 Bajauris at Chakdara in the Swat valley, and the wave of unrest on the frontier, which had lasted since August, died down. The calm was not lasting, however. In 1916 the Mohmands again troubled the frontier, and the British eventually sealed off their country with a line of blockhouses and an electrified wire fence running from Abazai on the Swat to Michni on the Kabul river.