While the Headquarters and the First Brigade had been operating in Upper Swat, the Second Brigade had remained at Khar to overawe the people of Lower Swat, pushing reconnaissances in all directions, the inhabitants remaining perfectly submissive. There had been some idea of employing this Brigade for the punishment of the Bunerwals and Utman Khels, implicated in the recent rising, but by this time the frontier generally was in a blaze, and it was decided that two of Sir Bindon’s brigades should be sent through Dir and Bajaur in order to co-operate with the Mohmand Field Force from Nawagai: these operations, in which the Second and Reserve (Third) Brigade were employed—the First Brigade remaining in occupation of Swat—will be found described in Chapter VII.
Since this year there has been no further outbreak of fanaticism and no other trouble in Swat, and the prosperity of the country has made very real progress.
The trans-frontier portion of this tribe occupies the country between the Rud River on the north, the Panjkora and Swat Rivers on the east and south-east, and the Ambahar River on the south and south-west: their neighbours being the Bajauris on the north, the Akozai Yusafzais or Swatis on the east, and the Mohmands on the west; while the Peshawar district is the southern boundary. The country is a network of low hills and nullahs, and is generally unfertile and unproductive. The cis-frontier people of the tribe own certain lands in the northern portion of the Yusafzai Plain, originally bestowed upon them by the Baizais, when these, some time in the sixteenth century, were being pressed by the Ranizais. In the course of time the Baizais have practically been pushed from their own country by the Utman Khels. The Utman Khels hold the villages situated on the spur running down from the Pajja and Morah Ranges, and also the villages of Shamozai and Matta, on the north-west slopes of the Ganga Ghar Mountain.
The Utman Khel are said to be Sarbani Pathans of the Kodai Karlanri branch, who moved eastwards with the Yusafzais when these migrated from their earlier homes north-west of the Suleiman range, occupying their present territory simultaneously with the Yusafzai conquest of Swat. They are a hardy set of mountaineers, of good physique, hardworking, many of them eking out a scanty livelihood as labourers about Peshawar; “often,” so Oliver tells us, “naked from the waist up—a custom opposed to Pathan ideas—but not very civilised. They live in small groups of houses, rather than villages, stuck on the mountain side, secure in their inaccessibility.” There are no chiefs of any importance among them, and they are a very democratic people. They are estimated to number some 9,000 fighting men, poorly armed. The trans-frontier Utman Khels have always held themselves rather aloof, and few of them enlist with us; but the cis-frontier men have lately taken more freely to service in the levies, and even in the Indian army, and are said to make excellent soldiers.