Person · Waziristan resistance leader
The Faqīr of Ipi (Mīrzālī Khān)
A Tori Khel Wazir religious figure who in 1936 took up the case of a Hindu girl's conversion and marriage — the Islam Bibi affair — and turned the resulting quarrel with the courts into an insurgency that ran until 1947. With a few hundred fighters and no fixed base he tied down tens of thousands of British Indian troops in Waziristan for eleven years, was bombed from the air repeatedly, and was never caught. Afterwards he refused to accept Pakistan and called for Pashtunistan until his death at Gurwek in 1960.
- Function
- Military & resistance
- Confidence
- Not assessed
Worth knowing
The British devoted more troops to Waziristan in the late 1930s than to any other internal commitment in India, against a man whose forces never held a town — an expense recorded in the Indian budget while the war in Europe was starting.
Assessments of his aims vary sharply between British records, Pashtun nationalist accounts and Pakistani official history.
Connections (2)
- Alternative toAbdul Ghaffār Khān (Bāchā Khān)
Two answers from the same people at the same moment. From 1936 the Faqīr of Ipi fought the British in Waziristan with a few hundred men, tied down tens of thousands of troops for eleven years, was bombed from the air and never caught. From 1929 Bāchā Khān organised a hundred thousand Pashtuns in Charsadda and Mardan into a nonviolent movement and went to prison for about thirty years. Both wanted the British gone and neither accepted Pakistan afterwards; the frontier produced the century's most disciplined nonviolent movement and its most persistent insurgency simultaneously.
- CampaignKhyber Pass
The Waziristan campaign of 1936 to 1947 was the last and longest of the frontier wars, and it was fought in the country behind the passes rather than at them. The British committed more troops to it in the late 1930s than to any other internal commitment in India — against an opponent who never held a town, had no artillery, and moved between caves. The expense appears in the Indian budget while the war in Europe was beginning, which is the clearest measure of what the frontier cost to hold.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Faqir of Ipi”. Government of India, Waziristan operations despatches, 1937–39; Alan Warren, Waziristan, the Faqir of Ipi and the Indian Army (2000).
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