By steam to fringe of Afghanistan’s war

Press, 27 March 1980, Page 20

By steam to fringe of Afghanistan’s war

By

LIZ THURGOOD

in the “Guardian,” London

Every Friday the Flying Afridi, as she was once called, clanks and groans her way up the Khyber Pass and into Landi Kotal, just seven miles short of the jagged Afghan border. Except in times of war or military alert, the train, one locomotive at die front and another pushing from behind, stops here. Close to 33 years have passed since Britain’s Indian Empire was finally laid to rest, but Khyber and the old frontier station of Peshawar have still not quite shed the trappings of imperial Britain. The region, once known as the North West Frontier of India, is as acutely aware as ever of its military role in jthis troubled comer of Asia. Khyber itself would* never prove much of a deterrent for a determined, modern war machine. Compared with the towering peaks of Afghanistan where anything under 7000 feet is officially a hill, the Khyber Pass, domesticated with telegraph poles, two winding roads, escarpments dotted with regimental shields and solidly built tunnels, is distinctly unimpressive. But the Pakistani firemen and engine drivers of locomotive number 2511 take a distinct pride in their job. No matter that their Friday passengers are mostly, holidaymakers, carrying bundles of bread and spiced kebab for picnics at Landi Kotal, their four-and-a-half hour ride keeps the rust off the lines should the military ever want to reopen Khyber as one of the most jealously and ferociously guarded frontiers of the world. Their 55-year-old charge is. the dream of every schoolboy. Originally built as ; a steam train in 1925, locomo-

tive 2511 was modified 22 years later and today runs on oil, black smoke bellowing from her tea-pot lid funnel. The 36-mile single track, originally sanctioned by a British Parliament as the Kabul River Railway from Peshawar to Landi Kotal and northwest to Torkham takes locomotive 2511 up one of the steepest climbs in the world. Outside the fort of Jamrud she is joined by a second locomotive to help push her up a 1 in 33 gradient and .through 18 tunnels. Sandwiched in the middle are two second-class carriages and one small freight wagon. The return fare is a paltry 6.60 rupees (about 65 cents). “Only Pakistan’s most experienced drivers are allowed on this run,” says the wiry Ghulam Mohammed Bbatti. The driver from Rawalpindi is proud that despite the number of goats, cows and children wandering across the line, locomotive 2511 has never had an accident. The cost of operating what is one of the last relics of empire" is a secret. The weekly forays into Landi Kotal are financed by the Pakistan military, said the driver, because the line must be kept open for possible movement of troops and equipment to the frontier. On either side of the line are large concrete block tank traps put down during World War Two. ■■ The Kabul River Railway, as is true of much of Pakistan today,, was built with. - the military very much in mind. Britain, hounded by rebellious tribesmen, was warily watching Tsarist Rus-

sia make overtures to fickle (in British eyes) Afghan leaders and many years earlier the pass with its one winding road in the Soleiman Hills had been assigned the job of protecting the Indian jewel. Ironically, the North West Frontier was the only part of the empire that the” British were never able to conquer. “The reasons for the construction of the Kabul River Railway are to be found in the inadequacy of the Kaibar roads for Jhe rapid dispatch of a large army into Afghanistan and for provisioning it when there,” wrote the Honourable Arnold Keppel, a British journalist in 1911. “Supposing we ever had occasion to send an army' into Afghanistan this one avenue is easily interrupted, flanked as it is on both sides by presumably hostile Afridi tribes. In any case the road would never be sufficient for supplying a body of say between 60,000 and 100,000 men.” So a second road, the Mullagori, was constructed and the Loe Shilman or Kabul River Railway sanctioned as far as Torkham on the border.. Fortunately for the kings in Kabul, the third Afghan war was history when the flying Afridi finally took to her tracks in 1925. a In any case, technology was already- introducing new ways to. cross the Khyber., During the third Afghan war of 1919 the British sent a Royal Flying Corps squadron of bombers to soften Afghan positions around the village of Dakka, but' the pilots could riot get enough altitude to go over the pass,-

so they flew through it, with the result, according to one historian, that the Afghan tribesmen perched on their hilltops became the first and only anti-aircraft gunners in history to fire, down at flying targets. Further down the tracks are escarpments studded with plaques marking now almost forgotten moments in British history. A shield with a slag’s head and crown remembers the Gor-

don Highlanders 50 years ago. The same tracks split Peshawar, historically the wintering water hole of Kabul kings, right down the centre. On one side is what government brochures lyrically describe as “the old oriental bazaar redolent with the smell of luscious fruit, roasted meat - and tobacco smoke.” On the other side is the old sprawling British canton-

ment with Its barracks, churches and old missionary Edwardes College. What was once a seat of empire today has a certain seediness. Shutters are rotting and electric light bulbs hang naked, from lofty ceilings. Outside, soldiers’ uniforms dry on long washing lines in the warm t ddday sun and the brass of military bands is occasionally punctuated by the dull clomp of a nearby cricket ball on wood. Perceptions have apparently changed little with the passing of years. Just off the Khyber road lies the old British cemetery, a dark, dank place overgrown with rosewood and dock. Enteric fever and heat stroke, as the old tombstones testify, took a hefty toll among the British community here. So too did cholera which, in 1870 made Peshawar, in the words of Sir Robert Warburton, “a station to be avoided and dreaded . . « life and property were by no means safe and the cholera season of 1869 has been an exceptionally deadly one □ , Many young Britons were killed in action, such as Lieutenant Bishop who died at Shabkadr “in an engagement with the hill tribes, 1863. He was aged 22.” Others were “assassinated by fanatics.” or what Afghanistan’s official friends would today describe as CJ.A. - Chinese - Pakistan • trained insurgents. Whatever the correct terminology. the lessons, it seems, have still to be learned. The dank little cemetery together with the railway that never carried British troops into Afghanistan and the rows of fading regimental shields all bear witness to the fate of past imperial ambitions.