Topic summary
Siege of Malakand
Bindon Blood
The siege of Malakand was the 26 July – 2 August 1897 siege of the British garrison in the Malakand region of colonial British India's North West Frontier Province. The British faced a force of Pashtun tribesmen whose tribal lands had been bisected by the Durand Line, the 1,519 mile (2,445 km) border between Afghanistan and British India drawn up at the end of the Anglo-Afghan wars to help hold back what the British feared to be the Russian Empire's spread of influence towards the Indian subcontinent.
The unrest caused by this division of the Pashtun lands of Afghania led to the rise of Saidullah, a Pashtun faqir who led a great army of at least 10,000 tribesmen of the regional Yusufzai, Mohmand, Uthmankhel, Bunerwal, Swati tribes among others against the British garrison in Malakand. Although the British forces were divided among a number of poorly defended positions, the small garrison at the camp of Malakand South and the small fort at Chakdara were both able to hold out for six days against the much larger Pashtun army.
The siege was lifted when a relief column dispatched from British positions to the south was sent to assist General William Hope Meiklejohn, commander of the British forces at Malakand South. Accompanying this relief force were Second Lieutenant Winston Churchill, who later published his account as The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War, and Major R. S. H. Moody, who was second in command of the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment), whom Churchill's book mentions.