Defence of Malakand

Siege of Malakand

South Malakand Camp, August 1897

Date	26 July – 2 August 1897
Location	Malakand, India 34°35′47″N 71°55′52″E / 34.59639°N 71.93111°E / 34.59639; 71.93111Coordinates: 34°35′47″N 71°55′52″E / 34.59639°N 71.93111°E / 34.59639; 71.93111
Result	British victory

Belligerents

British Raj

پشتون Pashtun tribes

Commanders and leaders

William Hope Meiklejohn,
Sir Bindon Blood

Fakir Saidullah

Strength

10,630 on 26 July 1897

10,000

Casualties and losses

206: 173 killed and wounded in the Malakand camps, 33 killed and wounded at Chakdara

At least 2,000

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 led to the rise of Saidullah, a Pashtun fakir who led an army of at least 10,000 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 was second lieutenant Winston Churchill, who later published his account as The Story of the Malakand Field Force: An Episode of Frontier War.

The rivalry between the British and the Russian Empires, named "The Great Game" by Arthur Conolly, centred on Afghanistan during the late 19th century. From the British perspective, Russian expansion threatened to destroy the so-called "jewel in the crown" of the British Empire, India. As the Tsar's troops in Central Asia began to subdue one Khanate after another, the British feared that Afghanistan would become a staging post for a Russian invasion. Against this background the British launched the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1838, and attempted to impose a puppet regime under Shuja Shah. The regime was short-lived, however, and unsustainable without British military support. After the Russians sent an uninvited diplomatic mission to Kabul in 1878, tensions were renewed and Britain demanded that the ruler of Afghanistan (Sher Ali Khan) accept a British diplomatic mission. The mission was turned back and, in retaliation, a force of 40,000 men was sent across the border by the British, launching the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

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Wikipedia