First Mohmand Campaign

Date	1897 to 1898
Location	Peshawar border of the North West Frontier
Result	British Indian victory

Belligerents

Mohmands

India

The First Mohmand Campaign was a British military campaign against the Mohmands from 1897 to 1898.

The Mohmands are a Pashtun tribe who inhabit the hilly country to the north-west of Peshawar, in the North-West Frontier Province of India, now Pakistan. British punitive expeditions had been sent against the Mohmands in 1851-1852, 1854, 1864, 1879, 1880, but the principal operations were those of 1897-1898.

The year 1897 witnessed an almost general outbreak among the tribes on the north-west frontier of India. The tribes involved were practically independent, but the new frontier arranged with the amir of Afghanistan, and demarcated by Sir Mortimer Durand's commission of 1893-1894 (the Durand Line), brought them within the British sphere of influence.

The fear of these tribes was annexation, and the hostility shown during the demarcation led to the Waziri expedition of 1894. Other causes, however, contributed to bring about the outbreak of 1897. The easy victory of the Turks over the Greeks in the Greco-Turkish War (1897) gave rise to excitement throughout the Muslim world, and the publication by the amir of Afghanistan, in his assumed capacity of king of Islam, of a religious work, in portions of which fanatical antipathy to Christians was thinly veiled, aroused a militant spirit among the border Mahommedans.

The growing unrest was not recognized, and all appeared quiet, when, on 10 June 1897, a detachment of Indian troops escorting a British frontier officer was suddenly attacked during the mid-day halt in the , where, since the Waziri expedition of 1894-95, certain armed posts had been retained by the government of India. On 29 July, with equal suddenness, the fortified posts at Chakdara and Malakand, in the Swat valley, which had been held since the Chitral expedition of 1895, were for several days fiercely assailed by the usually peaceful Swatis under the leadership of the Mad Mullah in the Siege of Malakand.

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