Bajaur District
Bajaur District, formerly Bajaur Agency, is a district in the Malakand Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan. Prior to 2018, Bajaur Agency was the northernmost component of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a semi-autonomous region along the Afghanistan–Pakistan border. In May 2018, FATA was merged into the larger Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province in an attempt to bring stability to the region, redesignating Bajaur Agency to Bajaur District.
The district lies on Pakistan's western border, sharing a 52 km border with Afghanistan's Kunar Province, and lies 35 mi north of the Torkham border crossing linking Jalalabad and Peshawar. 498 square kilometer miles in size, Bajaur occupies a small mountain basin and is into seven tehsil with its district headquarters in the town of Khar, in the district's center. According to the 2017 Pakistani census, Bajaur District has a population of 1,090,987.
Geography
Before the 2018 incorporation of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas' tribal agencies into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Bajaur Agency was both the northernmost and smallest of the seven tribal agencies, bordering the slightly larger Kurram Agency to its south.Bajaur is about long and wide. It lies at a high elevation to the east of the Kunar Valley of Afghanistan from which it is separated by a continuous line of rugged frontier hills. The old road from Afghanistan's Kabul to Pakistan went through Bajaur before a new pass, Khyber Pass, was constructed.
To the south of Bajaur is the district of Mohmand. To the east, beyond the Panjkora River, are the hills of Swat District. On its east side, there is the district of Malakand, while on its northeast is an intervening watershed between Bajaur and Dir.
Nawagai is the chief town of Bajaur; the Khan of Nawagai was previously under the British protection for the purpose of safeguarding of the Chitral road.
An interesting feature in the topography is a mountain spur from the Kunar range.
The drainage of Bajaur flows eastwards, starting from the eastern slopes of the dividing ridge, which overlooks the Kunar and terminating in the Panjkora river, so that the district lies on a slope tilting gradually downwards from the Kunar ridge to the Panjkora.
Jandol, one of the northern valleys of Bajaur, has ceased to be of political importance since the 19th century, when a previous chief, Umra Khan, failed to appropriate himself Bajaur, Dir and a great part of the Kunar valley. It was the active hostility between the Amir of Kabul and Umra Khan that led, firstly to the demarcation agreement of 1893 which fixed the boundary of Afghanistan in Kunar; and, secondly, to the invasion of Chitral by Umra Khan, and the siege of the Chitral fort in 1895.
History
Ancient history
The area was the site of the ancient Gandhara kingdom of Apraca from the 1st century BCE to the 1st century CE, and a stronghold of the Aspasioi, a western branch of the Ashvakas of the Sanskrit texts who had earlier offered stubborn resistance to the Macedonian invader Alexander the Great in 326 BCE. The whole region came under Kushan control after the conquests of Kujula Kadphises during the first century CE.Alexander the Great
turned south from Aornus and continued march towards the Indus, but the greatest surprise during the march came when he neared the town of Nysa. The local people and even the flora seemed strangely out of place in these mountains. The Nysains placed their dead in cedar coffin in the trees - some of which Alexander accidentally set on fire - and made wine from grapes, unlike other tribes in the area. The Acuphis, the chief man of the city, who has been sent to them along with other thirty leaders, begged him not to harm their towns as they were descendants of settlers that the god Dionysus placed their generation before. Their prolific ivy, a plant sacred to Dionysus that nowhere else in the mountain, was proof they were the people blessed by god. Then they were only commanded to give him 300 cavalry, after which he restored their freedom and allow them to live under their own laws, having made Acuphis governor of the city. Alexander took his son and grandson as hostages. He sacrificed there to Bacchus under this god's others name of Dionysus.Bajaur casket
The Bajaur casket, also called the Indravarma reliquary, year 63, or sometimes referred to as the Avaca inscription, is an ancient reliquary from the area of Bajaur in ancient Gandhara, in the present-day Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. It is dated to around 5-6 CE. It proves the involvement of the Scythian kings of the Apraca, in particular King Indravarman, in Buddhism. The casket is made of schist.Mughal–Afghan wars
Bajaur massacre
In 1518, Babur had invested and conquered the fortress of Bajaur, The Gabar-Kot from Sultan Mir Haider Ali Gabari the Jahangirian Sultan and gone on to conquer Bhera on the river Jhelum, a little beyond the salt ranges. Babur claimed these areas as his own, because they had been part of Taimur's empire. Hence, "picturing as our own the countries once occupied by the Turks", he ordered that "there was to be no overrunning or plundering ". It may be noted that this applied to areas which did not offer resistance, because earlier, at Bajaur, where the Pashtun tribesmen had resisted, he had ordered a general massacre, with their women and children being made captive.Babur justifies this massacre by saying, "the Bajauris were rebels and at enmity with the people of Islam, and as, by heathenish and hostile customs prevailing in their midst, the very name of Islam was rooted out...".
As the Bajauris were rebels and inimical to the people of Islam, the men were subjected to a general massacre and their wives and children were made captive. At a guess, more than 3,000 men met their death. We entered the fort and inspected it. On the walls, in houses, streets and alleys, the dead lay, in what numbers! Those walking around had to jump over the corpses.
Battle of Malandari Pass
From late 1585 into 1586, forces of the Mughal army led by Zain Khan Koka, at the direction of the Mughal emperor Akbar the Great, waged a military campaign to subdue the Yusufzai tribes of Bajaur and Swat. The Mughal operation, which culminated in the Battle of the Malandari Pass resulted in an Afghan victory and a military embarrassment for Akbar.Princely state
Bajaur was a princely state run by the Nawab of Khar. The last and most prominent Nawab was Abdul Subhan Khan, who ruled until 1990.Recent decades
During the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, the area was a critical staging ground for Afghan and local mujahideen to organise and conduct raids. It still hosts a large population of Afghan refugees sympathetic to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a mujahideen leader ideologically close to the Arab militants. Today, the United States believes militants based in Bajaur launch frequent attacks on American and Afghan troops in Afghanistan.Counterterrorism
Airstrikes
An aerial attack, executed by the United States targeting Ayman al-Zawahiri, took place in a village in Bajaur Agency on January 13, 2006, killing 18 people. Al-Zawahiri was not found among the dead and the incident led to severe outrage in the area.On October 30, 2006, 80 people were killed in Bajaur when Pakistani forces attacked a religious school they said was being used as a militant training camp. There are many unconfirmed reports that the October attack was also carried out by the United States or NATO forces, but was claimed by Islamabad over fears of widespread protest similar to those after the US bombing in January 2006. Maulana Liaqat, the head of the seminary, was killed in the attack. Liaqat was a senior leader of the pro-Taliban movement Tanzim Nifaz Shariat Mohammadi, that spearheaded a violent Islamic movement in Bajaur and the neighbouring Malakand areas in 1994. The TNSM had led some 5,000 men from the Pakistani areas of Dir, Swat and Bajaur across the Mamund border into Afghanistan in October 2001, to fight US-led troops. In what is thought to be a reprisal for the October strike in Bajaur, in November, a suicide bomber killed dozens in an attack on an army training school in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Bajaur offensive
Loi sum is on a strategic location, road come from four sides,, so approach was easy from Charmang and Ambar. That was the reason that this area was affected mostly. A military offensive by the military of Pakistan was launched in early 8 August 2008 to retake the border crossing near the town of Loi-Sum, 12 km from khar from militants loyal to Tehrik-e-Taliban, the so-called Pakistani Taliban. In the two weeks following the initial battle, government forces pulled back to Khar and initiated aerial bombing and artillery barrages on presumed militant positions, which reportedly has all but depopulated Bajaur and parts of neighbouring Mohmand Agency, with an estimated 300,000 fleeing their homes. The estimate of casualties ran into the hundreds. The offensive was launched in the wake of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani's visit to Washington in late July, and is believed by some to be in response to U.S. demands that Pakistan prevent the FATA being used as a safe haven by insurgents fighting American and NATO troops in Afghanistan. However, the offensive was decided by the military, not the civilian government. The bloody bombing of Pakistan Ordnance Factories in Wah on August 21, 2008, came according to Maulvi Omar, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, as a response to the Bajaur offensive. after a few weeks, the Pak army came to battlefield. In an initial way toward the Loi sum Taliban did not resist and let them to come to middle position, when they reach to Rashakai, Taliban started to attack them but the Army was far stronger than their expectation. For several weeks they stayed in Rashakai, then 1st attempt Army come to loi sum, stay for whole day and come back to Rashakai, In 2nd attempt was the same, and 3rd attempt they come to loi sum and took the control of the area. Army continues there journey, control the main road of Bajaur from Khar to Nawagi, and the peripheral areas were still in the hold of Taliban. After nine months of vigorous clashes between government security forces and Taliban, military forces have finally claimed to have forced militants out of Bajaur Agency, and advanced towards strongholds of Taliban in the region. According to figures provided by the Government of Pakistan, 1,600 militants were killed and more than 2,000 injured, while some 150 civilians also died and about 2,000 were injured in the fighting. The military operation forced more than 300,000 people to flee their homes and take shelter in IDP camps in settled districts of the province. To date, more than 180,000 IDPs have returned to their homes in Bajaur Agency, facing widespread destruction to their lives, livelihoods and massive unemployment.In August, 2012, the Pakistani Army de-listed Bajaur as conflict zone.