Khyber Pass
The
Khyber Pass, (
Pashto:
د خیبر درہ,
Urdu:
درۂ خیبر) (altitude: 1,070 m or 3,510 ft) is a
mountain pass linking
Pakistan and
Afghanistan.
The Pass was an integral part of the ancient
Silk Road and throughout history, it has been an important
trade route between
Central Asia and
South Asia and a
strategic military location. The summit of the Khyber Pass is 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) inside Pakistan at
Landi Kotal and it cuts through the northeastern part of the
Safed Koh mountains which themselves are a far southeastern extension of the
Hindu Kush range.
Origin of Name
According to historians and local oral traditions,
Khyber is a word of
Hebrew origin meaning a fort, castle or palace.
- "Khyber is a Hebrew word, it means a fort". [1] [2]
"No one knows when Khyber got its present name, but this much is certain that "Khyber" is a word of Hebrew language and it means palace or castle. There is also a city and fort known as "Khaybar" Forty miles to the west of Medina (Saudi Arabia), which was inhabited by Jews before the rise of Islam, and was conquered by Muhammad in 629 AD..".
History
In some versions of the
Aryan migration theory, the
Indo-Aryans migrated to India via the Khyber Pass.
[citation needed] Recorded invasions through the Khyber begin with the conquests of
Darius I and
Alexander the Great and also include later
Muslim invasions of South Asia, culminating with the establishment of the
Mughul Empire from 1526. The
British invaded
Afghanistan from India and fought three Afghan Wars in
1839-42,
1878-80, and
1919.
George Molesworth, a member of the
British force of 1919, summarised: "Every stone in the Khyber has been soaked in blood."
Rudyard Kipling called it "a sword cut through the mountains."
Finally, Sikhs under
Ranjit Singh, in 1798 brought to an end the 800 years of foreign invasions into India through Khyber Pass, by bringing it under their control. This was the best gift the Sikhs gave to the nation which finally allowed the rest of India to breathe in peace.
Hari Singh Nalwa, who manned the Khyber pass for years became a household name in Afghanistan.
Afghan chiefs and a
British Political officer posed at
Jamrud fort at the mouth of the Khyber Pass in 1878.
To the north of the Khyber Pass lies the country of the
Mullagori tribe. To the south is Afridi
Tirah, while the inhabitants of villages in the Pass itself are
Afridi clansmen. Throughout the centuries the
Pashtun clans, particularly the Afridis and the Afghan
Shinwaris, have regarded the Pass as their own preserve and have levied a toll on travellers for safe conduct. Since this has long been their main source of income, resistance to challenges to the Shinwaris' authority has often been fierce.
For strategic reasons, after the
First World War the
British built a heavily engineered railway through the Pass. The
Khyber Pass Railway from
Jamrud, near
Peshawar, to the
Afghan border near
Landi Kotal was opened in 1925.
During
World War II concrete "
dragon’s teeth" (tank obstacles) were erected on the valley floor due to British fears of a German tank invasion of India.
[4]
The Pass became widely known to thousands of Westerners and Japanese who travelled it in the days of the
Hippie trail, taking a bus or car from
Kabul to the Afghan border. At the Pakistani frontier post, travellers were advised not to wander away from the road, as the location was then a barely controlled
Federally Administered Tribal Area. Then, after customs formalities, a quick daylight drive through the Pass was made. Monuments left by British Army units, as well as hillside forts, could be viewed from the highway.
The area of the Khyber Pass has been connected with a counterfeit arms industry, making various types of weapons known to gun collectors as
Khyber Pass Copies, using local steel and
blacksmiths' forges.
[5][6]
Current conflicts
During the current
war in Afghanistan, the Khyber Pass has been a major route for resupplying
NATO forces in the Afghan theater of conflict. Recognizing this, the
Taliban attempted to choke off the route in late 2008 and early 2009, bringing the Taliban into conflict with the Pakistani government.
[7]
In February 2009, a bridge 15 miles northwest of
Peshawar was blown up by militants presumably sympathetic to or sponsored by the Taliban. While it was not considered to be a major strategic blow to the allied war effort, it invigorated efforts to secure additional supply routes, some of which may ultimately run through Iran. However, the current general consensus is that the new supply route will pass through various central Asian republics to the north of Afghanistan.
