Thirty miles long, and in places no more than sixteen meters wide, the Pass is the principal route through the great mountain borderlands between India and Central Asia -- and the path of invasion for generations of conquerors. In this ground-breaking book, Paddy Docherty charts its remarkable story -- one which involves so many of the world's great leaders and civilizations, from the influential Persian kings to Alexander the Great, from the White Huns to Genghis Khan, not to mention the Ancient Greeks and countless tribes of nomads and barbarians. He paints an illuminating picture of mountain warriors and religious visionaries, artists, poets and scientists as well as describing how around the Pass emerged three of the great world religions -- Buddhism, Sikhism and Islam. He also depicts the Pass' more modern significance as a lawless region of gunsmiths, drug markets and as a terrorist hideout. Just a few years after the Soviet Union was defeated by the Afghan Mujahideen, many thousands of soldiers from the United States, Britain and other nations are struggling to control Afghanistan. Through his own travels in this true frontier region Paddy Docherty brings this epic history into the twenty-first century.

The Author Takes The Rader With Him From The First Tentative Approach By The British, Their Embroilment With Pathans And Afridis. Upto The Present When Kabul And Peshwar Seem To Entice The Adventurous Tourists.

Recounts the British attempts to conquer the Pushtuns of Afghanistan and offers profiles of the tribal leaders and their British foes

Sir Robert Warburton (1842-99) was a British army officer who served for 18 years as the political officer, or warden, of the Khyber Pass, the most important of the mountain passes connecting Afghanistan and present-day Pakistan. He was born in Afghanistan, the son of a British officer and his wife, a noble Afghan woman who was the niece of Amir Dost Mohammad Khan. Warburton was educated in England, commissioned an officer, and served at posts in British India and in Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) before being appointed, in 1879, to his post in the Khyber. Home to the fiercely independent Pushtun Afridi people who resisted external control, the pass frequently had been blocked by the Afridis or by fighting among the hill tribes. Warburton is credited with keeping the frontier peaceful and the pass open, mainly though diplomacy rather than force. He drew upon his Afghan background and his fluent Persian and Pushto to gradually win the trust of tribesmen whose traditions made them deeply suspicious of outsiders. In August 1897, one month after Warburton's retirement, unrest broke out among the Afridis, who seized the pass and held it for several months. Warburton was called back into service and participated in the Tirah expedition of 1897-98, in which Anglo-Indian forces reopened the pass. Warburton was especially proud of the role played in the expedition by the Khyber Rifles, a paramilitary force recruited from Afridi tribesmen that he had raised and commanded. Eighteen Years in the Khyber, 1879-1898 is Warburton's account of his education and career. It touches upon virtually every individual and event that played a role in relations between Afghanistan and British India during the last quarter of the 19th century. Long in poor health, Warburton returned to England and died before the book was completed. Posthumously published, it is illustrated with a number of striking photographs and includes a detailed fold-out map of the Khyber.

Recruited from the Pathan tribes that live in the no-mans land between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the Khyber Rifles fought for the British Raj against their own kith and kin. Jules Stewart tells the story of Colonel Sir Robert Warburton, the man who raised the Khyber Rifles in 1878, and describes the Khyber Rifles in action.

In this new age of twenty-first century problems and concerns, perhaps we can take comfort in the life of a remarkably brave woman? Her name was Morag Murray Abdullah, and sadly, though her story has been forgotten, the resonating echoes of her life still ring as true now as they did back in the 1920s when she wrote her amazing autobiography. In 1916 Morag was leading what can only be termed as a conventional life. The First World War was raging in nearby Europe. But the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, where she lived, was quiet and safe. In fact everything about her life, up till this point, had been predictable. Then she met Syed Abdullah. The handsome student was attending university there in Scotland, but his roots were far away. Abdullah s father was a chief of the Pathan tribe, those legendary tribesmen who ruled the lands around the fabled Khyber Pass in distant India. Regardless of these vast cultural and religious, (she was Protestant - he a Muslim), the two young people fell in love and were married. Nothing in Morag s life was ever the same. She followed her new husband out to the war-filled, North West Frontier Province of India. There she took up residence among one of the most martial races on Earth. For the next two decades the former Scottish lass became a witness to blood feuds, ruthless tribal politics, and the seclusion of her fellow women in one of the most remote and dangerous portion of the world. Yet this is in no way a tale of exploitation, rather it is the true story of two people from vastly different countries, religions, and families, who learned to live and love each other despite all the odds.

Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award In this urban adventure story, Khyber, a smart, bold, eleven-year-old girl from a poor neighborhood, sets out to find her friend X, a mysterious homeless woman who has gone missing. The desperate search takes Khyber on a long, all-night odyssey that proves to be wilder than any adventure she has ever imagined.