Frontier Firebrand

If Lord Linlithgow, Viceroy of India, wants to talk over troublesome Indian problems with Mohandas K. Gandhi, the revered Mahatma will usually arrange to call on His Excellency at New Delhi. Not so obliging is another Indian leader named Mirza Ali Khan, better known as the Fakir of Ipi.

Years ago this turbaned giant of a man, wearing baggy pants and a flowing robe, consented to a parley with a British Resident General of Waziristan, the craggy, wild tribal area of Northwestern India. It did not turn out well. The Fakir was friendly enough. But he declined to accept British bakshish ("small change"), and after he had gone it was discovered that the Fakir's entourage had looted the Resident General's headquarters while the conference was taking place.

Since that time the doughty fanatical firebrand, also called "Champion of Islam" and "Holy Man of the Sulaiman Mountains," has lived by two premises: 1) never meet the British at a conference table (they are too good at it); 2) do your arguing with a gun in the mountains (he is good at it). Result is that whereas the humble Fakir used to be No. 40 on the British list of Waziristan's chieftains, he has now become Troublemaker No. 1.

Money and women are scarce in the mountains, but the Fakir and his tribesmen are experts at both stealing and kidnapping. His favorite tricks are planting bombs on British parade grounds, poisoning wells, connecting telephone lines with power circuits and luring unsuspecting Indian Army contingents into death traps. Biggest feather in his turban came when he caused the British Raj to send out an expensive expedition of 30,000 men to hunt down the Fakir and his few thousand followers. The British scoured the crags and peered into caves for months without ever catching him, and at the same time lost dozens of officers, scores of men.

The Fakir of Ipi has not popped up now for over a year, but last week the British reported that Waziristan tribesmen were again shooting at stray Indian soldiers. At New Delhi it was quickly concluded that the Fakir had gone on the warpath once more. Matters became so serious that regular Army communiques were issued. "Our casualties were light," read one which might well have described the Western Front. "The second of two columns encountered considerable opposition."

What worried the British more than usual this time was the suspicion that the Fakir, although a fanatical religious leader, has been "encouraged" to rebellion by atheistic Soviet Russia. This, the British knew, was no time to have serious trouble near the Khyber Pass. While they hunted the Fakir, they also started building good military roads right up to the Afghanistan border.

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