His father, the eminent statesman Randolph Churchill, thought Winston was too stupid for anything but a career in the army, but the young man's intellectual curiosity blossomed late.Posted to India with a cavalry regiment, 2nd Lt. Churchill filled his siesta hours reading history and philosophy. By the time fighting broke out on the Northwest Frontier, he had enough confidence in himself to get assigned to the staff of the commanding general and at the same time to get work as a war correspondent for two newspapers back home, the Pioneer and the Daily Telegraph. It was August, 1897; Britain had not fought any wars for decades, so every young officer was eager to go into action, and people in England were just as eager for news.
The British ruled the great triangular plain of the subcontinent, and the government derived its defense policy from nature, a topographical policy of using the mountains as the best political and military borderline. But Russia had been pushing into the buffer zone for years and the tribes began to get restless, so the politicians in London came up with a new “Forward Policy” -- the army would cross the mountain passes and force the natives to behave and pay tribute.
The Northwest Frontier of those days is today the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Churchill described the Swat Valley: “As the troops advanced up the fertile and beautiful valley, all were struck by the numerous ruins of the ancient Buddhists. Here in former times were thriving cities, and civilized men.”
A century later the Taliban destroyed those ancient Buddhist monuments. Of the Malakand Field Force fighting in Afghanistan, Churchill reported that “isolated posts have been formed in the midst of races notoriously passionate, reckless and warlike. They are challenges. When they are assailed by the tribesmen, relieving and punitive expeditions become necessary.”
He also noted how the religious leaders were most threatened by the British, for their political influence would decline with the introduction of foreign rule -- “Morally, it is unfortunate for the tribesmen that our spheres of influence clash with their spheres of existence.”
Warfare and the technology of killing have developed beyond recognition in the intervening century -- who could have imagined pilotless aircraft dropping bombs? -- but the basic situation of foot soldiers fighting in those valleys has not changed much. It was a matter of strict honor not to leave behind the dead and wounded, and Churchill pointed out how snipers on the high ground could quickly reduce a fighting force by arithmetic. One man hit required four men to carry the body, thus a single hit took five soldiers out of action.
The young correspondent concluded that the costs of the campaign and the military policy could not be justified on economic grounds. He judiciously sidestepped the political justification -- he was, after all, a mere subaltern -- and rested his case on the efficacy of one versus the other: “From a general survey of the people and the country, it would seem that silver makes a better weapon than steel. A system of subsidies must tend to improve our relations with the tribes, enlist their interests on the side of law and order, and by increasing their wealth, lessen their barbarism.”
Critics of the British government's fighting over the mountains derided the punitive expeditions -- laying waste to whole valleys -- as a policy of “butcher and bolt,” just as critics of today's war say it is a hopeless fight in an ungovernable place.
One can liken defeating al-Qaeda to trying to pin a drop of mercury to a table. The pin pricks of drone aircraft often kill civilians, losing hearts and minds among the dead and the survivors, while the guerilla terrorist network oozes back into shape somewhere else. But we are committed. We will blast these rebels on a roundtrip, back into the Stone Age with a return ticket to modern life, to civilization.
