Landi Kotal Tribal Areas Pakistan

The Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Durrani, the Pashtun Durrani founder of the Afghan state, employs Afridis in his armies in the late eighteenth century.

Ahmad Shah Durrani's grandson Shah Shoja', who rules Afghanistan from 1803 to 1809, receives both support and asylum from the Afridis.

Shuja Shah has proven unpopular with the Afghans, and the British garrison's position has become untenable.

On January 6, 1842, some forty-five hundred British and Indian troops, with twelve thousand camp followers, march out of Kabul, after which Shah Shuja is killed.

The retreat of the British from Kabul, struggling through the snowbound passes on their way back to India, is one of the worst disasters in British military history.

Despite Akbar Khan's promise of safe passage, bands of Afghans swarm about them, and the retreat ends in a blood bath: only one survivor, of a mixed British-Indian garrison, reaches the isolated British outpost in Jalalabad, on a stumbling pony.

The British have tried various methods to keep the Khyber Pass open since the British annexation of the Punjab in 1849, including allowances, punitive expeditions such as those of 1878 and 1879 against the Kohat and Khyber Afridis, and the use of tribal militia (the Khyber Rifles).

The pass is the scene of much fighting during the Second Anglo-Afghan War.

The Treaty of Gandamak leaves the Khyber tribes under British control.

Following the war, the British will have continuing trouble with the warlike Pashtun inhabitants.

The British officer John Masters recorded in his autobiography that Pashtun women in the North-West Frontier Province (1901–1955) of British India during the Second Anglo-Afghan War would castrate non-Muslim soldiers who were captured, like British and Sikhs.

They also used an execution method involving urine, in which Pashtun women urinated into prisoner's mouths.

Captured British soldiers were spread out and fastened with restraints to the ground, then a stick, or a piece of wood was used to keep their mouth open to prevent swallowing.

Pashtun women then squatted and urinated directly into the mouth of the man until he drowned in the urine, taking turns one at a time.

This method of execution was reported to have been practiced specifically by the women of the Afridi tribe of the Pashtuns.

The Afridis of the Khyber region come under the control of the Durand Line, which divides the tribal region between Afghanistan and British India, in 1893.

The Afridis had seized the Khyber Pass in 1897, holding it for several months before their defeat by the Tirah campaign in 1898.

The British become responsible for the safety of the pass.