Bajaur Agency FATA (Federally administered tribal area) is tribal territory north of Peshawar that borders on Afghanistan's Kunar Province to the west. The area of Bajaur is 590 square miles. The main tribes are Utman Khel and Tarkani of which the major sections are Mamund and Salar Zai. Churchill campaigned here (and in the Mohmand areas) in the last years of the last century and wrote of his adventures in 1898 in The Story of The Malakand Field Force (1972). It was created as an Agency from a remote subdivision of the Malakand Agency on December 1, 1973 with Headquarters at Khar. Before 1960 Bajaur was treated as an almost wholly inaccessible area and it was in that year that an Assistand Political Agent was appointed whose headquarters, however, were outside an agency at Munda, in Dir District.
Only tribal peoples can go there without government permission.
My friends in Peshawar warned me not to go to Bajaur. As my friend Arif told me, "Even the birds will not find your bones if you go to Bajaur. They will kill you in Bajaur!". Just a city dwellers opinion I thought. In Tribal Territory the government holds sway only on the metalled road (if that). It is said the government controls up to three feet off the metalled road, but that if someone kills you, they just will drag you off the road. Most of these pictures were taken five to ten kilometers off the metalled road, around Momad Gat/Nawagay/Nawa Pass! An area dear to my heart.