[inline:drone-view-1.jpg="Human Drone Afridi Houses 1937"|class="left"]This human drone photograph was taken by an R.A.F. camera in the 1930s and was part of the "Tribal Directory" project undertaken by the British Indian army to support extensive air campaigns in NWFP.

Its objective was to list the "resources, population and defensive structures of every village in the Frontier region." 1

Bombing came quickly to aircraft. Eight years after the Wright Brothers first flew in South Carolina in 1903, Italian pilots were tossing hand grenades out of biplanes in Libya.

In 1915 bombs were used as a "policing method" by the British Army in the North West Frontier of India 2. The Chief Commissioner of NWFP Sir John Maffrey asked about the rules for bombing in his province in 1925 and was told by his air force that there were no international laws "against savage tribes who do not conform to the codes of civilized warfare." 3

During the Afghan War of 1919-1920, British airplanes bombed the Afghan army garrison inside the Khyber Pass at Dakka and the bazaar in Jalalabad, Afghanistan as well. Was a bombing mission a cheaper method of securing large tracts of tribal lands and compelling them to do something? It never became clear. According to David Ormissi's excellent research on the subject, the reform Afghan King Amanullah even used the air force against his tribes on the Afghan side of the Khyber Pass. The disgust over those killings apparently helped hasten Amanullah's own demise in 1929.4

By 1932 photography itself was used as a tool of warfare when a comprehensive catalog of the Frontier was made by airborne cameras. It is from that collection that this photograph likely comes.

[inline:afridi-houses-3.jpg="Afridi Houses"|class="left"]

1. 1. Omissi, David E., Air Power and Colonial Control, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1990, p. 96.
2. 2. Ormissi, p. 47
3. 3. Lindqvist, Sven, A History of Bombing, The New Press, 2000, p. 45
4. 4. Ormissi, p. 122