Landscapes of District Tank Khyber Pakhtunkhawa Pakistan
Tank District ٹانک is a district in Dera Ismail Khan Division of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in Pakistan. The city of Tank is the capital of the district, which consists of Union Council City I and Union Council City II. There are sixteen Union councils of district Tank. Until 1992 Tank was a tehsil within Dera Ismail Khan District. Tank is bounded by the districts of Lakki Marwat to the northeast, Dera Ismail Khan to the east and southeast, FR Tank to the north and the South Waziristan Agency to the west. The climate in Tank reaches 110–120 °F. However, in the cold, harsh winters in the mountains to the west, people come to Tank to enjoy a pleasant stay and then return during the summer.At the Battle of the Hydaspes (now the Beas River), fought between Alexander the Great's army and the Indian king Purushotthama (better known as Porus), the Macedonian army refused to go any further. It is said that Alexander's army's was at risk of being trapped, or was faced by an enemy army too big to defeat, and had to retreat southwards through the Makran Desert.
The Islam came in the Tank region in eighth century A.D. when Umayyad general Muhammad Bin Qasim had attacked on the Multan and nearby areas. The tribe known as Arain in Tank District is the generation of those Arab soldiers who came towards Multan with Muhammad Bin Qasim.
Finally, the Sikhs from the south overran the local tribes. They annexed the land in 1838. Somewhere in the midst of this turmoil, the British were assembling against the Pashtuns and the First British-Afghan War commenced. The British took over in 1848. The British regiments weren't able to occupy the entire territory and remained in camps at the foothills of the mountains, while the harsh and dangerous upland terrain remained unexplored.
The eastern border of the Kingdom of Kabul was undefined until 1893 when the Durand Line was demarcated. At that moment, the line was used to intentionally separate the fierce Pushtun tribes from the tame. Under the same agreement, the tribes of Waziristan were clearly designated as being under the British rule.
The British negotiated with the tribes through their agents in the border towns and Tank was a centre of negotiation with the Mahsud tribe – For the Britishers the Mahsud tribe was the most difficult to control, and in 1860 when the Mullah Shaleem kaka machi khel Mahsuds lushker attacked the British with a 3000 strong army the British were forced to penetrate into the territory of Tank to control them.
In January 1899, Lord Curzon was appointed Viceroy of India. Reaching India shortly after the suppression of the frontier risings of 1897–98, he paid special attention to the independent tribes of the north-west frontier and inaugurated a new province called the North-West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), and pursued a policy of forceful control mingled with conciliation. The only major armed outbreak on this frontier during the period of his administration was the Mahsud Waziri campaign of 1901.
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