After this punishment the conduct of the Dawaris was satisfactory up to 1876, when several serious offences were committed, and the Dawaris evading surrender of the offenders, a blockade of Lower Dawar was instituted, and was kept up until the tribe submitted in June 1878. During the Afghan war, the men of both Upper and Lower Dawar were concerned in raids on the Thal-Bannu and Thal-Kurram roads. In April 1880 Dawaris joined with the Wazirs in an attack upon the Baran militia post, and on the Chapri post in the following month; and it was suggested that opportunity should be taken of the operations of 1881 against the Mahsud Wazirs, to visit the Dawar Valley and inflict punishment on its inhabitants. Eventually these measures were not sanctioned by the Government of India; the mere threat of coercion, however, appears to have been sufficient, and the conduct of the Dawaris at once improved and has since remained very fairly satisfactory. CHAPTER XVIII. WAZIRS: OPERATIONS.[136] _Darwesh Khels._—Immediately after the annexation of the Punjab, the Umarzai sub-division of the Ahmadzai Wazirs began and continued to give trouble on our border. A dispute which commenced with a disagreement with a Bannuchi chief, responsible for the collection of the revenue from Wazir villages in our territory, gradually developed into a grievance against the local British authority, and finally, early in 1850, men from several divisions of the Ahmadzai, to the number of 1500, attacked our post at Gumatti, immediately north of Bannu, but were repulsed. Later in the same year the Umarzais, joined by the Mahsud Wazirs, collected a force of several thousand men, intending to make an attack upon Bannu itself, but finding it too strongly defended, they dispersed. During the next two years the outposts of Bannu were constantly engaged in skirmishes with the Wazirs, who came down almost daily, occupying the foothills and firing at long range into Gumatti. Attempts were made to effect a settlement with them, but they resisted all overtures, and operations were then decided upon against them. Before, however, these could be undertaken, the southern Umarzais, living between the Tochi River and the Gabar Mountain, made a raid towards the Kurram, but were headed off by Major John Nicholson, then Deputy-Commissioner of Bannu, who at once made arrangements for the punishment of this particular section.