Gilgit Scouts

The Gilgit Scouts was a paramilitary force based in the Gilgit-Baltistan region in northern Pakistan. They were raised by the British Raj in 1913, to assist the Gilgit-based British Political Agent in managing Gilgit Agency which formed the northern frontier of British India. The force had a strength of almost six hundred composed of local men recruited by British commanders.

With the lapse of British paramountcy in the subcontinent and subsequent independence of Pakistan and India, the British ceded not only the Gilgit tehsil, which had been leased for sixty years in 1935 from Hari Singh, the maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir, but the whole of Gilgit Agency on 1 August 1947.

Following maharaja's accession to the Dominion of India on 26 October 1947, the Gilgit Scouts under the command of Major William Brown, staged a rebellion and overthrew the Dogra governor of Gilgit. In a matter of days the 6th Battalion of Jammu and Kashmir in Bunji was routed by a Gilgit Scouts force under command Captain Mathieson, the deputy commandant and Assistant Political Agent operating out of Chilas. The Muslim element of the State Forces at Bunji joined the Gilgit Scouts.

After Major Brown and Captain Mathieson left Gilgit, Major Aslam Khan (who took on the nom de guerre of Colonel Pasha) was given command of the Gilgit Scouts. Men from 6th J&K were amalgamated into Gilgit Scouts in early January 1948. Aslam Khan, who had intimate knowledge of the area having served earlier in Rattu and Bunji with Jammu and Kashmir Forces, organised the Gilgit Scouts now numbering around sixteen hundred into three groups, namely Ibex, Tiger and Eskimo forces.

The Gilgit Scouts played a key role in the campaigns in Baltistan, taking Kargil and Dras in early May 1948 and Zojila in July 1948, and reached close to Leh. The territories retained by Gilgit Scouts as of 31 December 1948 gave rise to the present day Gilgit-Baltistan.

The force continued in Pakistan till 1975 when it was incorporated as the Northern Light Infantry of the Pakistan Army.