.. by Prof Rahmat Karim Baig

In the valleys of Chitral there lived many ethnic groups who came into this part of Hindu Kush via a number of passes in the West, East and North. I am not sure about any such entry from the South, but that aspect cannot be rejected outrightly. The Kalash claim to have come here from SIAM Desh. OK. Their forefathers came from a certain region but the Kho of today, are not the original Kho who came thousands of years ago but most of these ethnic groups also tell stories about their places of migration to Chitral and mixed with the old Kho tribes and adopted their ways and enriched their language.

The original Kho are nowhere to be found except a few exceptions. Where did they go then? Did they migrate from here? And settled somewhere else? Or they died en masse in an epidemic? Or they drowned themselves into the rivers of Chitral where many young ones do the same act even today?

The old Kho were overpowered by the newcomers and then made slaves and then were sold into slavery by the rulers of the old times. This is one of the answers to the questions posed above. The enslavement was a common feature of the society of that time when the powerful captured the weaker ones and made them slaves or sold to traders of that time.

Even after their disappearance there are smaller groups in certain valleys where they can be identified. Many of them, even after that misfortune to their fellow Kho groups, survived and took shelter in resourceful families and got mixed with other minor groups and renamed themselves so the Kho became lesser and lesser in numbers with the passage of time till to date. .. Prof. Rahmat Karim Baig, Chitral 09 June 2022.