Before the end of February nearly all the Afridi clans had submitted or were making advances towards a settlement; the Khyber Pass had been reopened to kafilas, but the Zakha Khels evinced no real intention of giving in. On the 17th March, therefore, preparations were made for a spring campaign; Sir William Lockhart returned to Jamrud, fresh transport was distributed among the troops, and one of the brigades of the Second Division made a short advance towards the Bara Valley. The effect upon the Zakha Khels was immediate. By the 3rd April all the clans had definitely submitted and given hostages for fines still due; hostilities then ceased and demobilisation commenced, but for some months regular troops were retained in occupation of the Khyber posts.
By November 1898 the arrangements for the government of the Khyber previously in force were practically re-established.
The total casualties during the campaign amounted to 287 killed, 853 wounded and ten missing.
It was hoped that the settlement effected, coupled with the knowledge the Afridis now possessed that no part of their country was inaccessible to British troops, would have proved satisfactory to both sides; and it was noticed as a favourable sign that the enlistment of Pathans, and especially of Afridis, into the regiments of the Indian Army, had never been brisker than during the months immediately succeeding the close of hostilities. It was hardly to be expected that individual raids and outrages would cease, and had any such expectations been cherished they would have speedily been disappointed; but at any rate for a brief term of years it was not considered necessary to undertake military operations against any of the Afridis. But among these tribesmen the mullahs appear to be specially inimical to the British Government—as they probably would be to any civilised administration—while there is also always present in Afghanistan a faction opposed to British interests, and from this faction disaffected tribesmen can safely reckon upon a large measure of support. In 1904 a number of Afridis visited Kabul—whether by invitation or not is not certain—were accorded a very friendly reception, and seem to have returned determined—especially the Zakha Khel members of the deputation—upon a policy of opposition to the British authorities. During the next four years raids, ever increasing in audacity, were committed on and within our border by the Zakha Khels, culminating on the 28th January, 1908, in a raid carried out by some seventy or eighty men upon the city of Peshawar, whence property valued at a lakh of rupees was carried off, the raiders getting clear away. Tribal allowances were stopped in the endeavour to force the more well-behaved tribesmen to undertake the coercion of the Zakha Khel, but they declared their inability to restrain the clan—and their impotence was recognised—while suggesting to the British authorities the occupation of the Bazar Valley, as the only means of dealing effectively with a situation which was rapidly becoming intolerable, since security of life and property on the Kohat and Peshawar borders was seriously menaced.