Fighting between the Afridis and the troops of the Mughal dynasty of India occurred frequently in the 16th and 17th centuries. In the 18th century the Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Durrani employed Afridis in his armies, and his grandson Shah Shoja' (reigned 1803-09) received both support and asylum from them.
British encounters with the Afridis began during the first Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42), notably when General George Pollock fought against them during his march to Kabul. After the British annexation of the Punjab in 1849, various methods were tried to keep the Khyber Pass open, including allowances, punitive expeditions such as those of 1878 and 1879 against the Kohat and Khyber Afridis, and the use of tribal militia (the Khyber Rifles). In 1893 the Afridis of the Khyber region came under control by the Durand Line, which divided the tribal region between Afghanistan and the British Indian Empire.
During the 1930s the Indian Congress Party enlisted Afridi support for the militant anti-British Red Shirt Movement, an amalgam of pan-Islamism and Indian nationalism. With independence, the Afridi lands in the North-West Frontier Province became a part of Pakistan, which thereafter faced an Afghan-supported movement for an independent Pakhtunistan, or Pashtun state.