The Durand Line

The bleak prospect lent to the Pak-US relationship by the contenders to the next White House tends to lift a bit in the wake of Washington's take on the Durand Line. The US State Department too has upheld Special Envoy Marc Grossman's recent assertion that the Durand Line is an internationally recognised boundary between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Rejecting Kabul's protest over Grossman's comment, the State Department spokesperson said last Wednesday the US policy on the Durand Line 'has not changed' and 'it was correctly stated by Ambassador Grossman'. Since the envoy said so in Kabul, on arrival from Islamabad the host government's reaction, quite expectedly, was vociferous. A statement issued by the Afghan foreign ministry said "Kabul rejects and considers irrelevant any statement by anyone about legal status of this line". And the issue came up in the Afghan parliament and media also. But the American position was unchanged in that even the newly accredited US Ambassador James Cunningham too fully owned up to his government's take on the status of the boundary line. But soon enough Kabul relented on its first reaction and is said to have 'later played down as a reiteration of an existing position rather than an approach'. The position on the Durand Line taken by the US government is quite close to Pakistan's. Given the lingering nature of controversy over its legal status, a historical perspective is in order. As the British rule in this region came to a close in 1947 the Kabul government came up questioning the validity of the Durand Line with Pakistan. The then Afghan government, in the words of Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, a former prime minister of Pakistan, "aided and abetted by India" and encouraged by the Red Shirts (Khudai Khidmatgar party of Bacha Khan), showed hostility. On September 30, 1947 when Pakistan was admitted to the United Nations the Afghan representative cast the solitary negative vote. The Kabul position was a negation of the Durand boundary agreement of 1893 which was negotiated on the initiative of Amir Abdur Rahman of Afghanistan. He had expressed full satisfaction with the agreement and reiterated its acceptance in 1905. In subsequent treaties of 1919 and 1921 the government of Amir Amanullah Khan reconfirmed the legitimacy of the Durand Line. As for the overlap of ethnicity, culture and language the Durand Line has it in common with most of the international borders. Now that the "Pakhtunistan" stunt is dead and buried deep - the death blow delivered to it by none other than the Pashtun on both sides of the border who find no problem criss-crossing it in thousands every day - there is no reason with Kabul to fret and fume over Grossman's statement. Unless Kabul intends justifying cross-border forays by Swati Taliban now enjoying Afghan hospitality into the Pakistan territory. But that would be a bad bargain; for peace to return to the region it is necessary that Kabul should respect the common border with Pakistan and its other neighbours. In fact, the Afghan government would be raising heckles about the Grossman comment at the cost of keeping the common border insecure and problematic to cross over - a condition all the more critical for a landlocked country. The historical fact is even when Kabul opposed UN membership for Pakistan and never stopped patronising the Pakhtunistan stunt Pakistan took it in stride and maintained brotherly relations with it. It's our hope that as it emerges from the long spell of chaos and anarchy, Afghanistan is stable, confident and at peace with itself and its neighbours. Following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, a relatively democratic Baghdad too is at peace with its neighbours.