No need to redraw the line

From time to time, the top Afghan leadership disputes the status of the 2,400-kilometre Durand Line as the permanent frontier separating Pakistan and Afghanistan. Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai has vowed that his people will never accept the Durand Line. This should, on no account, surprise anyone. Some time back, in an interview with the BBC, Karzai had declared that the “Durand Line is a blow which no Afghan can ever forget”.

Pakistan, on the other hand, has consistently maintained that the Durand Line constitutes the permanent international border between the two countries. It’s a past and closed transaction: any attempt to redraw it is out of the question.

In the wake of the closure of the Pak-Afghan border on February 16, Karzai took to social media to denounce the Durand Line. Though initially shut down for an indefinite period in the aftermath of the surge in terrorism in Pakistan, the border was re-opened for two days on March 7.

The status of the Durand Line and the closure of the Pak-Afghan border –though closely related – are different issues. One may, on humanitarian or commercial grounds, question Pakistan’s decision to shut down the border with Afghanistan for security reasons, without calling into dispute the status of the Durand Line. However, if one, like Karzai, starts with the premise that the Pak-Afghan frontier needs to be redrawn, the logical conclusion will be that the movement of people as well as the flow of traffic between the two countries should be free.

The Durand Line, drawn in 1893 and endorsed in 1919 and 1921 by the Anglo-Afghan treaties, sowed the seeds of acrimony between Pakistan and its north-western neighbour years before the former was even born. It is not surprising then that Afghanistan was the only state that opposed the admission of Pakistan to the UN.

Although the opposition was subsequently withdrawn, the Afghan position on the status of the Durand Line persists. The Afghans claim that certain areas located in the west and north-west of Pakistan, bordering Afghanistan, belong to them. The claim is based on the fact that these territories formed part of the short-lived empire of Ahmad Shah Durrani (1747-73) and were later annexed by the British.

The claim was first made in the last years of the British rule in India. In 1944, the Afghan government sought an assurance from the British that in case India was granted freedom, the inhabitants of those annexed areas would be given the choice of becoming independent or reuniting with Afghanistan – ‘the motherland,’ as they would call it. The assurance was not acted upon.

The Afghan request was renewed after India’s partition plan was unveiled in June 1947. The English government turned down the petition on legal as well as historical grounds. Legally, the British replied, the territories claimed by Afghanistan were irrevocably a part of India, as recognised by the Anglo-Afghan treaties. Historically, they held that if Afghan reasoning was to be accepted, then the whole of Afghanistan should be considered part of India.

The partition plan included a referendum in the then North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to determine whether it would opt for India or Pakistan. The Indian National Congress, however, demanded that NWFP should also be given the choice of becoming independent. The partition plan only gave such a choice to the princely states and hence the demand made by the Congress was dismissed.

After the establishment of Pakistan, Afghanistan championed the cause of independence for the Pakhtuns and put forth the idea of the state of Pakhtunistan comprising territories in the NWFP (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) and Balochistan. However, the demand for Pakhtunistan has never found favour among the Pakhtuns.    

The re-demarcation of the border with Pakistan – redrawing the Durand Line – is nothing but wishful thinking on the part of the Afghan leadership and has no legal or historical basis. It’s the issue of cross-border terrorism that currently occupies the centre stage in Pak-Afghan relations. Each country accuses the other of harbouring terrorists and vehemently denies playing such a role itself. If an incident of terrorism takes place in Afghanistan, the finger is immediately pointed at Pakistan. In most of the recent bomb blasts in Pakistan, militants who had sanctuaries in Afghanistan were allegedly involved. For Pakistan, that was sufficient reason to close down the border with Afghanistan.

Since the 1990s, Pakistan has looked to Afghanistan for strategic assets. Initially, Islamabad pinned its hopes on Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. But when he turned out to be an inefficient warlord, Pakistan’s establishment propped up the student militia Taliban and facilitated their rise to power in 1996. Five years down the road, Pakistan was instrumental in the ouster of the same Taliban regime.

The end of the Taliban regime and the massive presence of Nato troops in Afghanistan did not bring stability to the country. Both Washington and Kabul have, all along, laid full responsibility for the continuing instability in Afghanistan at the door of Islamabad. Pakistan, it is alleged, provides sanctuaries, equipment and tactical support to the Afghan Taliban.

Islamabad’s position is that it no longer distinguishes between the good and bad militants and the current military operation has targeted all terrorists without discrimination. Not only that, Pakistan accuses the Afghan government of supporting the Pakistani Taliban through its acts of omission and commission. Following the recent acts of terrorism in Pakistan, surgical strikes were launched at alleged militant hideouts in Afghanistan.

During Afghan President Ashraf Ghani’s visit to Pakistan after his election in 2014, the two countries agreed not to allow their territories to be used for cross-border terrorism. Kabul also assured Islamabad of action against Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) sanctuaries inside Afghanistan. For Kabul to fulfil its promise, it needed to be sure that the military operation in North Waziristan was against all militant outfits, including the Haqqanis and their affiliates, who are a thorn in the side of Kabul.

The closure of the Pak-Afghan border has economic repercussions as well. Afghanistan being a land-locked country has remained dependent on Pakistan for its overseas trade. The access was provided to it first through the 1965 Afghan Transit Trade Agreement and currently through the Afghanistan-Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement (APTTA), which is in force since 2010.

The problem, apart from cross-border terrorism, is that transit trade is a conduit for smuggling. This is because import tariffs in Afghanistan are much lower – since there’s no domestic industry worth mentioning to protect – than in Pakistan. Smuggling is a drag on public revenue: it also hits hard on Pakistan’s domestic industry. The implementation of APTTA has remained a source of friction between the two countries, since Afghanistan wants less regulation of the transit trade than Pakistan deems necessary.

The closure of the Pak-Afghan border means that the trucks carrying Afghan exports or imports are not allowed to enter or leave Pakistan, which will adversely affect both consumers and traders in Afghanistan. This will also force the Afghans to rely more on Iran as a transit route. From Pakistan’s perspective, security overrides any other consideration.

Both Pakistan and Afghanistan have stakes in each other’s security – not to speak of the dependence of Afghanistan on Pakistan for foreign trade. It is high time each side addressed the other side’s concerns.

The writer is a freelance countributor.

Email: hussainhzaidi@gmail.com