Durand Line - Contemporary Era

Contemporary Era

Further information: Civil war in Afghanistan, Af-Pak, and CIA activities in Afghanistan

Pakistan's largest intelligence agency (the ISI), which began with the birth of the nation, has been heavily involved in the affairs of Afghanistan since the late 1970s. During Operation Cyclone, the ISI with full support/funding from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the White House in the United States recruited huge numbers of mujahideen militant groups on the Pakistani side of the Durand line to cross into Afghanistan's territory for missions to destroy the Soviet-backed Afghan government. Afghanistan KHAD was one of two secret service agencies believed to have been conducting bombings in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (NWFP) during the early 1980s. U.S State Department blamed WAD (a KGB created Afghan secret intelligence agency) for terrorist bombings in Pakistan's cities in 1987 and 1988. It is also believed that Afghanistan's PDPA government supported leftist Al-Zulfiqar organization of Pakistan, the group accused of the 1981 hijacking of a Pakistan International Airlines plane from Karachi to Kabul.

After the collapse of the pro-Soviet Afghan government in 1992, Pakistan being well aware of its Durand Line Agreement violation (specifically article 2 where it mentions "The Government of India (Pakistan) will at no time exercise interference in the territories lying beyond this line on the side of Afghanistan") created a puppet state in Afghanistan run by the Taliban. According to a summer 2001 report in The Friday Times, even the Taliban leaders challenged the very existence of the Durand Line when former Afghan Interior Minister Abdur Razzaq and a delegate of about 95 Taliban visited Pakistan. The Taliban refused to endorse the Durand Line despite pressure from Islamabad, arguing that there shall be no borders among Muslims. When the Taliban government was removed in late 2001, the new Afghan President Hamid Karzai also began resisting the Durand Line.

"A line of hatred that raised a wall between the two brothers." —Hamid Karzai

Afghan Geodesy and Cartography Head Office (AGCHO) depicts the line on their maps as a de facto border, including naming the "Durand Line 2310 km (1893)" as an "International Boundary Line" on their home page. However, a map in an article from the "General Secretary of The Government of Balochistan in Exile" extends the border of Afghanistan to the Indus River. The Pashtun dominated Government of Afghanistan not only refuses to recognize the Durand Line as the international border between the two countries, it claims that the Pashtun territories of Pakistan rightly belong to Afghanistan. Many in Afghanistan as well as some Pakistani politicians find the existence of the international boundary splitting ethnic Pashtun areas to be at least objectionable if not abhorrent. Some argue that the 1893 treaty expired in 1993, after 100 years elapsed, and should be treated similar to the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory. However, neither the relatively short Durand Line Agreement itself nor the much longer joint boundary demarcation documents that followed in 1894-6 make any mention of a time limit suggesting the treaty should be treated similar to the Curzon Line and Mexican Cession. In 2004, spokespersons of U.S. State Department's Office of the Geographer and Global Issues and British Foreign and Commonwealth Office also pointed out that the Durand Line Agreement has no mention of an expiration date.

Recurrent claims that (the) Durand Treaty expired in 1993 are unfounded. Cartographic depictions of boundary conflict with each other, but Treaty depictions are clear. —A spokesperson for U.S. State Department's Office of the Geographer and Global Issues

Because the Durand Line divides the Pashtun and Baloch people, it continues to be a source of tension between the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan. In August 2007, Pakistani politician and the leader of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, Fazal-ur-Rehman, urged Afghanistan to recognise the Durand Line. Press statements from 2005 to 2007 by former Pakistani President Musharraf calling for the building of a fence on the Durand Line have been met with resistance from numerous political parties within both countries. Pashtun politicians in both countries strenuously object to even the existence of the Durand Line border. In 2006 Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned that "Iran and Pakistan and others are not fooling anyone."

"If they don’t stop, the consequences will be ... that the region will suffer with us equally. In the past we have suffered alone; this time everybody will suffer with us.... Any effort to divide Afghanistan ethnically or weaken it will create the same thing in the neighboring countries. All the countries in the neighborhood have the same ethnic groups that we have, so they should know that it is a different ball game this time." —Hamid Karzai, February 17, 2006