Afghanistan-Pakistan Relations - Historical Context

Historical Context

Southern and eastern Afghanistan is predominately a Pashto-speaking region, like the adjacent Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, and northern Balochistan regions in Pakistan. This entire area is inhabited by the indigenous Pashtuns who belong to different Pashtun tribes. The Pashtuns were known historically as ethnic Afghans and lived in this region for thousands of years, since at least the 1st millennium BC.

The Durand Line border was established after the 1893 Durand Line Agreement between Mortimer Durand of colonial British India and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan of Afghanistan for fixing the limit of their respective spheres of influence. The single-page agreement, which contains seven short articles, was signed by Durand and Khan, agreeing not to exercise political interference beyond the frontier line between Afghanistan and what was then colonial British India. Pakistan inherited this agreement after its partition from India in 1947 but there has never been a formal agreement or ratification between Islamabad and Kabul.

The agreement did not put a restriction on the free movement of the native Pashtun people who are used to travelling freely between different places since ancient times, especially during season changes. Due to this and other reasons, the Afghan government has decided not to formally accept the poorly-marked Durand Line as the international border between the two states, claiming that the Durand Line Agreement has been void in the past. This complicated issue is very sensitive in both countries. The Afghan government worries that if it ever ratifies the agreement, it will permanently divide the 50 million Pashtuns and thus create a backlash in Afghanistan. Pakistan feels that the border issue had been resolved before its birth in 1947, and it too fears a revolt from the warring tribes which could eventually bring the state down as it was done to the Persian Empire by the Hotaki dynasty in 1722 or when Ahmad Shah Durrani unified the Pashtuns later to topple the Mughal Empire of India. This unmanagable border has always served as the main trade route between Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent, especially for supplies into Afghanistan.