Although the Durand Line is internationally recognized as Pakistan`s western border, it remains largely unknown to Afghanistan. [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan, former prime minister and then president of Afghanistan, vigorously opposed the border and started a propaganda war – but during his visit to Pakistan in August 1976, he softened his tone by recognizing the Durand Line as an international border. [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] In 2017, amid cross-border tensions, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Afghanistan would “never recognize” the Durand Line as an international border between the two countries. [21] After the founding of Pakistan in 1947, Afghanistan demanded that Pashtuns living on the Pakistani side of the Durand Line have the right to self-determination. Not surprisingly, Britain and Pakistan refused. In response, the Afghan government began to ignore the Durand Line and instead claim areas between the line and the Indus. A line of hatred that built a wall between the two brothers. A political boundary is an imaginary line that separates one political entity, such as one country or state, from another. Sometimes these coincide with a natural geographical feature such as a river to form a border or barrier between nations.
Sometimes two countries can argue over where a certain border is drawn. These disputes could arise because of a natural resource that both groups want, as in the case of Sudan and South Sudan, or in order to gain more political power, as in the case of Pakistan and India in the Kashmir region. Use these resources to learn more about political boundaries. With regard to the Shaman question, the Amir withdrew his objection to the new British canton and granted the British governments the rights he had acquired in the waters of the Sirkai Tilerai. On this part of the border, the border is drawn as follows: Abdur Rahman became king in 1880, two years after the end of the Second Afghan War, during which the British took control of several areas that were part of the Afghan kingdom. He was essentially a British puppet. His agreement with Durand defined the limits of his Anglo-Indian “spheres of influence” on the Afghan “border” with India. In 1893, Mortimer Durand was sent to Kabul by the government of British India to sign an agreement with Amir Abdur Rahman Khan to define the limits of their respective spheres of influence and to improve diplomatic and trade relations. On November 12, 1893, the Durand Line Agreement was signed. [3] The two sides then camped in Parachinar, a small town near Khost in Afghanistan that is now part of Pakistan`s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) to demarcate the border. [Citation needed] From the crest of the Khwaja Amran Mountains near Psha Kotal, which remains on British territory, the line will go in a direction that will leave Murgha Chaman and the Sharobo spring in Afghanistan and pass halfway between Fort De New Shaman and the Afghan outpost known locally as Lashkar Dand. The line will then pass halfway between the station and the hill known as Mian Baldak and will meet the Khwaja Amran Range to the south, leaving the Gwasha post on British territory and the Shorawak Road west and south of Gwasha in Afghanistan.
The British government will not intervene less than half a kilometre from the road. The Durand Line, established in 1893 on the Hindu Kush, which crosses the tribal areas between Afghanistan and British India and marks their respective spheres of influence; in modern times, it has marked the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The adoption of this line, named after Sir Mortimer Durand, who prompted ʿAbdor Raḥmān Khān, the Emir of Afghanistan, to accept a border, can be described as a solution to the problem of the Indo-Afghan border for the rest of the British period. After the collapse of the pro-Soviet Afghan government in 1992, Pakistan attempted to create a puppet state in Afghanistan from Taliban control, despite Article 2 of the Durand Line Agreement, which states: “The Indian government will never intervene in areas beyond this line on the side of Afghanistan,” according to the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan. Peter Tomsen. [59] According to a Friday Times article in the summer of 2001, even Taliban leaders questioned the existence of the Durand Line when former Afghan Interior Minister Abdur Razzaq and a delegation of about 95 Taliban visited Pakistan. [60] The Taliban refused to support the Durand Line despite pressure from Islamabad, arguing that there should be no borders between Muslims. When the Taliban government was overthrown in late 2001, Afghan President Hamid Karzai also began to resist the Durand Line,[61] and today the current government of Afghanistan does not recognize the Durand Line as its international border.
Since 1947, no Afghan government has recognized the Durand Line as a border. [62] [63] Pakistan has long had tense and unstable relations with its Afghan neighbor, as the two countries have been at odds since the advent of Pakistan in 1947. Among other important factors, the roots of the Afghan-Pakistani conflict are the product of the disputed legacy of British colonialism in the region. In the 19th century, Afghanistan became the plaything of the so-called “Great Game” between the Russian and British empires. As Russia began to conquer one Central Asian khanate after another, the ever-expanding Tsarist Empire began to draw dangerously close to the Pamirs, the border of British India. To secure control of the strategic Khyber Pass, the British had to send diplomat Sir Mortimer Durand in 1893 to negotiate an agreement to demarcate the border between Afghanistan and British India. The new border, called the Durand Line, divided Pashtun tribal lands into two parts. Half of the Pashtun tribal region became part of British India, and the other half remained as part of Afghanistan. The border has since been viewed with the utmost contempt and resentment by Pashtuns on both sides of the line, which also leads Afghanistan to lose Balochistan province and deprive the country of its historic access to the Arabian Sea. The above-mentioned articles of the Agreement are considered by the Government of India and His Highness the Emir of Afghanistan to be a comprehensive and satisfactory settlement of all major disagreements that have arisen between them over the border. and both the Government of India and His Highness of the Amir undertake to resolve in detail all differences, such as those to be taken into account below by the officers appointed to delimit the border, in a friendly spirit, in order to eliminate for the future as far as possible all causes of doubts and misunderstandings between the two Governments.
This border dispute has its roots in the nineteenth century, when Pakistan was part of India and India was a British colony. .
