Afghanistan–Pakistan relations

Afghanistan–Pakistan relations refer to the bilateral ties between Afghanistan and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. In August 1947, the partition of British India led to the emergence of Pakistan along Afghanistan's eastern frontier, and the two countries have since had a strained relationship; Afghanistan was the sole country to vote against Pakistan's admission into the United Nations following the latter's independence. Various Afghan government officials and Afghan nationalists have made irredentist claims to large swathes of Pakistan's territory in modern-day Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Pakistani Balochistan, which complete the traditional homeland of "Pashtunistan" for the Pashtun people. Afghan territorial claims over Pashtun-majority areas that are in Pakistan were coupled with discontent over the permanency of the Durand Line, for which Afghanistan demanded a renegotiation, with the aim of having it shifted eastward to the Indus River. Territorial disputes and conflicting claims prevented the normalization of bilateral ties between the two countries throughout the mid-20th century. Further Afghanistan–Pakistan tensions have arisen concerning a variety of issues, including the Afghanistan conflict and Afghan refugees in Pakistan, water-sharing rights, and a continuously warming relationship between Afghanistan and India.

Shortly after Pakistani independence, Afghanistan materially supported the failed armed secessionist movement headed by Mirzali Khan against Pakistan. Afghanistan's immediate support of secessionist movements within Pakistan prevented normalised ties from emerging between the two states.

In 1952 the government of Afghanistan published a tract in which it laid claim not only to Pashtun territory within Pakistan, but also to the Pakistani province of Balochistan. Diplomatic relations were cut off between 1961 and 1963 after Afghanistan supported more armed separatists in Pakistan, leading to skirmishes between the two states earlier in 1960, and Pakistan's subsequent closure of the port of Karachi to Afghan transit trade. Mohammed Daoud Khan became President of Afghanistan in 1973, Afghanistan—with Soviet support—again pursued a policy of arming Pashtun separatists within Pakistan.

In 2017, the Pakistani military have accused Afghanistan of sheltering various terrorist groups which launch attacks into Pakistan, while Afghan authorities have blamed Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, for funding warlords and the Taliban, and for basing terrorist camps within Pakistani territory to target Afghanistan. There is considerable anti-Pakistan sentiment in Afghanistan, while negative sentiment towards the Afghan refugees is widespread in Pakistan, even in Pashtun-dominated regions.

However, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai (in office 2004–2014) has described Pakistan and Afghanistan as "inseparable brothers" while also alleging that Pakistan uses terrorism against Afghanistan, which is due to the historical, religious, and ethnolinguistic connections between the Pashtun people and other ethnic groups of both countries, as well as to trade and other ties. Each of the two countries features amongst the other's largest trading partners, and Pakistan serves as a major conduit for transit trade involving landlocked Afghanistan. Both countries are member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, Economic Cooperation Organization and South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.

Historical context

Southern and eastern Afghanistan is predominately Pashto-speaking, 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 as (Pathans in Pakistan and India) and have 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 contained 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 the British Indian Empire.

Shortly after the demarcation of the Durand Line, the British began connecting the region on its side of Durand line to the vast and expansive Indian railway network. Concurrently, the Afridi tribesmen began to rise up in arms against the British, creating a zone of instability between Peshawar and the Durand Line. As a result, travel across the boundary was almost entirely halted, and the Pashtun tribes living under the British rule began to orient themselves eastward in the direction of the Indian railways. By the time of the Indian independence movement, prominent Pashtun nationalists such as Abdul Ghaffar Khan advocated unity with the nearly formed Dominion of India, and not a united Afghanistan – highlighting the extent to which infrastructure and instability began to erode the Pashtun self-identification with Afghanistan. By the time of the Pakistan independence movement, popular opinion among Pashtuns was in support of joining the Dominion of Pakistan.

Pakistan inherited the Durand Line agreement after its independence in 1947 but there has never been a formal agreement or ratification between Islamabad and Kabul. The Afghan government has not formally accepted the 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 to both the countries. The Afghan government worried that if it ever ratified the agreement, it would've permanently divided the 50 million Pashtuns and thus create a backlash in Afghanistan. Pakistan felt that the border issue had been resolved before its birth in 1947. This unmanagable border has always served as the main trade route between Afghanistan and the South Asia, especially for supplies into Afghanistan.

Shortly after Pakistan gained independence in 1947, Afghanistan crafted a two-fold strategy to destabilize the frontier regions of Pakistan, in an attempt to take advantage of Pakistan's post-independence instability. Firstly, it strongly aligned itself with Pakistan's rival, India, and also the USSR. Secondly, it politically and financially backed secessionist politicians in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the 1960s. In January 1950, the Afghan king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, had an anti-Pakistan speech which was condemned by Pakistan's Liaquat Ali Khan. A serious incident took place on September 30, 1950, when Pakistan claimed Afghan troops had crossed into their territory near the Bogra Pass as a low-scale invasion. The Afghan government denied involvement, saying they were pro-Pashtunistan tribesmen. Zahir Shah mentioned in a 1952 speech the friendly feelings towards Pakistan, but that the Pashtunistan issue cannot be ignored. The 1954 military pact between Pakistan and the United States concerned Afghanistan and India, and it brought Afghanistan closer to the Soviet Union but whilst maintaining non-alignment.

The Afghan government denounced the merger of West Pakistan provinces, and on March 30, 1955, Afghan demonstrators attacked the Pakistani embassy and consulates in Kabul, Kandahar and Jalalabad. Pakistan retaliated by closing the border, an economic blockage. Diplomatic relations were restored in September. Again due to the Pashtunistan issue, the two countries accused each other of border mispractices in 1961. In August, the consulates in both countries closed and relations were broken in September 1961. The situation was not defused until about 1965.

Afghanistan's policies placed a severe strain upon Pakistan–Afghan relations in the 1960s, up until the 1970s, when the Pashtunistan movement largely subsided as the population came to identify with Pakistan; although, resentment against the Punjabi elite continued to develop. The Pashtun assimilation into the Pakistani state followed years of rising Pashtun influence in Pakistani politics and the nation's bureaucracy, culminating in Ayub Khan, Yahya Khan, Ishaq Khan – all Pashtuns, attaining leadership of Pakistan. The largest nationalist party of the time, the Awami National Party (ANP), dropped its secessionist agenda and embraced the Pakistani state, leaving only a small Pakhtunkhwa Millat Party to champion the cause of independence in relation to both Pakistan and Afghanistan. Despite the weaknesses of the early secessionist movement, this period in history continues to negatively influence Pakistani-Afghan relations in the 21st century, in addition to the province's politics.

Confederation proposal

In order to solve the disputes, mainly centered around the borders issue with the Durand line, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, a veteran diplomat who served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan (2002–2007), says that "at one time serious efforts were made at government level for a Pak-Afghan Confederation", precising that these initiatives were taken during the time of President Mohammed Daoud Khan, generally considered to be anti-Pakistan for his galvanization of the Pashtunistan issue. Aslam Khattak, a politician who also served as an ambassador to Afghanistan, talked about this process in his book ''A Pathan Odyssey'', and says that Prime Minister Malik Firoz Khan Noon and President Iskandar Mirza both agreed with the plans, the former also agreeing to take King Zahir Shah "as the constitutional Head of State", proclaiming that "after all, for some time after independence, we had a Christian Queen (Elizabeth II). Now, we would have a Muslim man!’." As per Kasuri, the United States supported the idea as well. He blames the failure of the project to the assassination of Daud Khan and the advent, in 1978, of the pro-Soviet PDPA party and Nur Muhammad Taraki.

Afghan scholar Hafizullah Emadi says that "the initial blueprint suggested that both sides would maintain their internal autonomy, but in the matter of defense, foreign policy, foreign trade and communication, there would be a central government. The prime minister would be by rotation." He also explains the failure of the proposition : Iskandar Mirza was replaced by General Ayub Khan, after a coup d'état in 1958, an ethnic Pashtun who "regarded himself as the leader of the Pashtuns in Pakistan, and believed that the Pashtuns in Afghanistan should join Pakistan under his leadership" instead of a confederation. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto rejected the idea because "an economically underdeveloped Afghanistan would not benefit Pakistan." In his diaries, in an observation dated to 9 January 1967, Ayub Khan noted that "it is people from the Punjab like Feroz Khan Noon and Amjad Ali who keep on emphasizing to me the need to make up with Afghanistan."

President Zia-ul-Haq too was for such confederation. " Charles Wilson recalled a map that Zia had also shown to him in which overlay indicated the goal of a confederation embracing first Pakistan and Afghanistan and eventually Central Asia and Kashmir. Zia further explained about the Pakistan-Afghanistan confederation in which Pakistanis and Afghans could travel freely back and forth without passports." General Akhtar Abdur Rahman, considered Zia's right-hand man and more importantly the DG-ISI (1979–1987), himself a Pashtun, "also shared Zia’s vision of a post-Soviet "Islamic Confederation" composed of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir and even the states of Soviet Central Asia."

Even more than a confederation, recently declassified CIA documents point out that, in 1954, the Afghan government approached the US in order to have a merger with Pakistan, being threatened by the Soviet Union's economic envelopment. Pakistan's then Prime Minister Mohammad Ali Bogra was skeptical of a total merger, but the idea of a confederation in itself, on the other hand, was already floating around, as "the CIA report hinted that there had been some talk in Afghan and Pakistani official circles of some sort of confederation."

Some analysts have noted that present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan have already been amalgamated into a single geographical unit during the Durrani Empire (1747–1826). For instance, scholar Muhammad Shamsuddin Siddiqi says that " Ahmed Shah's empire with its power base in Kandahar, and later transferred to Kabul, incorporated Kashmir, Punjab, Sind and Baluchistan" and thus "the Durrani empire bears the closest resemblance to Pakistan", while others have noted that "since the Durrani Empire included the present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan, the forces of history, the principle of national self-determination, and the aspiration for the unity of Muslim ''Ummah'' have all come into line", explaining the interconnected geopolitics of both countries, its latest example being the AfPak doctrine, theorized under the Obama administration from 2008 onward, concluding that Afghanistan and Pakistan should be the aim of common security policies considering their similarities.

Contemporary era

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan began deteriorating again in the 1970s when Afghanistan hosted Pashtun-Baluch militants operating against Pakistan under the leadership of National Awami Party led by Abdul Wali Khan and in retaliation Pakistan started supporting Islamist movements against the progressive and Soviet-influenced Afghan government of Mohammed Daoud Khan, and encouraged the Islamists to rise up against the government. The figures included Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Ahmad Shah Massoud-both members of the Jamiat-e Islami students' political society- and the Haqqanis. In April 1978, Afghan President Daoud Khan was assassinated in Kabul during the self-declared Marxist Saur Revolution. This was followed by the execution of deposed Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in April 1979 and the assassination of Afghan leader Nur Muhammad Taraki in September 1979. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, the United States joined Pakistan to counter Soviet influence and advance its own interests in the region. In turn, Afghan, Indian and Soviet intelligence agencies played their role by supporting al-Zulfikar – a Pakistani leftist terrorist group responsible for the March 1981 hijacking of a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane. Al-Zulfiqar was a Pakistani left-wing organisation formed in 1977 by Mir Murtaza Bhutto, son of former Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Its goal was to overthrow the military regime that ousted Bhutto. After March 1981 Al-Zulfiqar claimed no further attacks. The Bhutto family and Pakistani military dictator Zia-ul-Haq shared a common enemy, as Zia was the one supporting attacks against the Afghan government.

During the 1980s, the Durand Line was heavily used by Afghan refugees fleeing the Soviet occupation in Afghanistan, including a large number of Mujahideen insurgent groups who crossed back and forth. Pakistan became a major training ground for roughly 250,000 foreign mujahideen fighters who began crossing into Afghanistan on a daily basis to wage war against the communist Afghanistan and the Soviet forces. The mujahideen included not only locals but also Arabs and others from over 40 different Islamic nations. Many of these foreign fighters married local women and decided to stay in Pakistan, among them were radical Muslims such those of Saudi-led Al-Qaeda and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as well as prisoners from Arab countries. Relations between the two countries remained hostile during the Soviet-Afghan War. Afghan leader Babrak Karmal refused to improve relations with Pakistan due to their refusal to formally recognize the PDPA government.

Following the death of Pakistani President

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