Durand Line

The Durand Line (; ; ), also known as the Afghanistan–Pakistan border, is a international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan in South Asia. The western end runs to the border with Iran and the eastern end to the border with China.

The Durand Line was established in 1893 as the international border between the Emirate of Afghanistan and the British Indian Empire by Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat of the Indian Civil Service, and Abdur Rahman Khan, the Emir of Afghanistan, to fix the limit of their respective spheres of influence and improve diplomatic relations and trade. Britain considered Afghanistan to be an independent state at the time, although they controlled its foreign affairs and diplomatic relations.

The single-page Agreement, dated 12 November 1893, contains seven short articles, including a commitment not to exercise interference beyond the Durand Line. A joint British-Afghan demarcation survey took place starting from 1894, covering some of the border.An adjustment to the demarcation was made at Arundu in the early 1930s: Established towards the end of the British–Russian "Great Game" rivalry, the resulting line established Afghanistan as a buffer zone between British and Russian interests in the region. The line, as slightly modified by the Anglo-Afghan Treaty of 1919, was inherited by Pakistan in 1947, following its independence.

The Durand line cuts through to demarcate Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and the contested region of Gilgit-Baltistan of northern and western Pakistan from the northeastern and southern provinces of Afghanistan. From a geopolitical and geostrategic perspective, it has been described as one of the most dangerous borders in the world.

Although the Durand Line is internationally recognized as the western border of Pakistan, it remains unrecognized in Afghanistan. Sardar Mohammed Daoud Khan, former prime minister and president of Afghanistan, vigorously opposed the border and launched a propaganda war. However, Bhutto made a proposal in August 1976 that if Bhutto pardons the leaders of the National Awami Party then Daoud Khan must simultaneously announce that Afghanistan has no territorial claims on Pakistan and is prepared to recognise the Durand Line. Bhutto, however, also disclosed to American diplomats that he feared that the Afghans may go back on their word. Following the second round of talks, Daoud publicly announced his willingness to recognise the border as part of the Afghan concession, however, the following negotiations were stalled after Bhutto was overthrown a year later and following the overthrow of Daoud Khan in 1978, the new PDPA government back to the hardline stance on the Durand Line claiming that Afghanistan's borders extended up until the Indus River. In 2017, amid cross-border tensions, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai said that Afghanistan will "never recognise" the Durand Line as the border between the two countries.

Historical background

The area through which the Durand Line runs has been inhabited by the indigenous Pashtuns since ancient times, at least since 500 BC. The Greek historian Herodotus mentioned a people called '' Pactyans'' living in and around Arachosia as early as the 1st millennium BC. The Baloch tribes inhabit the southern end of the line, which runs in the Balochistan region that separates the ethnic Baloch people.

Arab Muslims conquered the area in the 7th century and introduced Islam to the Pashtuns. It is believed that some of the early Arabs also settled among the Pashtuns in the Sulaiman Mountains. These Pashtuns were historically known as "Afghans" and are believed to be mentioned by that name in Arabic chronicles as early as the 10th century. The Pashtun area (known today as the " Pashtunistan" region) fell within the Ghaznavid Empire in the 10th century followed by the Ghurids, Timurids, Mughals, Hotakis, by the Durranis, and thereafter the Sikhs.

In 1839, during the First Anglo-Afghan War, British-led Indian forces invaded Afghanistan and initiated a war with the Afghan rulers. Two years later, in 1842, the British were defeated and the war ended. The British again invaded Afghanistan in 1878, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War. The British decided to accept a new Amir who was a British opponent – Abdur Rahman Khan and the Treaty of Gandamak was signed in 1880. Afghanistan ceded control of various frontier areas to India. The British failed in their objective to maintain a British resident in Kabul but having attained their other geopolitical objectives, the British withdrew.

In 1893, Mortimer Durand was dispatched to Kabul by the Government of India to sign an agreement with Amir Abdur Rahman Khan for fixing the limits of their respective spheres of influence as well as improving diplomatic relations and trade. On 12 November 1893, the Durand Line Agreement was reached. The two parties later camped at Parachinar, a small town near Khost in Afghanistan, which is now part of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan, to delineate the frontier.

From the British-Indian side, the camp was attended by Mortimer Durand and Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum, Political Agent Khyber Agency representing the Viceroy of India and Governor General of India. The Afghan side was represented by Sahibzada Abdul Latif and a former governor of Khost Province in Afghanistan, Sardar Shireendil Khan, representing Amir Abdur Rahman Khan. The original 1893 Durand Line Agreement was written in English, with translated copies in Dari.

The resulting agreement or treaty led to the creation of a new province called the North-West Frontier Province, now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a province of Pakistan which includes FATA and the Frontier Regions. It also led to Afghanistan receiving Nuristan and Wakhan.

Demarcation surveys on the Durand Line

The initial and primary demarcation, a joint Indo-Afghan survey and mapping effort, covered and took place from 1894 to 1896. Detailed topographic maps locating hundreds of boundary demarcation pillars were soon published and are available in the Survey of India.

The complete 20-page text of these detailed joint Indo-Afghan demarcation surveys is available in several sources.

In 1896, the long stretch from the Kabul River to China, including the Wakhan Corridor, was declared demarcated by virtue of its continuous, distinct watershed ridgeline, leaving only the section near the Khyber Pass to be finally demarcated in the treaty of 22 November 1921, signed by Mahmud Tarzi, "Chief of the Afghan Government for the conclusion of the treaty" and " Henry R. C. Dobbs, Envoy Extraordinary and Chief of the British Mission to Kabul."
A very short adjustment to the demarcation was made at Arundu (Arnawai) in 1933–34.

Cultural impact of the Durand Line

Shortly after demarcation of the Durand Line, the British began connecting the region on their side of the Durand Line to the North Western State Railway. Meanwhile, Abdur Rahman Khan conquered the Nuristanis and made them Muslims. Concurrently, Afridi tribesmen began rising up in arms against the British, creating a zone of instability between Peshawar and the Durand Line. Further, frequent skirmishes and wars between the Afghanistan and India starting in the 1870s made travel between Peshawar and Jalalabad almost impossible. As a result, travel across the boundary was almost entirely halted. Further, the British recruited tens of thousands of local Pashtuns into the Indian Army and stationed them throughout India and southeast Asia. Exposure to India, combined with the ease of travel eastwards into Punjab and the difficulty of travel towards Afghanistan, led many Pashtuns to orient themselves towards the heartlands of British India and away from Kabul. By the time of Indian independence, political opinion was divided into those who supported a homeland for Muslim Indians in the shape of Pakistan, those who supported reunification with Afghanistan, and those who believed that a united India would be a better option.

British Raj declares war on Afghanistan

The Durand Line triggered a long-running controversy between the governments of Afghanistan and British India, especially after the outbreak of the Third Anglo-Afghan War when Afghanistan's capital (Kabul) and its eastern city of Jalalabad were bombed by the No. 31 and No. 114 Squadrons of the British Royal Air Force in May 1919. Afghan rulers reaffirmed in the 1919, 1921, and 1930 treaties to accept the Indo-Afghan frontier.End of Imaginary Durrand Line: North Pakistan belongs to Afghanistan
by Wahid Momand

Territorial dispute between Afghanistan and British India

Pakistan inherited the 1893 agreement and the subsequent 1919 Treaty of Rawalpindi after the partition from the British India in 1947. There has never been a formal agreement or ratification between Islamabad and Kabul. Pakistan believes, and international convention under uti possidetis juris supports, the position that it should not require an agreement to set the boundary; courts in several countries around the world and the Vienna Convention have universally upheld via ''uti possidetis juris'' that binding bilateral agreements are "passed down" to successor states.Over 90% of present African nations signed both the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) charter and the 1964 Cairo Declaration, both of which "proclaimed the acceptance of colonial borders as the borders between independent states...through the legal principle of uti possidetis." Thus, a unilateral declaration by one party has no effect; boundary changes must be made bilaterally.

At the time of independence, the indigenous Pashtun people living on the border with Afghanistan were given only the choice of becoming a part either of India or Pakistan. Further, by the time of the Indian independence movement, prominent Pashtun nationalists such as Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his Khudai Khidmatgar movement advocated a united India, and not a united Afghanistan – highlighting the extent to which infrastructure and instability together began to erode Pashtun self-identification with Afghanistan. By the time of independence, popular opinion amongst Pashtuns was split amongst the majority who wished to join the newly formed state of Pakistan, and the minority who wished to become a part of the Dominion of India. When the idea of a united India failed, Ghaffar Khan pledged allegiance to Pakistan and started campaigning for the autonomy of Pakistan's Pashtuns.

On 26 July 1949, when Afghan–Pakistan relations were rapidly deteriorating, a loya jirga was held in Afghanistan after a military aircraft from the Pakistan Air Force bombed a village on the Afghan side of the Durand Line in response to cross-border fire from the Afghan side. In response, the Afghan government declared that it recognised "neither the imaginary Durand nor any similar line" and that all previous Durand Line agreements were void. They also announced that the Durand ethnic division line had been imposed on them under coercion/duress and was a diktat. This had no tangible effect as there has never been a move in the United Nations to enforce such a declaration due to both nations being constantly busy in wars with their other neighbours (See '' Indo-Pakistani wars and Civil war in Afghanistan''). In 1950 the House of Commons of the United Kingdom held its view on the Afghan-Pakistan dispute over the Durand Line by stating:

At the 1956 SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization) Ministerial Council Meeting held at Karachi, capital of Pakistan at the time, it was stated:

In June 1976, a summit was held between the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan which both sides made concessions, Pakistan publicly recognising the existence of the Pashtunistan question which was a key part of Afghan foreign policy for decades, and the Afghans were willing to hold high-level bilateral talks without bringing up the subject regarding the fate of Wali Khan and his banned National Awami Party in Pakistan which the Pakistanis considered as "internal matters".AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: THE POLITICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DURAND LINE
(''www.cia.gov'')

Geography

The border is south of the Hindu Kush, while its eastern end by China is in the Karakoram range. These are regions of extreme high elevation, hence much of the Durand Line is bounded by mountains. The Spīn Ghar (''White Mountains'') range is roughly in the middle of the Line. The western part of the Line meanwhile is lower and sparse, consisting of the Registan Desert.

The highest peak, Noshaq, is located along the border between two countries, while some of the highest peaks in the world, including K2, are a short distance to the east of the Line's end on the Pakistani side.

The Kunar River, Kabul River, Kurram River and Gomal River all cross the Durand Line. At the very western end of the line is the Godzareh Depression.

Border regions

The border is long. Twelve Afghan provinces are located along the border: Nimroz, Helmand, Kandahar, Zabul, Paktika, Khost, Paktia, Logar, Nangarhar, Kunar, Nuristan and Badakhshan.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, and the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan share a border with the Durand Line.

Border crossings and economy

The two countries are major trade partners, and therefore the various border crossings are economically important for the wider region, particularly the Torkham and Khyber Pass that is also the main land connection between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.

Contemporary era

During Operation Cyclone, the ISI, with support and funding from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States, recruited mujahideen militant groups on the Pakistani side of the Durand line to cross into Afghanistan's territory for missions to topple the Soviet-backed Afghan government. Afghanistan KHAD was one of two secret service agencies believed to have been conducting bombings in parts of the North West Frontier (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) 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 the 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, despite Article 2 of the Durand Line Agreement which states "The Government of India will at no time exercise interference in the territories lying beyond this line on the side of Afghanistan", attempted to create a state friendly to Pakistan in Afghanistan prior to Taliban control according to US Special Envoy on Afghanistan Peter Tomsen. 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 delegation of about 95 Taliban visited Pakistan.The Unholy Durand Line, Buffering the Buffer
by Dr. G. Rauf Roashan. 11 August 2001. 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 Afghan President Hamid Karzai also began resisting the Durand Line, and today the present Government of Afghanistan does not recognize Durand Line as its international border. No Afghan government has recognized the Durand Line as its border since 1947.

The Afghan Geodesy and Cartography Head Office

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