The Durand Line and Afghanistan – Pakistan

Since the formation of Pakistan as a successor state to the Government of
India, Afghanistan has wanted to “reclaim” Pakistani territory up to the east
of Indus River, what’s described in geographical terms as cis-Indus. To be
sure, Afghanistan’s state practice has been uneven with Kabul accepting the
border at crucial points in Pakistan-Afghanistan history. But the irredentism

has continued to lurk across decades, reminding one of T.S. Eliot’s lines from
Burnt Norton: “What might have been is an abstraction/ Remaining a
perpetual possibility/ Only in a world of speculation.”

I quote these lines not merely for embellishment but to indicate, as
vehemently as one must do, that the existing international border is
internationally recognised and undisputed. The Afghan idea of a border
stretching to the western banks of the Indus River (and even parts of
Balochistan) is an unfortunate abstraction that has done much harm, not only
to Afghanistan itself but also Pakistan-Afghanistan relations.

The point of mentioning this history is to debunk Kabul’s claims and to point
to the need for Pakistan to reformulate its Afghanistan policy. As should be
obvious, the wheel has come full circle on the policy to get Kabul to accept the
border, refrain from interfering in Pakistan’s western and northwestern
districts through overt and covert actions and to keep the border soft to help
the tribes on both sides through positive engagement. That, unfortunately,
has not happened and Pakistan has had to take measures to curb movement
because of continued Afghan mischief.

History and myth, especially religious mythology, can wreak much havoc on
the peoples. The settler-colonialism of Zionists is an ongoing tragedy with its
roots in a mythological past inflaming the present and singeing constructive
future possibilities.

If pre-nation state histories were to determine present-day realities, there
would be no Afghanistan pre-Ahmad Shah Abdali (Durrani) because this was
an area contested among whoever ruled India, Central Asia and Iran. History
did not begin in 1747. But even if we were to consider for the sake of our
present argument that it did, the Durrani dynasty was gone in what 19th
century lawyer and historian William Fraser-Tytler called “five and forty
years.”

“[T]he Afghan people as a whole [had not] acquired that stability of purpose
which would have enabled them to consolidate control of the vast dominions
acquired by Ahmad Shah, or to found an enduring dynasty to replace the
dying empire of the Moguls. Such a task was too great for a people who were
still largely tribal, resembling in their composition rather the clans of the
highlands of Scotland in ancient days…”

Fraser-Tytler knew. He was Scottish! But let’s get to an overview of the
situation in the run-up to the Indian Subcontinent’s Partition.

With the Durrani dynasty losing out to the Barakzais (Muhammadzais) and
its territorial reach reduced, there was much strife. Nor did the fall of the
Durrani dynasty in 1818 bring about calm. It was not until 1826 that Dost
Muhammad, the youngest of Painda Khan’s sons, finally prevailed over his
brothers and lay claim to what remained of the Durrani empire. There was
little left.

Writes Fraser-Tytler: “During the years of anarchy and of internecine strife,
which had continued for upwards of a quarter of a century, one province after
another had broken away from the central authority.” Sindh, Balochistan, the
entire southern country from the Persian border to Ghazni and Balkh in the
north had seceded.

Into this mix came a bigger problem: the Sikhs. In the later years of his rule,
Ahmad Shah Durrani had resigned control of central Punjab to the Sikh
Federation. During his grandson Zaman Shah’s reign the Sikhs killed the
Afghan representative. The incident forced Zaman Shah to personally return
to Punjab to re-establish his authority. He is also said to have tinkered with
the idea of moving his seat of power from Kabul to Lahore. That didn’t
happen because his tribal chieftains didn’t want to leave Kabul. He then chose
to have a Sikh governor in Lahore rather than an Afghan plenipotentiary. Enters Ranjit Singh.

The canny Singh entrenched himself and began to take advantage of the
growing weakness of the Durrani dynasty. By 1818, “he held all the northern
Punjab between the Indus and the Sutlej.” Between 1820 and 1823 he chipped away at the Afghan possession west of Attock in the Battles of Attock and Nowshera. The Nowshera battle brought all of Peshawar valley under the Sikh rule. “While retaining his rights as suzerain of the country to the east of the Khyber Pass, [Ranjit Singh] entrusted the governorship of Peshawar to Sultan Muhammad Khan on the payment of a small tribute.”

By the time of the Battle of Jamrud between the forces of Ranjit Singh and
Dost Mohammad in 1837, Dost, facing internal strife in his territories within
Afghanistan, wanted British mediation between Afghanistan and the Sikh
kingdom. This is why, despite having defeated the Sikh force, including killing
Hari Singh Nalwa, the famous Sikh general, he did not venture towards
Peshawar. The letter to Lord Auckland, who had recently arrived in India,
“opened the door to British intervention in Central Asia.”

Dost Mohammad corresponded frequently with the British (the Library of
Congress has multiple volumes on Dost Mohammad Khan’s life) and sought
their intervention. He also signed two agreements with the British in March
1855 and January 1857, respectively. The texts of these agreements clearly
indicate and confirm his acceptance of the existing frontiers between
Afghanistan and British India. By then the Afghan frontier’s eastern outreach
was Ali Masjid Fort at the entrance to Khyber Pass. The Frontier Corps now
maintains a company-strength in the fort.

It is important to mention these agreements because they preceded the
Durand Treaty of 1893 and clearly show that Afghan rule did not extend to
the Indus River much before the 1893 Treaty was signed. If anything, there’s
no indication after 1849 of an Afghan army setting foot anywhere near
Peshawar. The 1857 agreement also stipulated 4,000 muskets and a monthly
subsidy of 100,000 Indian rupees for Dost Mohammad Khan.

Another treaty which precedes the much-touted and maligned 1893 Treaty
was the 1879 Treaty of Gandamak, following the first campaign of the second
Anglo-Afghan War. Dost Mohammad’s son, Sher Ali Khan, fled after the
British invaded Afghanistan and his son, Yaqub Khan, sued for peace.

According to Article 9 of the Treaty, Yaqub relinquished Afghan sovereignty
over Sibi, Kurram and Pishin as assigned districts and also accepted British
sovereignty over the “Khyber and Michni Passes, which lie between the
Peshawur and Jellalabad Districts, and of all relations with the independent
tribes of the territory directly connected with these Passes.” (Quote from the
Treaty)

The peace treaty did not last long. The British mission led by Louis Cavagnari
was massacred by some Afghan soldiers and the treaty got interred with their
bodies. There are other details until the ascension to the Kabul throne of
Abdul Rahman but those are not relevant to our purpose, except that Rahman was told that Kandahar would not be part of his dominion.

The British position in Kandahar became untenable after a British army was
defeated in the Battle of Maiwind by Yaqub’s younger brother, Ayub Khan,
who was the governor of Herat. Incidentally, Ayub Khan is considered a
national hero in Afghanistan. He died in Lahore in 1914 and is buried in
Peshawar. Another interesting bit is about how the Taliban used the reference to the Battle of Maiwind in their tarani [songs]. (See ‘The Battle of Maiwand and the Taliban’s Tarani’ by Roshan Noorzai.)

It’s time to get to 1893. Rahman entered into a treaty with the British
delimiting the Indo-Afghan frontier, and their respective “spheres of
influence.” Maps were attached to the treaty and Amir Abdur Rahman
relinquished Afghanistan’s sovereignty over the frontier districts of Bajaur,
Swat, Chitral and Chagey. In the bargain he got Asmar, Kafiristan and the
Birmal tract, areas over which Afghanistan had exercised almost no control
previously. Further, the Government of India undertook to “increase by the
sum of six lakhs of rupees a year the subsidy of twelve lakhs now granted to
His Highness.”

Many Afghan writers and politicians make false claims that Afghanistan lost
most of the territory between the Indus River and the Durand Line because of
the Durand Treaty. That territory, as our historical overview shows, was lost
three decades before the treaty between 1810s and 1870s. As Afghan academic Arwin Rahi argues, “In fact, through the Durand Treaty, Afghans would cede some territory to the British for the last time, not for the first time.”

The second false claim made by Afghans and many Indians is about a 100-
year time-limit on the Durand Treaty. There is nothing in the text of the
Treaty — available to anyone interested — which gives even a hint of a 100-
year time-limit. Afghans claim that the text of the treaty given to Rahman had
this clause. There’s no evidence of such a text.

Yet another claim made by the Afghans is that Rahman signed the treaty
under duress. As British historian and barrister Bijan Omrani writes, “The
negotiations lasted a month, and a stream of correspondence between Sir
Mortimer Durand and the Government of India shows that there was a
genuine process of negotiation over this period: the British conceded to the

Government of Afghanistan that a number of areas should fall on the Afghan
side of the Durand Line which they had originally wished to fall on the Indian
side.“

Contemporary accounts suggest that even if Abdur Rahman had mixed
feelings about the agreement, his assent was not brought about by duress,
though one can make the point that in those days there were no international
law provisions against annexation, which is also obvious from Afghans’ own
forays into then-India and occupation of territories. Also, treaties were
generally signed after territorial conquests. As the German jurist Lassa
Oppenheim states, “Coercion in the signing of peace treaties ‘was a necessary
corollary of the admissibility of war as an instrument for changing the
existing law.’” (Quoted by Omrani from Oppenheim’s treatise, International
Law.)

The 1893 frontiers under the treaty were also reaffirmed by Rahman’s son
and successor Amir Habibullah in the 1905 Kabul Treaty, including accepting
the Durand Line as the frontier with India. Interestingly or perhaps for our
present purpose, ironically, it was a victory for Habibullah since the
Government of India had sought more concessions from Habibullah after
Rahman’s death and even stopped the subsidies to Kabul. After three months
of negotiations with Louis Dane, Habibullah got his way with the
arrangements under the 1893 Treaty. The Kabul Treaty was to be repudiated
by Amanullah Khan in 1919, resulting in the third Anglo-Afghan War.

Resultantly, the treaty, signed in Rawalpindi, is short and curt. It not only got
Amanullah to accept the border but under Article 5 stipulated “early
demarcation by a British Commission of the un-demarcated portion of the
line west of the Khyber, where the recent Afghan aggression took place, and to accept such boundary as the British Commission may lay down.” Articles 2
and 3 of the treaty also withdrew certain privileges to Afghanistan and the
subsidy to the Amir.

The 1919 Treaty was followed by the 1921 Treaty in Kabul which also
reaffirmed the previous arrangements regarding the border in addition to
other matters related to trade and setting up of diplomatic missions etc. This
treaty, however, has a withdrawal clause in Article XIV. It was nonetheless
reaffirmed in 1930 by Mohammad Nadir, then monarch of Afghanistan. The
situation stood as it were until 1949 when Kabul claimed that it had
withdrawn from the 1921 Treaty, a step very different from irredentist claims
made under the Durand Treaty.

And this brings us to 1947.

Afghanistan cast a negative vote against Pakistan in September 1947, arguing
that Pakistan’s northwest frontier “should not be recognised as a part
of Pakistan until the [Pakhtuns] of that area had been given the opportunity
to opt out for independence.” However, it withdrew the negative vote in
October 1947 and both sides exchanged ambassadors in February 1948.

Zahir Shah sent his uncle, Sardar Shah Wali Khan, as ambassador to Karachi.
Wali spoke Urdu and is said to have stated at one point that while
Afghanistan might have had a claim on Pakhtun-majority areas of Pakistan, it
would forgo such claims.

In reality, as American diplomat James Spain who had served in Pakistan
noted, “Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have come to be centred
on one issue.” That issue was Afghanistan’s demand for ‘Pashtunistan’ and
Kabul’s repeated attempts to subvert the Pakhtun (and later the Baloch)
through covert and overt actions.

The ‘Pashtunistan’ issue, couched in the right of self-determination for the
Pakhtun, was actually irredentist. It was clear that if such an “independent”
state were to actually come into being, it would not be able to survive and
would be subsumed into Afghanistan, satisfying Kabul’s idea of Greater
Afghanistan.

In a 1963 article for Asian Survey, titled ‘The Pak-Afghan Detente’, George
Montagno, who served as a visiting professor of American history at the
University of Karachi, wrote that Afghan agents operated among Pakhtun
tribesmen for many years, distributing large amounts of money, ammunition
and even transistor radios in an effort to sway loyalties from Pakistan to
Afghanistan, and to develop sentiments for the ‘Pukhtoonistan’ cause.

Montagno also noted that Kabul had made no mention of including any
Pashto-speaking areas of Afghanistan in a future ‘Pukhtoonistan’. This silence
would indicate that the Afghan plea has probably been one “prompted by a
veiled irredentism.”

It’s important to note that this article mentions a period of detente following
the May 1963 Tehran agreement to normalise relations between Pakistan and
Afghanistan. Relations had nosedived because Afghanistan’s prime minister
and King Zahir Shah’s cousin, Sardar Muhammad Daoud, had sent an Afghan
army into Bajaur in September 1960. It took Pakistan and Bajauri tribesmen
an entire year to evict the Afghan elements. Daoud was a vocal opponent of
the border and a hardliner on the issue of ‘Pashtunistan’. Pakistan had also
challenged Afghanistan to hold a referendum in its own Pakhtun areas to see
if the Afghan Pakhtun wanted to live in Afghanistan or join Pakistan.

There is a vast literature on how Kabul did everything to keep the border issue alive both through overt and, later, covert actions. This space does not allow for a full treatment but two points must be made: one, the negativity that mostly defined Pakistan-Afghanistan relations was the doing of Kabul; two, Pakistan’s Afghanistan policy, as indicated above, has been defined by Kabul’s irredentism and its linkages with India, Pakistan’s adversary in the east.

On 17 July 1973, Sardar Daoud ousted Zahir Shah and declared Afghanistan a
republic. The putsch was bloodless and Daoud was supported by a large
number of military officers. Daoud also revived the ‘Pashtunistan’ campaign
and began supporting Pakhtun and Baloch separatists. At home, his
campaign against conservatives led to purges and a number of future Afghan
leaders fled to Pakistan. Some important names included Gulbuddin
Hekmatyar, Abdur Rab Rasul Sayyaf, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Ahmad Shah
Massoud et al.

The late Maj Gen Naseerullah Babar, then a brigadier, was Inspector-General
Frontier Corps. He apprised Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of the
situation. As Barnett Rubin notes in The Fragmentation of Afghanistan:
State Formation and Collapse in the International System, “The influx of
Islamist refugees after 1974 was a welcome opportunity [for the Bhutto
government]… Pakistan covertly organised and supported the attempted
uprising by the Islamists in 1975 which, together with pressure from the Shah
[of Iran], had the desired effect of bringing Daoud to the bargaining table over
his support for [Pakhtun] and [Baloch] separatism in Pakistan and other
regional issues.”

In 1998, I interviewed the late Maj Gen Naseerullah Babar while writing a
long report for the Regional Centre of Strategic Studies at Colombo. Babar
told me — and this is corroborated by other writers — that these Afghan
leaders were paid stipends through the Frontier Corps’ acquittance roll
(British term for military payroll, a system then used by Pakistan and Indian
armies). Babar had also arranged for a team of Special Services Group (SSG)
to train the Afghan exiles in basic infantry tactics.

There was no involvement of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate. The
arrangement, according to Babar, was only known to three other top officials
in the system: Prime Minister Bhutto, foreign minister Aziz Ahmed and army
chief Gen Tikka Khan. Later, in 1994, Babar was to play the role of facilitating
the Taliban to open the southern route to Turkmenistan, though his claim
that he created the Taliban was bogus.

It is clear from reports and analyses of the time and later that Pakistan’s
policy of reverse-pressure on Daoud’s Afghanistan was not an attempt to
meddle in Afghanistan’s internal affairs but to use Daoud’s troubles to get
him to settle the border and end his irredentist policy.

To cut a long story short, for a number of reasons Daoud began moving away
from the Soviet Union and towards the United States, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan
and Gulf states like Saudi Arabia. Books by Barnett Rubin, Diego Cordovez —
then Under-Secretary General for Special Political Affairs who co-authored
Out of Afghanistan with Selig Harrison — Angelo Rasanayagam, another
United Nations diplomat who also served as the Director of UNHCR in
Peshawar and many others note that Daoud had come round to putting an
end to the “Durand Line” issue. [This was also corroborated to the writer
years ago by the late Riaz Khokhar, former foreign secretary who was a young
notetaker during Bhutto’s meeting with Daoud.]

Bhutto visited Kabul in June 1976 and Daoud visited Islamabad in August,
indicating his willingness to accept the Durand Line as an international
border in return for Bhutto’s undertaking to release the imprisoned National
Awami Party leaders.

It is interesting to note that by 1975 Bhutto had also become wary of Soviet
actions in West and South Asia. Bhutto’s three letters to the then US
President Gerald Ford (June to August) are intriguing, especially the August
17 letter in which Bhutto, quite presciently, speaks of how the Kremlin was
likely to focus on West and South Asia after the centre (Europe) was stabilised
through the Helsinki Final Act signed on August 1, 1975. Bhutto’s argument
was that “assured of security in Europe, the Soviet Union will relentlessly
exert pressures on the smaller states of Asia and on Pakistan in particular,
with a view to achieving its purpose of establishing an unchallengeable sphere of influence in this continent.” The text of these letters is available at the online Ford Library Museum.

Ford’s response basically ignored this point. The US would in about four years
come to appreciate the developments that would lead to the Soviet tanks
rolling south of Amu Darya.

What Bhutto was not counting on was a coup at home. The positive
development with Daoud was, however, picked up by General Ziaul Haq after
he removed Bhutto in July 1977. Zia latched on to the diplomatic push since
he knew the outlines of the Bhutto-Daoud discussions and he had, ironically,
opposed Bhutto’s decision to release the Baloch and Pakhtun leaders. After
removing Bhutto, he pursued the latter’s policy and engaged Daoud, visiting
Kabul in October 1977. Daoud had a reciprocal visit in March 1978.

Cordovez and Harrison write that when Daoud was asked at a farewell press
conference “whether the Durand Line was discussed, he replied that
‘everything was discussed, and with the passage of time everything would fall
in place.’”

The two writers also mention that Daoud had begun to mould public opinion
at home and met Pakhtun and Baloch leaders who had taken refuge in Kabul
and told them that “all of their eight thousand activists and guerrillas from
Pakistan… should leave by April 30 [1978].” Cordovez and Harrison also
quote the late Ajmal Khattak, a NAP/ANP leader, on this meeting and what
Khattak said to Daoud about being “either a fool or a knave and we would not
go [back to Pakistan].”

April 30 proved a date too far. Daoud and his family were murdered in a coup
by officers belonging to the Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA)
on April 27, 1978. There were many reasons but the tipping point was the
killing of Mir Akbar Khyber, a prominent Left intellectual belonging to the
Parcham faction of PDPA and Daoud’s attempt to quell the protests and
arrest PDPA leaders.

The PDPA took over. True to Afghanistan’s history, resistance by tribal
solidarity groups emerged to central control and suppressive “reforms” by the
communists. The situation got to a point where the USSR’s General Secretary
of the Communist Party, Leonid Brezhnev, an emotive alcoholic with failing
health, took the decision to get invited (read, invade) Afghanistan to stabilise
the PDPA. On December 24, 1979, Soviet tanks rolled into Afghanistan. Just
over a decade later, on February 15, 1989, the last Soviet military column
crossed north to the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic.

That was the end of the communist misadventure. That was also the
beginning of an entire era of new troubles for the region and Pakistan.
Pakistan’s primary policy objective, the acceptance by Kabul of the
international border, had earlier died with Daoud. Pakistan calculated that
supporting the mujahideen would help settle the issue. That was a
miscalculation. The Soviet withdrawal led to a civil war and the rise of the
Taliban. Even Taliban 1.0 did not accept the border. Now the problem has
recrudesced. While the border is recognised by the world, the western
neighbour remains irredentist and, this time, also religiously charged.

This space does not allow a full treatment of Pakistan’s current policy options.
What should be obvious though, and urgent, is that the situation requires a
thorough review of relations with Afghanistan and recourse to an array of
non-kinetic and kinetic means.

This article has not gone into the international law perspective on the border
for two reasons: the border is recognised and there’s no real need to revive a
dead mule. Even so, at some point, Pakistan might have to underpin the need
for kinetic action with recourse to recognised legalities.

For instance, the Vienna Convention on Succession of States in Respect of
Treaties states that succession of states cannot impact (a) international
border agreed upon in result of an agreement, and (b) rights and obligations
concerning international border created through an agreement.
This is also in line with the International Court of Justice judgments under
what is referred to as uti possidetus juris [as you possess under the law],
meaning new sovereign countries should inherit the borders of the dependent area as they were before gaining independence. Pakistan also has the right under animus occupandi, meaning Pakistan occupies and exercises
sovereignty over the area and that is also reflected in state practice over seven decades.

Any policy review must also revisit the two prongs of counterterrorism action
against the TTP — at home and in Afghanistan — and state action against the
TTA where and when required. Both prongs would require their own detailed
tactics and strategies.

But most importantly, a comprehensive policy review and its consistent
implementation would require a constitutional compact within Pakistan,
since facing the outside world prerequisites internal harmony.