The Durand Line marks the 1610 mile boundary between Afghanistan and PakistanA US envoy says that the Durand Line is only the “de facto” border, not the sanctified “de jure” border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Pakistanis busy electioneering and the watching the elections may have missed one of the most outstanding and incredulous statements made by any American official. Either Mr. Boucher is terribly misinformed, or he has deliberately sent a cryptic message…for those who can or will read it.
Of course Mr. Zardari who recently met at the US Embassy had no time to discuss this matter. He was too busy talking about his Green Card and prospects of Swiss Clemency and Pakistani ministership.
This statement is like Mexico saying that the Mexican-US border is a “de facto” border. This would imply that Mexico does not recognize “de jure” US sovereignty over Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. If the nuances are lost, please read on.
De facto means “ground realities”. Ground realities have no basis in law and could be changed.
De jure means “legally sanctified and correct”. Based upon international law and jurisprudence.
The Durand Line marks the 1610 mile boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan
An insidious petard was thrown by the American envoy, Mr Boucher. He said that the “Durand Line” was the “De facto border”. Does this mean that the new US position is that the “Durand Line” is only the “De facto border” and not a “De Jure”, legally binding border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The United States recognized Pakistan as an independent country and Pakistan is a member of the United Nations. All treaties signed by the US with Pakistan are based on the land betwen Durand Line, the Radcliff line etc. Despite what Ralp Peters and other nuts think Pakistani sovereignty is sacrosanct.
The Durand Line was the border defined between the British Mortimar Durand and the Afghan Abdur Rehman Khan in 1893. Eighty Four percent of the line follows clear physical features (rivers or watershed divides), and remaining line was demarcated from the 1894-95 demarcation reports and subsequent mapping such as the detailed (1:50,000 scale) Soviet maps of the 1980s.
As a successor state, Pakistan and Afghanistan accepted each other and established diplomatic relations on that basis. The world courts have universally upheld “uti possidetis juris”, i.e, binding bilateral agreements with or between colonial powers are “passed down” to successor independent states. A unilateral declaration by one party has no effect; boundary changes must be made bilaterally. If this was not true there would be total pandemonium all over the world. The Treaty of Westphalia in the 17th century also held the same principles.
Thus, the Durand Line boundary remains in effect today as the international boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and is recognized as such by most nations. Despite pervasive internet rumors to the contrary, US Department of State and the British Foreign Commonwealth Office documents and spokespersons have confirmed that the Durand Line, like virtually all international boundaries, has no expiration date, nor is there any mention of such in any Durand Agreement with Mr. Rehman.
For an American envoy to now claim that this border is only “the de facto” border is disingenuous, incorrect, fallacious and highly incendiary. This statement could be misconstrued as hostile or unfriendly American intentions. The ”De facto border” comment could be taken as proof that the USA does not recognize the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan.
Afghanitan like Pakistan is a multi enthnic state. Uzbeks live in Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. More Pashtuns live in Pakistan than Afghanistan. Pakistan is the spokesperson for the Pashtuns. Tajiks live in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Hindu Punjabis live in India, Muslim Punjabis live in Pakistan. Sunni Baluch live in Pakistan, and also in Iran. The Durand Line divided the Pashtuns living on both sides of the border. Many in Pakistan and Afghanistan want the Durand Line abolished and the Pakistani boundary extended to the Oxus (Amy Darya) with Uzbekistan. Mr. Boucher’s statement plays into the hands of those who seek strategic depth of Pakistan.
If the Durand line is erased, Pakistan would look like this.It is a great leap of faith, and the assumption defies all logic– that if the Durand Line is not recognized, then the border of Afghanistan would somehow magically move to the Indus or Chena, Ravi, Sutlej, Baeas, the Gangetic, or the Brahmaputra rivers. The exact opposite is the case. Pakistan’s Eastern boundries have been recognized by India and all international organizations.If the Durand line is erased the Pakistan border wouud automatically move to the Oxus (Amu Darya). Twice the number of Pashtuns live in Pakistan than Afghanistan.
Afghanistan and Pakistan were part of the Indus Valley Civilzation trading with each other, and with the Silk route ot China and to Sumer and Urr. This is not the first time Afghanistna and Pakistan will be united. Afghan and in particular Tajik traders and scholars regularly travelled to the Indus Valley in ancient times and plied their trade.
The trade corridor from Gwadar to Khyber to Amu Darya would be powerful engine. The economic potential of such a confederation would be enormous and help propel both countries forward economically particularly for Afghanistan, but Pakistan would also benefit considerably. This new confederation would stabilize the entire region as a whole. The economies compliment each other. Pakistan supplies the surplus food to Afghanistan and Afghanistan provides links to Central Asia.
The Pathans of Pakistan.Karachi is the largest Pashtun city in the world. More Pashtuns live in Pakistan than any other country in the world. In Pakistan Pashtuns have been part of the ruling class and make a huge number in the armed forces, totally disproportionate to their population. There have been two famou Pushtun heads of states in Pakistan, Ayub Khan and Yahya Khan.
Pashtuns are known as Pathans in Pakistan. They control the transport business in Karachi and other areas, and are some of the hardest working Pakistanis. They liberated Azad Kashmir and defeated the USSR in Afghanistan. Millions of Afghan Pathans were born in Pakistan. Pakistan hosted the largest number of refugees in the world from Afghanistan, About 3 million refuse to go back and have become part of the Pakistani fabric.
One of the greatest Pathans was Ahmad Shah Abdali who went all the way to Delhi and took the Peocock throne and the Kohinoor.
Da Dili takht herauma cheh rayad krhm, Zma da khkule Pukhtunkhwa da ghre saroona. “I forget the throne of Delhi when I recall, The mountain peaks of my beautiful Pukhtunkhwa.” Ahma Shah Abdali
The Pakistani province of NWFP, popularly known as Sarhad is now being renamed to Paskhtunkhwa based on Ahmad Shah Abdali’s words. Khushal Khan Khattak was one of the greatest poets of Pakistan and of Pakhtunkhwa.
Pashtuns comprise over 15.42% of Pakistan’s population or 25.6 million people.[2] In Afghanistan, they make up an estimated 39%[19] to 42% of the population or 12.4 to 13.3 million people. The exact numbers remain uncertain, particularly in Afghanistan, and are affected by approximately 3 million Afghan refugees that remain in Pakistan, of which 81.5% or 2.49 million are ethnic Pashtuns.[3] An unknown number of refugees continue to reside in Iran.[20] A cumulative population assessment suggests a total of around 42 million across the region Source Wikipedia
According to many historians including Humayun Gauhar and Aslam Khattak (” A Pathan Odessy) a conferation almost happened with Afghanitan in 1956.
The missed opportunity came in 1956-57 when Aslam Khattak was first our First Secretary and then Ambassador in Kabul. By then we had a full-blown ‘Afghan Problem’. Prime Minister Suharawardhy called a meeting in which Army Chief General Ayub Khan “dismissed our neighboring country in proper Sandhurst style. ‘Afghan problem?’ he said gruffly. ‘What is the Afghan problem? A little strategic bombing and an armoured thrust would settle it once and for all!.’” It was then that Pakistan, with Aslam Khattak in ‘Track Two’ mode, so to speak, started the proposal for a Pakistan-Afghan confederation. He wanted to get Prime Minister Sardar Daud on his side because “Daud honestly believed that the Pathans were oppressed in Pakistan. He considered it a duty to help his brethren. He may also have been suspicious about the ‘A’, for Afghan (Afghanica) province in Pakistan. Did it mean we wanted to take over his country? At the same time, we thought that Daud was in league with India and bent upon dividing our country with Delhi. As was often the case in such circumstance, both sides were wrong.” Daud was King Zahir Shah’s first cousin and married to the King’s sister. It was he who eventually deposed Zahir Shah. Khattak went to see Daud and told him that he wanted “to remove the misunderstanding between our countries…”
Next, Khattak separately met the “royal uncles”, Shah Wali and Shah Mahmood, and took them into confidence. “I told him that Pakistan and Afghanistan would have to form a confederation if they were to survive threats from the USSR and India.” After considerable humming and hawing both agreed to take the idea further. “Now I was ready to try my hand with Sardar Daud, whom I thought would be my most difficult hurdle.” After Daud had made his complaints and Khattak had clarified them, including the letter ‘A’ in the name ‘Pakistan’, they decided that there should be an exchange of visits between King Zahir Shah and President Iskander Mirza. Actually both President Mirza and Prime Minister Suhrawardy went to Kabul together, which is highly unusual. While King and President were involved in ceremony, the two Prime Ministers started talking. After they left, Khattak continued the dialogue with Daud, who “suggested that we include some friendly missions in our discussions, such as Turkey and the USA. Sardar Daud said that the Americans should foot the bill of our mutual development projects when we confederated. Both sides would maintain internal autonomy, he proposed, but they would form a Central Government for defence, foreign policy, foreign trade and communications. The Prime Ministers would rotate.”
If you are surprised at how far the dialogue went, there was more. Feroz Khan Noon had replaced Suhrawardy as Prime Minister. Khattak raised the question of head of state of the confederation with him. “In his grand way [Noon] said we should have no difficulty accepting King Zahir Shah as the constitutional head of state. ‘After all, for some time after independence we had a Christian queen. Now we would have a Muslim man’. President Mirza concurred in this.” When Khattak next met Daud, he said that “…a confederation was the correct step to realise our common destiny. I noted that Pakistan was a democratic country and asked what would be the position of the King. He promptly replied, ‘We shall be a republic if Pakistan so desires.’” So here was Pakistan ready to accept the constitutional monarchy of Zahir Shah in the new Pak-Afghan confederation and there was Afghanistan prepared to become a republic.
As to the USA, Aslam Khattak says, “The Americans agreed to help in a big way. They were prepared to enlarge Karachi harbour and to develop another port. They agreed to provide fifty locomotives and five hundred wagons and to extend the Chaman railway to Kandahar and the Torkham rail line to Jalalabad. Sardar Daud wanted them to extend the Jalalabad railhead to Kabul and to commit to connect Kandahar and Kabul by rail.” They had actually got into post-confederation details.
Then came mistakes. Daud came to Pakistan and while inspecting a shipyard in Karachi a bullet ricocheted off a ship and hit Aslam Khattak instead. Undaunted, they decided to bring Ghaffar Khan into the equation. He was released from prison and sent to Kabul, where he agreed to help in removing Pakistan-Afghan differences provided President Mirza agreed to hold a referendum on the One Unit. Mirza agreed. The American Ambassador in Karachi assured Ghaffar Khan through the American Ambassador in Kabul that the referendum would be held. But it wasn’t. “I have never known,” says Aslam Khattak, “exactly why he did not go ahead and do the job that he said he would. He may have got word from some important Pathans in Pakistan that, if the Afghans stopped speaking about the Pushtuns, the Punjabis would literally turn them into camp followers and second-class citizens. At any rate a great chance to change the face of history was missed.” Indeed. Let’s leave it at that. So much water has flown since then.
But consider. If the confederation had happened, it would have automatically meant the end of the Parity Principle and One Unit because the anti-democratic 1956 Constitution would have had to be changed. There would have been no Ayub Khan regime and East Pakistan may still have been with us. The Soviets would not have such a large country. No Soviet occupation means no Jihad. No Jihad means no Mujahideen. The Americans could not have created Osama bin Laden. No Osama means no 9/11. Source Humayun Gauhar hgauhar@nation.com.pk
ZULFIQAR ALI BHUTTO DESTABILIZED SARDAR DAUD
In the 1970s, the roles between Pakistan and Afghanistan reversed despite the Pakistan government’s fresh crackdown on the Baloch and Pashtun Nationalist’s by the government of Zulfiqar Bhutto. The Pakistan government decided to retaliate against the Afghan governments Pakhtunistan policy by supporting Islamist opponents of the Afghan government[6] including future Mujahidin leaders Gulbadin Hekmatyar and Ahmed Shah Masood. This operation was remarkably successful and by 1977 the Afghan government of Sardar Daud was willing to settle all outstanding issues in exchange for a lifting of the ban on the National Awami Party and a commitment towards provincial autonomy for Pashtuns.
The case for a Pakistan Afghanistan Confederation
Most Pakistani foresee the eventual unification or reunificaiton of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Both countries are ethnically diverse with large Pashtun minorities. Both countries depend on each other. Pakistan depends on Afghanistna for access to Central Asia, the brithplace of Babar and many Sufis. An unstable Afghanistn has spread instability in Pakistan and vice versa. Afghanistan and Pakistan depend on each other for trade and commerce. Landlocked Afghanitan would benifit from Gwadar and Port Qasim. Pakistan would ebnifit from having access to Uzbekistan. There is commonality of economic, linguistic, cultural, poliitcal, and historical bonds. Most of all both countries are Muslim and share a very strong link in the post-USSR era.
Most scholars agree that its not a matter of if the two countries unite, but rather of when they unite as the two countries histories seem inextricably intertwined. Such a union, would prove beneficial in many aspects. The Afghan (Pashtun) ethnic groups would finally be united and balance each other when part of a myriad of ethnic groups.
Traditionally, when Afghans were united in a nation of their own, they have often been bogged down in internal warfare and tribal feuds. However, when part of a multi ethnic state, they would flourished.
Afghanistan abundant untapped natural resources offer strategic depth which Pakistan lacks. The two countries were united as recently as the 18th century under the Afghan Empire founded by Ahmed Shah Durrani, an Afghan born in Multan, in the province of Panjab in modern day Pakistan
The gloomy picture of Afghanistan keeps getting gloomier.
“The Fatherland of Pak Nation (Ali 1940) “North West Frontier Province – is semantically non-descript and socially wrongful. It is non-descript because it merely indicates their geographical situation as a province of old ‘British India’ [which no longer exists]. It is wrongful because it suppresses the social entity of these people. In fact, it suppresses that entity so completely that when composing the name ‘Pakistan’ for our homelands, I had to call the North West Frontier Province the Afghan Province.“Choudhary Rahmat Ali in his book, “Pakistan”
The erasure of the Durand Line will end the Afghan state for all practical purposes. The remaining Heratis will join Iran, and the Uzeks may want to join Uzbekistan. About 2 million Afghans were born in Pakistan.Or the entire country may vote to join Pakistan.
Durand line de facto border, says US By Our Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Feb 15: The United States believes that both Afghanistan and Pakistan recognise the Durand line as their de facto border but has not tried to settle the dispute between its two key allies, says a senior US official.
Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher made these comments at a congressional hearing when asked to comment on a recent report which urged the US administration to help resolve the border dispute between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The report by the Afghanistan Study Group, discussed at the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, urges the United States to reduce antagonism between Pakistan and Afghanistan by persuading Afghanistan to accept the Durand Line as the official border. The report also advises Washington to persuade Islamabad to remove restrictions on transit trade between India and Afghanistan.
“Frankly, we haven’t taken on the issue of the Durand Line, a problem that goes back to 1893, to the colonial period,” Mr Boucher, the US State Department’s pointsman for South Asia, told the Senate panel.
“I think both sides do operate with that as the border; they shoot across it to protect it. They operate border posts on it, and our goal has been to try to reduce those tensions and get them to work in a cooperative manner across that line.”
Mr Boucher said the United States also keeps urging Pakistan to remove restrictions on Afghanistan’s transit trade with India.
“It is an issue that we have taken up, and we continue to take it up because, frankly, we think it’s in Pakistan’s overall economic interest to capture that transit trade and have it go through Pakistan, and not have it go through Iran,” he said.
“The Pakistani government keeps telling us it’s really a matter that’s determined by their bilateral relationship with India, and not even by their sort of broader global interests.”
Despite Pakistan’s reluctance, Mr Boucher said, the United States continues to push for the removal of these restrictions “because we think it would be not only helpful to us and our allies and others who operate in Pakistan, but it would be helpful to Pakistan itself”.
The Afghanistan Study Group has also recommended that America should open direct negotiations with Iran to seek its cooperation for defusing tensions in Afghanistan.
On the group’s recommendations for improving relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan, Mr Boucher said that due to US efforts the relations between the two countries have greatly improved since March when they were shooting at each other across the border.
There was no Islam 5,000 years ago. Indus Valley Civilization was an India civilization, if you want to embrace it you are welcome but shun Islam.
Moses was a Muslim as was Abraham. There was no Hindus in the IVC