Durand Line-the hot spot

WHEN the British left India in 1947, it left two contested borders, Pakistan-Afghanistan border-the Durrand Line, and India-Chinese border, the McMahon Line. Observers believe that one of the most explosive spots on earth today is the so-called Durand Line, the 2640 kilometre border, much of it in harsh mountain country, between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is where the United States and its NATO allies are battling the Taleban and are facing the possibility of military defeat. The Durand Line was established by the British. It was demarcated and then signed into a treaty on November 12, 1893 between the ruler of Afghanistan, Amir Abdul Rahman Khan, and Sir Mortimer Durand, foreign secretary of what was then British India. The idea was to create a buffer zone to protect British India from possible Czarist Russian aggression in what was then the 'Great Game' between the British and Russian empires as the Nobel Laureate Kipling described it. When British India was partitioned between India and Pakistan in 1947, the Durand Line became the Pakistan-Afghan border. Successive Afghan rulers repudiated the Durand Line as the border with Pakistan. There was a demand in the past by Afghan rulers to set up an independent Pakhtoonistan state of Pashtun people. Because of the non-recognition of the Durrand Line as the international boundary, Afghanistan in 1947 voted against the admission of Pakistan in the UN. Even Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's current President, has called the Durand Line a "line of hate" because by cutting through tribal lands it artificially divides the Pashtun people, whom Kabul would like to claim as Afghans.
The tribal areas on both sides of the Durand Line have always been autonomous. Anxious to safeguard this autonomy, the tribes resist control by the central government, whether in Islamabad or Kabul. For centuries, their overriding impulse has been to protect their religion and their traditional way of life from foreign interference. Of all the challenges, which the new American administration will face next January, the ongoing war across the Afghan-Pakistan border could be the most difficult and dangerous. They do not want a Western model of society forced upon them. The morality they live by is that of the Pashtunwali Code, which means giving asylum and hospitality to visitors and avenging any slight or attack. The Durand Line was always a hot spot -- and perhaps never more so than in the 1980s, when the United States and Pakistan recruited 'jihadis' from all over the world to fight the Soviets then occupying Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of fighters were trained, armed and funded in the Pakistan tribal areas who then infiltrated across the Durand Line into Afghanistan. The Soviet army was withdrawn in 1989 and the US's strategy was successful in the '90s. But the US had a pyrrhic victory. Currently large numbers of tough, brave, well-armed Pashtun tribesmen as well as sympathizers from many parts of the world have joined the resurgent Taliban movement in a determined effort to expel the invading US forces and their coalition allies just as they expelled the Russians almost 20 years ago. They believe that if they were successful with the Soviet Union, they would also be victorious with the US this time. The United States and Pakistan are now reaping what they sowed. Pashtun nationalism has been aroused. Pashtun leaders on both sides of the border do not recognize the Durand Line that, in any event, has always been porous. The tribal customs, traditions and war-fighting abilities which the Americans mobilized against the Soviets have now been turned against the Americans themselves. Major mistake of the Bush administration was the diversion of US military effort from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003 -- a policy largely driven by neo-cons in Bush's Administration, primarily concerned to destroy Iraq in order to enhance Israel's security environment. But this switching of focus proved immensely costly in men and treasure. US armed forces are overstretched; deficits have ballooned; the shattering of Iraq has handed Iran a strategic victory; the Taliban have been able to regroup their forces on both sides of the Durand Line and are now a formidable force. When the Taliban were in power in Kabul in 2001, poppy cultivation in Afghanistan was greatly reduced. But President George W. Bush's campaign against Al-Qaeda after 9/11, and the overthrow of the Taliban that followed, led to a vast explosion in poppy cultivation and the rise of corrupt warlords along with corrupt Kabul elites. The huge illegal trafficking of drugs and arms across the Durand Line in recent years has contributed to making the tribes rich and confident, and has doomed Bush's "Global War on Terror", at least in these crucial tribal areas. The US-backed Karzai government in Kabul has a tenuous hold on power. The insurgency has spread to many parts of the country, indeed in Kabul itself. The military situation for the US and NATO is worse today than it has been since 2001. At the same time, neighbouring Pakistan has been destabilized. President Asif Ali Zardari, like his predecessor Pervez Musharraf, has to face a public that has become fervently anti-American. Bush's secret authorization last July - recently revealed by the New York Times - to launch US air strikes and ground operations across the Durand Line, without consulting Islamabad, has aroused fury in Pakistan. If it were possible for the US and NATO to deploy an additional 150,000 troops in Afghanistan, the situation may have been reversed. But there is no sign that reinforcements on this scale would be available, or that Western public opinion would tolerate the opening of such a major front.
The Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir and their competition in Afghanistan has contributed to stoking the fires of revolt across the Durand Line. Finding a solution to the Kashmir problem should be a priority for the international community. It would rob Pakistan of a motive for promoting militancy. Afghanistan would also greatly benefit since Pakistan has covertly backed jihadis in that country, if only to counter the growing, American-encouraged influence of India. Pakistan's perennial fear is of being squeezed between India on one flank and an Indian-dominated Afghanistan on the other. Observers believe that a fundamental rethinking of Western strategy is therefore urgently required. This could include:
(a) Winning support from the main regional powers for a peace settlement across the Durand Line -- Pakistan and Afghanistan including India, Iran and even China.
(b) Political negotiations with the Taleban and the Pashtun tribes in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the aim of separating them from Al-Qaeda. This would most probably involve guaranteeing the autonomy of the tribal areas, substantial financial subsidies, and offering the Taliban a share in government.
Many analysts say that Afghanistan is likely to overshadow other global concerns next year, such as the existing tension with Russia in the Caucasus, the rise of Iran as a major regional power and its nuclear programme, the search for an honourable exit strategy from Iraq, the impact of the collapsing Arab-Israeli peace process, and even the horrors of global warming. The resolution of conflicts, rather than the use of military force -- whether in Afghanistan or South and Central Asia or in the Middle East -- is the only way to lessen, and ultimately defeat, the threat of terrorism. Hopefully the next US President would initiate a negotiation. Negotiation with opponents does not mean weakness or appeasement.

The author is former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.