India should question legality of Durand Line between
Afghan Pak
The Pashtun Times in Latest News, Opinion April 6, 2017
Men coming from Afghanistan move down a
corridor between security fences at the border post in Torkham, Pakistan on the
Durand Line on 18 June 2016. REUTERS
All successive
Afghan regimes since 1947 have refrained from granting de jure recognition to
the Durand Line.
In a welcome
departure from the past, we are beginning to see the evolution of a new get
tough policy by the government vis-à-vis Pakistan, designed to impose costs on
it for the continued export of terror to India. Some initial indicators of this
are the abandonment of the dialogue process, the diplomatic campaign to isolate
Pakistan as the fount of terror, highlighting its human rights violations in
Gilgit-Baltistan, PoK, Balochistan, Pakhtunistan, and Sindh and the resulting
discontent there, the surgical strikes, the effort to maximise the utilisation
of the Indus waters, etc. Not only will these moves have to be sustained, but
much more will need to be done over the years in order to make Pakistan desist
from its use of terror as an instrument of foreign policy against India. An
innovative, low cost, and effective step, which can be taken by India towards
this end, is to weigh in, at an appropriate occasion, against the legitimacy of
the Durand Line.
Established in
1893, through an agreement between the Indian Government and Amir Abdur Rahman
Khan of Afghanistan, the Durand Line was designed to demarcate the “respective
spheres of influence” of British India and Afghanistan. It is a matter of
record that it has, since inception, been mired in controversy.
The Durand Line
was never intended to constitute an international border between Afghanistan
and India, but merely to mark the limits of the spheres of influence of Amir
Abdur Rahman Khan and British India. Indeed, after signing the Agreement, Sir
Henry Mortimer Durand, the Indian Foreign Secretary, had no hesitation in
asserting that “The tribes on the Indian side are not to be considered as
within British territory. They are simply under our influence in the technical
sense of the term…” That the Durand Line merely marked spheres of influence,
and not territorial limits, is further borne out by the fact that the British
right till 1947 allowed the tribals under their sphere of influence to conduct
their own affairs without any hindrance and did not attempt to bring them under
their administration, much less occupy the area.
Pakistan has
consistently failed to observe the assurance of non interference “in the
territories lying beyond this line on the side of Afghanistan”, which was
expressly provided for in the 1893 Durand Line Agreement.
It may also be
underlined that the Durand Line took no cognisance of the ethnic groups in the
region and divided not only the Pashtuns, but also the Mohmands and Waziris.
Since the separation effected by the line was not territorial in nature, tribes
on both sides of it freely interacted with each other and conducted trade on
both sides of the line.
Above all,
contrary to what is made out by Pakistan, the Durand Line established by the
agreement of 1893 did not put in place a clearly defined and sacrosanct
international border.
Afghanistan
has, over the years, repeatedly questioned the alignment of the line as
projected by the British, with Amir Abdur Rahman Khan at the very outset
asserting in 1895 that he was to receive the entire Mohmand territory and not
just a part of it. It is also significant that the line defied delimitation and
demarcation for decades due to differences of interpretation.
After the 1893
agreement, the alignment of the Durand Line saw repeated changes emanating from
the agreements of 1905, 1919 and 1921. The agreements of 1893 and 1905 were in
the nature of personal agreements between successive Amirs of Afghanistan and
the British government, and those of 1919 and 1921 were between the governments
of the two countries. Significantly, the treaty of 1919 was concluded in
cancellation of all previous treaties. Furthermore, the treaty of 1921
expressly provided in Article 14 that either side could denounce it with one
year’s notice.
Given Afghanistan’s
long standing and deep rooted unhappiness with the Durand Line, it is no
surprise that in 1949, soon after the departure of the British from the Indian
subcontinent, it repudiated all treaties made with the latter. Indeed, it was
on this issue that in 1948 it opposed Pakistan’s joining the UN. All successive
Afghan regimes since 1947, whether monarchist, republican, communist, Islamist,
or democratic, have refrained from granting de jure recognition to the Durand
Line. Even the Pakistan sponsored and supported Taliban regime had no
compunction in resisting Pakistani pressures to accept the Durand Line.
It is ironic
that while Pakistan swears by the sanctity of the Durand Line it has
consistently failed to observe the assurance of non interference “in the
territories lying beyond this line on the side of Afghanistan”, which was
expressly provided for in the 1893 Durand Line Agreement. In a similar vein,
the 1921 agreement unequivocally guaranteed to Afghanistan “all rights of
internal and external independence”, which too have been consistently ignored
by Pakistan.
Regrettably,
both the US and the UK have made known their acceptance of the Durand Line.
This is the result, no doubt, of their historic tilt towards Pakistan, as the
legitimacy of the line is clearly questionable.
Indeed, a
British House of Commons 20 June 2010 research paper found that “The legal
status of the Durand Line has never been definitively settled. Although the
British policy was and remains that the line represents a legal frontier,
Afghan arguments that it was never intended as such have considerable
credibility…”
Given the
dubious legitimacy of the Durand Line as a legal frontier between Afghanistan
and Pakistan and the latter’s implacable hostility towards India, it is worth
considering the possibility of expressing our reservations about it at an
appropriate occasion. This is all the more so as independent India has so far
refrained from taking any firm official position on the Durand Line. The
reported off the cuff remark to the media on return from Iran by Atal Behari
Vajpayee, as External Affairs Minister, way back in May 1978, that the Durand
Line be respected by Afghanistan and differences be settled through
negotiations, was a one-off comment and cannot be regarded as binding on India
today, particularly in the light of Pakistan’s increasingly hostile moves
towards it in recent times.
A clear-cut
stance by India against the Durand Line as a legal frontier between Afghanistan
and Pakistan would redound to its benefit in two ways. Firstly, it would take
the already excellent India-Afghanistan relations to an even higher level, as
no other country has supported it on this issue. Indeed, even the Taliban would
find it difficult not to be appreciative of India for this step. Secondly, it
would promote the unravelling of Pakistan, which India needs to seriously
consider as the ultimate riposte to the former’s relentless use of terror
against it.
The downside of
coming out against the Durand Line is negligible. Pakistan will, no doubt, be
upset, but that is nothing new. There will also be those who may argue that we
cannot object to the Durand Line while calling for the acceptance of the
McMahon Line.
This line of
argumentation is flawed, as the latter clearly marked territoriality, while the
former merely marked spheres of influence and cannot be regarded as
constituting a formal boundary between two sovereign nations. Moreover, non
interference in Afghanistan, a critical component of the Durand Line agreement,
was not observed by Pakistan and the line was, furthermore, formally rejected
by Afghanistan as per the provisions of the 1921 agreement.
By Satish Chandra
Satish Chandra was formerly
High Commissioner to Pakistan and later Deputy National Security Advisor.
No comments:
Post a Comment