International Law states that boundary changes must be made among all concerned parties; and a unilateral declaration by one party has no effect. So, when in 1949, Afghanistan’s “Loya Jirga” (Grand Council) declared the Durand Line Agreement invalid, it was considered a unilateral declaration, and therefore, could not be enforced. Furthermore, Durand Line, like virtually any international boundaries, has no expiration date, nor is there any mention of such in the Durand Line Agreement, which is contrary to the popular beliefs of certain Afghan scholars that the Agreement lapsed in 1993 which is after a hundred years of its signing.

To this date, the relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan are characterized by rivalry, suspicion and resentment. The primary cause of this hostility rests in the debate about the validity of the Durand Line Agreement. But, so far, it appears that Pakistan’s position in this debate is legally correct, and the Government in Afghanistan has never challenged Pakistan in the International Court of Justice.

Need less to say that, how much Afghans are fond of the Pakistan goernemnt, and especially the Pashtoons who have families on both side of the border,because of the Durant Line. Since 1980s Pakistan has recruited, brainwashed, trained and financed the young Afghans to become Jihadists. The government of Pakistan built more than 20000 Madrassas with the Saudi’s money to brain wash the young muslims from around the world to become terrorists, and the result of their desructions in Afghanistan, and towards the western world and the US, is on the news everyday.

I do agree with you that the United States of America left Afghanistan to the wloves, after the Russian army left Afghanistan, a country without any oil was not important to the US government anymore, and they lost interest in Afghanistan, but the result was the tragedy of 911, and after the US forces over thrown Taliban government in 2001, instead of cleaning the country from Talibans and insurgency, they started a wrong war in Iraq, and focuesd their attention on Iraq,they failed again,in Afghanistan because of the strong return of The Talibans.

The US, and the coalition forces’ military campaign in Afghanistan has not worked, since 2001, to establish an stable government in Afghnistan, especially after the US became a partner with Pakistan that never want peace in Afghanistan to start with, the result has been a chaos.

In a recent comment on Mr. Khalil Nouri’s paper Afghanistan: Indigenous Prospect, Mr. Zahir (May 1st, 2010) writes, “The British are the main cause of the problem in Afghanistan by creating the Durand Line…” This is an interesting view which deserves a closer look. The 1893 Agreement has been described by one British officer, diplomat, and historian (W.K. Fraser-Tytler, Afghanistan, Oxford, 1950) as a “concrete symbol of compromise”. He goes on to say that “The Durand Line …has few advantages and many defects. It is illogical from the point of view of ethnography, of strategy and of geography. It cuts across one of the main basins of the Indus watershed, it splits a nation in two, and it even divides tribes. It is surprising that Abdur Rahman accepted such a boundary…” (p. 188). This is a view which was echoed by a great many British officers and government officials at the time.
So why did the British create a problem for themselves – the problem of the North-West Frontier of India, a problem which they handed over, unsolved, to Pakistan in 1947? It is clear that in the mid-19th century the British Government of India had two main concerns: The security of the western approaches to India and a determination not to share a common boundary in Asia with the ever-expanding Czarist Russian Empire. Afghanistan was seen by the British as a possible buffer state between two expanding empires: the British were spreading to the north-west across the sub continent, while Czarist Russia was systematically encroaching on the Central Asian Khanates and getting closer and closer to India. As a buffer state Afghanistan served British interests up until 1947 and the interests of successor Pakistan thereafter until 1979 – nearly 100 years. In other words, to return to the Durand Line, the compromise worked – not smoothly, not trouble free – but it ‘worked’.
While recognizing all the shortcomings and the unsatisfactory nature of the Durand Line, I cannot see it as “the main cause of the problem in Afghanistan” today as Mr. Zahir has stated. The period between the end of the Second World War and the Soviet invasion saw many positive social, economic, educational, and political changes in Afghanistan. These are a matter of record. Things began to go seriously wrong in 1973 when Daoud, taking advantage of the King’s absence from the country, stepped out of retirement, took over the government, abolished the monarchy, and proclaimed himself President and Prime Minister. As subsequent events showed, he should have stayed in retirement. Here we find the seeds of today’s problems in Afghanistan, which have two main causes, (1) the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, a political blunder of catastrophic proportions, and (2) a second colossal political blunder caused by short-sighted cold war attitudes, which was the failure of the U.S. and other western nations to step forward in 1989 as soon as the Soviets retreated to provide large-scale aid with a view to establishing, rebuilding, and equipping schools and hospitals, rebuilding bridges and roads, renewing aid to foster agricultural development, to help create a

peaceful environment for the establishment of a government which would encourage Afghans to return home from the Diaspora to take their places in education, medicine, engineering and other positions essential for the growth and peace of the nation. Had such aid been forthcoming in 1989 or 1990 at the latest, the civil war would have been avoided and the Taliban movement would never have got off the ground. Instead, the U.S., lacking any vision for the future of the country and satisfied to see the Soviet withdrawal, turned its back on Afghanistan, leaving a political vacuum in the country and its people at the mercy of heavily armed radical fundamentalists, many of them not from Afghanistan in the first place, who then, despite apparent complete ignorance of the teachings of Islam, and without any idea of how to establish local, let alone a national government, and lacking the skills or even the desire to serve the Afghan nation, took over and completed the destruction begun by the Soviets.
The U.S. is now paying the price of its earlier neglect of Afghanistan by waging a war against an enemy that does not wear a uniform, represents no government, and cannot be brought to sign a surrender document. Unconventional warfare has characterized every war in which the U.S. has been involved since 1945. It leads to inconclusive results and suggests that there is no military solution to either the situation in Iraq or Afghanistan. Realizing this after ten years of warfare in Afghanistan the Soviets simply walked away, leaving a mess of their own making behind.
In their invasion of Afghanistan the Soviets confirmed cold war suspicions. They were the “bad guys”, while the U.S. basked in the warmth of a self satisfied image of themselves as the “good guys”. And yet, only a few years later, thanks to the unprincipled, unscrupulous, ignorant character of G.W.Bush and D. Cheney, the U.S. was led by lies, secrecy, and false ‘intelligence’ into a senseless, pointless, unnecessary war in Iraq, just as the Soviets had been led into Afghanistan by the tragic miscalculations of Leonid Brezhnev. Neither Bush nor Brezhnev realized that the only way to learn from history is to read it.

Dr. Schuyler Jones
May 5th, 2010

You bring up a good point about Pakistan and Taliban Central benefitting from U.S. extraction. A few thoughts:

TALIBAN WOULD LOVE IT, BUT…
An immediate U.S. withdrawal would greatly please the Taliban right now from a PR standpoint. However, they will miss the U.S./Karzai corruption, incompetence and inability to truly protect anyone, because it’s been one of their greatest recruiting tools to date. I think a phased U.S. withdrawal done correctly, with the right new strategy put in place will benefit Afghanistan. I think networks of like-minded tribal leaders provided with enough guns and money will be a more effective approach- so the Taliban might be kicking themselves once U.S. leaves, ironically.

PAKISTAN & TALIBAN – NATURAL ALLIES
I think the Pakistan government and its military leadership are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they would like to see the U.S. withdraw and Afghanistan fall into the hands of the Afghan Taliban – who’ve they’ve indirectly and directly supported for years. One could say the ISI, Musharaff and Pakistani madrassas gave birth to the Taliban movement (but many of you no doubt know this).

ANYBODY BUT INDIA
Also, Pakistan fears a Karzai-led regime because they want to avoid any arrangement where their mortal enemy India might play any type of role – which is the #1 issue that seems to drive ALL of their foreign policy decisions. If Karzai remains, India will have major influence in Kabul- or at least more influence than Pakistan. India has sunk more money in development aid into Afghanistan than nearly everyone outside of the U.S. An Indian role is a totally unacceptable and unthinkable situation to Pakistan.

YET, PAKISTAN SHALL REAP A WHIRLWIND…
However, on the other hand, the Pakistan govt, military and ISI don’t want to lose their grip on power in their own country, to their own version of the Taliban problem – the Tehrik-e-Taliban. They’re playing a dicey game here. Pakistani leaders love power more than Islam.

Ahmed Rashid pointed out to me once how Musharaff, for example, isn’t as a devout a Muslim as many folks think. He used Islamic extremism as a tool, but didn’t really abide by it himself. Now his “tool” has come home to roost. Thus, we have this “frankensteinian” scenario coming back to haunt the Pakis as they are now reaping what they sowed. (I wrote about this irony last May in an article entiled “Exposing Pakistan: terrorist incubator since 1947).
http://www.examiner.com/x-4454-Geopolitics-Examiner~y2009m5d27-Exposing-Pakistan-terrorist-incubator-since-1947

It is a maddening foreign policy to be supporting one version of the Taliban on the Afghan side of the border and then directly fighting another within your own. Logic dictates that it is impossible for both objectives to succeed. So, nothing looks appealing to Pakistan at this point.

I appreciate the detail in your answer however i fell you are making the British sound more powerful then they really are. Its America who is the real imperial power.

Thank you for posting in our blog, and hope to see you more in our international discussions about Afghanistan.

I confer with you in those important points. As for the COIN strategy, which I had a little emphasis in my article, seems to make little effect in the current setup.

As we all know, Afghanistan being a predominantly conservative Muslim state and many times I have heard from the average Afghans that this is a challenge to our religion, norms and culture. The NATO brasses are in the impression that this is a public service and protecting the population from insurgency and yet the population is highly skeptical of the free roaming around of foreign troops in their cities, towns and villages.

Here, I believe I am seeing a disconnect between the populace and NATO. People are very much in favor of sealing the Porous Afghan-Pakistani border rather than the notion of being protected by foreign forces.

There are many futile issues that may not bear fruit in current setup, and therefore a thorough reassessment must be in place for correcting those errors. This also applies in the lucrative narcotic trafficking by notorious warlords who are or were in CIA payroll and benefiting hugely.

The actual picture that I have is dated June, 1883 .. Which is about three years post second Afghan-Anglo war.
I believe it was still a turmoil but you are right; far better than now ..
Years of war, Afghanistan has descended back into earlier centuries..

I see the picture of your Grandfather, and it resembles a very different time back then in Afghanistan.
I bet they had better understanding of the people and government than nowadays.

As the Russians re-assert control over the satellites that have for centuries been a part of the Russian sphere of influence, the adventure in Afghanistan cannot even deliver reliable control of those to the US, which was one of the principal reasons for the invasion in the first place.

All in all, the invasion has not made the world a safer place; If anything it has made it far more unstable. It has not delivered the kind of control over the Caspian Sea region that the US was so keen to get and it has consumed vast quantities of cash and destroyed the people and the infrastructure of another country.

Very detailed explanation, I have to admit the fact that formation of Pakistan from day one was absolutely wrong.. Here they have created a state which is in turmoil with all its neighbors. If any peace to arrive in the Subcontinent then new Pakistan with new borders to be formed else nothing can be resolved.

However, frankly if Britain had taken a neutral position during the U.S. operation in Afghanistan .. and not being part of NATO coalition then I blieve the war could have had a slight different picture …. the past memories of the Anglo-Afghan war pours salt on Afghan wounds .. This is just in MHO ..

The argument between Afghanistan and Pakistan centers on the issue of Durand Line Agreement and its validity. But, the Government of Balochistan (GOB) in Exile challenges the “legality” of the Durand Line Agreement between Afghanistan and British India in 1893, not its “validity”. We believe that the Durand Line Agreement is an illegal agreement, and therefore, it is null and void. The Durant Line separated the Pashtoon tribes from eachother just like the Berlin Wall did in Germany after the defeat of Nazis in World War II.
The British ruled parts of Afghanistan without any legal authority, but through treacherous use of a piece of paper, the Durand Line Agreement, which did not have any legal standing in any court of law. As long as the British kept Afghanistan and Balochistan in the dark and apart from each other to discuss the Agreement, the British could continue to rule Afghan territory.

But, in 1947, the British Indian government was dissolved, and hence, there was no reason for the British to continue this façade. But, Mohammad Ali Jinnah and his legal team immediately found out after Pakistan’s independence that the Durand Line Agreement was not a legally admissible/binding document. To continue the illegal occupation of territories belonging to Afghanistan, it was important for Pakistan to keep the flaw in the Agreement a secret. But, the dilemma was that Balochistan was an independent country, and one day the truth might be reveled to Afghanistan about the Agreement. This truth could result in Pakistan losing its Pashtun dominated areas to Afghanistan.

It was very important for Pakistan to either annex or invade Balochistan to continue with their illegal occupation of Afghan territories. When Jinnah failed to convince the Baloch government to annex with Pakistan on basis of the two sovereign states being predominantly Muslim countries, he ordered his armed forces to invade Balochistan and, under duress, forced the His Highness, the Khan of Kalat to sign legal documents to merge Balochistan with Pakistan. This simple act of aggression against a sovereign nation assured Pakistan that their secret about the Durand Line Agreement would remain intact.

Once Balochistan was secured, the Pakistanis deceptively used the law of uti possidetis juris to their advantage and continued occupation of territories belonging to Afghanistan.
The tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan is the result of the Durand Line that was created by the British,so there will never be peace among the Pashtoon tribes, divide and conquer is The British moto, but in this case it worked only on the separation of the Pashtoons.
Afghanistan and Pakistan nevr look eachother in the eye, because of the Durand Line, and Pakistan will never wish to see Afghanistan in peace, and the irony is that Pakistan is a big part of the rebuild and peace process in Afghanistan, beacuse the Bush Administration chose Pakistan as a partner by the British recommendation. There will never be peace in Afghanistan as long as Pakistan is involved as dcision maker about the future of Afghanistan.

The British built a few railroads in India, because they needed them to send home all the Indian national resouorces for free. But Ghenghez khan left the Mughal dyansty behind by his grand son Babur, that lasted for more than 200 years, and united the whole india as one prosper country, till the British came and over throwned the last Mughal king and made India the Jewel in The Crown.

I am glad you are admitting the fact that militarily Afghanistan is an unwinnable war.

As for the relevance if British either being liked or disliked by the Afghans; it would be sufficed if you or the British government to take a populace survey in Afghanistan and come up with final determination whether it is true or not. I am confident for the assessment I made in my article is due to my understanding by being present on the ground and intensely involved with my fellow Afghans.

By the way, would you be happy if Britain was invaded 4 times throughout the one half century?

I like to see your answer on that.

Thank you,

Khalil Nouri

Our engagement in Afghanistan is a disaster that has achieved nothing and is going nowhere. Everyone knows this to be true, especially the politicians. The fact that none feel able to say so is symptomatic of what is wrong with politics today.

Your notion of British dislike is irrelevant because without British presence it is a failed state.

Debbie
Manchester, UK

You could not make this stuff up!