Calling the ‘cursed’ Durand Line what it is

The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is perhaps the world’s most contentious and conflict prone. Most Afghans consider it an artificial line that divides tribes, families and histories.

The roots of the problem go back to 1893 when an agreement was signed between the British rulers of India and the Amir of Afghanistan, which effectively dismembered the Pashtun dominated parts of Afghanistan and created a border named the Durand Line after the British-Indian foreign secretary, Sir Mortimer Durand, who had engineered the signing of the agreement.

Afghans never accepted the division of their lands even though their Amir had, for some unfathomable reason, signed away a vast swathe of their territory. When Pakistan became independent in 1947, the Afghans wanted their lands back, arguing that the agreement had been signed with the British rulers and that it had lapsed after their departure. Pakistan, however, refused to relinquish even an inch of territory, and thereby, ignited a dispute that persists to this day.

Although the Durand Line is anathema to Afghans, most outsiders (especially Western historians and writers) have accepted it unquestioningly. Author Rajiv Dogra, a former Indian foreign service officer, is perhaps the first writer to see the Durand Line for what it really is: a curse.

His book, aptly named Durand’s Curse, is the first major investigation into the circumstances of the signing of the dubious agreement between Sir Mortimer Durand and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan in November 1893. The book also deals with the tragic effects of the Durand Line on the people it divided as well as its devastating impact on Asian geopolitics.

The author’s main thesis is that the Durand Line agreement was an underhand piece of work engineered by the British and its agents. He suspects that the Amir of Afghanistan might not actually have signed the agreement.

When the author began researching the book, he was intrigued by the discovery that virtually every account on the history of that time devoted just a paragraph or so on the circumstances in which the Durand agreement was signed. He wondered how such a strategically critical issue received so little attention from historians and gazetteers of that time. And from there was born the idea of a book.

The more he dug into the history of that period and the mysterious circumstances surrounding the signing of this critical agreement, the more he was convinced that something “fishy” was afoot.

Durand, a hardnosed British bureaucrat, had arrived as a guest of honour in the Amir’s court and even though he was a busy personage — nothing less than the foreign secretary of the vast British Indian empire — he had spent weeks tarrying in Kabul as the Amir showed no inclination of signing the proposed agreement.

A few months earlier, Durand had recorded of his Kabul mission: “I cannot say it is a duty I look forward to with unmixed pleasure, for the Amir is not fond of giving up territory and he is likely to be extremely unpleasant on the subject… However the thing must be done.”

While in Kabul, as the weeks dragged on, Durand wrote in frustration: “The Kabul mission has broken down.” Yet, all of a sudden, something appears to have completely turned the Amir around. Without any concession from the British side, the Amir abruptly decided to sign away almost half the Pashtun-dominated territories of his country.

“Like many others, I too have puzzled over the mystery of the Durand Line,” the author writes. “Why did the Iron Amir sign on the dotted line? Why were there no Afghans in the room when he signed it? Why, in his so-called autobiography, there is considerable details about how he agreed to settle the northern boundary during his talks with Durand, but almost next to nothing about the frontier where he gifted away 40,000 square miles of Afghan lands to the British?”

What is more, he writes, “How did this hugely suspicious Amir agree happily that a small unsigned map with a hastily drawn line was to be his country’s ‘scientific’ border henceforth?”

Everything suggests the manner in which the Durand agreement was signed constitutes a dark chapter in Afghan history. Was the Amir in his right senses or was he ill or drugged? Or did unknown players dupe the Amir? There are no answers. All books are silent on the circumstances in which the Durand agreement was signed.

Durand’s Curse therefore is a vital insight into one of the most significant events involving British colonial machinations during the heyday of the Great Game. Its implications might not change the course of history but will at the least cast a deep shadow over the legitimacy of the Durand Line.

The writer is an independent security and political risk consultant