Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Pakistan: Friend or Foe? -- By Janet Levy

As part of Pakistan’s efforts to prove its commitment to the war on terror, it has revisited plans for walling off and possibly mining sections of its 1,700-mile border with Afghanistan along the hotly contested Durand Line. ---- The Durand Line was imposed by the British in 1893 to separate Afghanistan from what was then British India and is now the North-West Frontier Province (N.W.F.P.) of Pakistan. --- Afghanistan has never accepted that the N.W.F.P. is part of Pakistan and refers to the natural border of the River Indus as its national boundary. In 1949, following India’s independence from Britain and the creation of Pakistan, Afghanistan declared the Durand Line invalid. --- Since that time, successive Pakistani governments have attempted without success to reach a bilateral agreement with Kabul to establish the Durand Line as the international border. --- No Afghan government, including the Taliban regime, has accepted this division.

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