Commentary: Don’t Let Pakistan Repeat Past Mistakes In Afghanistan

The recently concluded London Conference on Afghanistan is the latest in a series of meetings that have sought to craft strategies for a country that has been torn by conflict since the Soviet Union invaded it in 1979. Back then, worried that Moscow would expand its footprint in the Pashtun heartland and pose a direct threat to the unity of Pakistan, the generals in Islamabad began a covert program of funding, training, and equipping Afghans willing to take on the Soviet Army.

At that time, the overwhelming majority of Pashtuns were moderate, uninfected by the viruses of religious exclusivism and intolerance that they were subsequently exposed to. The problem for Pakistan was that many of the moderate Pashtuns were ethnic nationalists, who sought a unified Pashtun state that would cover both sides of the 1893 Durand Line, the boundary that was arbitrarily drawn by the British empire to mark out its sphere of influence from that of the amir of Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman Khan. The Afghan territory ceded by the amir was to have been returned 100 years later, a condition that was obviously unacceptable to Pakistan.

No Afghan government has ratified the Durand Line, and only a few have recognized it as a valid (albeit temporary) border. In 1949, the then king of Afghanistan explicitly declared that the line was illegal and that the territories ceded in 1893 ought to be reintegrated into his country. Since then, Pashtun nationalists have regarded Pakistan as a country in illegal occupation of as much as 40 percent of Pashtun territory. They see Pakistan as a country dominated by Punjabis, where the Pashtuns -- together with Sindhis, Baluch, and other non-Punjabi groups -- have second-class status. Therefore, they seek the return of the lost lands of the Pashtun to Afghanistan.

Given the strong backing that Pakistan has historically enjoyed from the West, this demand has received almost zero traction within the international community. However, the dream of a unified Pashtun homeland has continued to simmer in Afghan minds, raising concern in Pakistan about a possible rise in the sentiment for unification in the populations of Dera, Bahawalpur, Ghazi, and the FATA, which were under Afghan rule for 12 centuries before the imposition of the Durand Line. --- Read More- Don’t Let Pakistan Repeat Past Mistakes In Afghanistan

'Charlie Wilson's War' would be harder to fight these days - CSM
حامی مجاهدین افغان در کنگره آمریکا، در گذشت

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