WAR ON TERROR

By: Zahoor 

This Note may be read as an afterwards to the below given article that appeared in Dawn in June, 2009. Let me confess that initially I felt somewhat guilty after suggesting that the Durand Line may be fenced and converted into a permanent border. My guilt flowed from the fact that my family had always sided with the nationalist party of Bacha Khan. But being a staunch believer in Realism, I easily stopped chiding myself, long before witnessing the Taliban takeover of Kabul in August, 2021 and the subsequent events including the self-righteous mullahs' cavorting with a rabid believer in Hindutva. I atoned for my feeling of guilt by making the subject matter as the cover story of my collection of articles titled 'Fateful Line.' Zahoor, my favourite cartoonist and the most intelligent artist in Pakistan, favoured me once again by drawing the cover as seen above.

Luckily, I say luckily for I do not rate my foresight highly, the below given article contained every foreboding that I had warned against including how our zealous TV anchors, rollicking in a life of incredible riches and comfort, would call the Afghan mullahs as our last line of defense against India. These same people have now been joined by newcomers inspired by the idiosyncrasies of Imran Niazi that Pakistan should hold talks with the militants. Our army generals of yester years who created, nurtured and patronised the Taliban could also be seen siding with what Imran unflinchingly believes in. These people are trying to distract the common people from the real issue i.e. fanaticism, by claiming that the ongoing conflict is for the control of minerals forced on us by America and China. A recent notification by the University of Peshawar that it was closing down nine departments including geology and geography due to very low admissions ought to silence these bigmouths. This notification, as if by a stroke of Divine intervention, has arrived at the precise time to tell us of our poor comprehension of the intricate skill of extraction of minerals and their conversion into valuable goods.

I do not say that the fence saw the light of the day soon after the publication of my suggestion, but seeing it being installed I couldn't help stop drawing a sigh of relief. I strongly believe that Pakistan should now double down on the fence by making it into an unbreakable and unscalable wall even if it required diverting resources from other pending strategic projects. Pakistan may also consider granting the option of migration with ex gratia to Afghanistan to all those self-styled politicians and TV anchors who are calling for a dialogue with the terrorist outfits. Let these guys and girls play chummy in their bespoke dresses with the Taliban in Afghanistan. These people have not learnt that even refugees in Pakistan and Iran were loathe to going back to their country while the yoke of militancy hung over their heads.

Before I finish, I would like to make a correction that Mortimer Durand is not buried in Dera Ismail Khan. I had misreported this in the below given article after picking it from the social media. When I visited Dera Ismail Khan in 2016, I made it a point to visit the cemetery where he was said to be buried. It wasn't in fact a cemetery, as I found it to my surprise, but a vast compund of an old church covered with wild grass and furze. There was just one grave in the centre of the compound with a headstone identifying a Durand who had also served in the Indian part of Punjab. It was neither Mortimer Durand nor his brother Algernon. I offer my apologies to the readers.)

TIME FOR HOLBROOKE TO PLAY DURAND

By: Nasser Yousaf

THAT Sir Mortimer Durand was the statesman consummate, he has left irrefutable proof thereof. In the early autumn of 1893, Durand left Peshawar for Kabul and stayed there as a special guest of Amir Abdur Rehman.

He returned to Peshawar two months later with the priceless trophy of the 'Durand Line' drawn between the British and Afghan areas of influence in the heretofore no-man's Frontier region.

Those were not easy times either. British India had taken the railways into the heart of Afghan lands through the mythical Khojak Tunnel in the rugged Balochistan terrain. Amir Abdur Rehman was incensed and it appeared that the formidable Afghan emotions would be hard to cool down. Employing all the craft that he possessed, the Afghan amir had made stealthy arrangements to pen every single word that Durand, who spoke fluent Persian, uttered during their fateful meetings. But all such moves on the part of the Afghan ruler came to naught as an astute Durand carried the day through sifting and demarcating the respective spheres over which the two would have the right to exercise suzerainty.

More than a century later, Durand lies buried in obscurity in the Christian cemetery in Dera Ismail Khan. The area all around is up in spiralling flames and the world knows little about how to put out the raging fire. Although the sanctity of the Line is scarcely known to have been observed owing to the fact that the same people have for eons lived on either side of it, it had a symbolically sobering effect on relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan. But new actors or non-state actors — the Taliban — have since emerged on the scene. Britain has since been replaced by the US as the reigning power and Mr Richard Holbrooke has unwittingly been chosen to act as Mortimer Durand.

That the approximately 2,200 km-long Line still lacks the stamp of a border shows the level of social, cultural, political, commercial and of late religious sensibilities and motives attached to its extremely volatile state of being. Pashtun nationalist parties in Pakistan have for long loathed the idea of converting the Line into a permanent border on the grounds that it would deal a fatal blow to the dream of a greater Pakhtunistan. The most common nationalistic refrain until the 1980s and well into the mid-1990s, Lar o bar yaw Afghan' ('the Afghans of the highlands of Afghanistan and the lowlands of the Frontier are one and the same people') is still fresh in our memories although not really in fashion these days.

The sentiments on the other side of the Line have also been hard to understand and reconcile with as Afghan leaders have laid claim to lands far beyond where Pashtun demography has extended. Afghan President Hamid Karzai might not be of much credible use to his people but when it comes to unrestrained jingoism and outlandish chauvinism, there is no stopping him.

Mr Karzai would do well to step into the real world. The Durand Line is no more that same threshold through which Pashtun wedding and funeral processions would pass and neither does it merely serve as a conduit for the movement of Afghan transit trade. The passage is now a licit thoroughfare for Arab, Chechen, Uzbek and Tajik mercenaries and for the fulfilment of their macabre designs. In order to prove himself as a true heir to Durand, it is these concerns that Holbrooke would be required to convey to Karzai.

In a sense the US envoy would now be required to complete the job left unfinished by his predecessor by turning the Line into a permanent border and erecting an invincible fence along its length.

No doubt, fencing the Line, from its highest pinnacles in the extremities of north-western Chitral to Balochistan's south, would be a colossal job to undertake in these troubled political and economic times. But there is no alternative to it. It is a wall that the world needs in order to make life difficult for the militants prancing around its perimeters at will. It should, therefore, be built by the civilised world as a bulwark against the forces of terror.

The financial part thus settled, the racial, social, cultural and linguist costs of the project should not impede its urgent undertaking. A solid example exists in our neighbourhood. India has built an over 4,000 km-long fence on its border with Bangladesh that literally encircles the latter and to good effect. The fence divides the western Bengalis from the eastern and few seem to mind it.

Pakistan has learned the lesson the hard way. The kind of resistance being put up by the militants in Swat and Waziristan and the infrastructure that they built while we looked away should now serve as an eye-opener. It is indeed shocking to see and hear some defeatist ideologues on our television screens still referring to the Taliban as our last line of defence against our neighbour on the eastern border. These armchair ideologues wouldn't like to hear that Afghans as a nation — Pashtun, Tajik or Uzbek — consider Pakistan as their bete noire and responsible for their endless afflictions and trauma.

Here is a chance to put an end to these sinister misgivings. Mr Holbrooke must take a leaf out of Durand's book and redirect the course of his efforts. It shouldn't be a hard task putting Karzai on the right track. As far as the stakeholders on this line of the divide are concerned, their fickleness has already brought the nationalists to the verge of extinction while the tribal jirga and its simplicities do not offer solutions to the emerging complexities as has been repeatedly tested and proved. The Taliban threat, as for now, seems permanently settled and hence it needs permanent solutions.