Afghanistan’S Experiences: The History of the Most Horrifying Events Involving Politics, Religion, and Terrorism

By Hamid Hadi M.D

Afghanistans Experiences is a sweeping analysis of the historic events and interplay between politics, religion, and terrorism in Afghanistan, the southeastern region of the country, and beyond.

The author has vividly explained the origin and the rise of Taliban to powerone of the most important sources of turmoil in contemporary time. Thus, one can perceive how the dynamics of the sinister politics, religious extremism, and terrorism has culminated in avoidable brutal wars and human tragedies.

Hamid Hadi has vividly described and put into political debate Afghanistans history; the implications of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan; the Americans, the Pakistanis, and Saudis role in the civil war; and the creation of the al-Qaeda that led to the 9/11 tragedy.

In a unique research and analysis, the author has examined the acts of Islamic terrorists against the American people and institutions during the last 176 years and brilliantly deduced that the Russian invasion of Afghanistan was a watershed era in the formation of contemporary terrorism and that the failure of both superpowers foreign policy in Afghanistan to a great extent has resulted in growth of the terrorist network.

Besides a detailed description of the 9/11 tragedy and Iraq war, Hamid Hadi has painstakingly brought the world religions and Abrahamic religions in particular into debate and discussed the reform of the Islamic faith.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Mar 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524600068

Hamid Hadi M.D

Hamid Hadi is a professor emeritus at East Carolina University School of Medicine. He is the winner of several academic awards and has published extensively. The author has spent half of his life in Afghanistan and his four decades of study and insight into politics, religion, and terrorism, and his status as a human rights activist highly qualify him to delve into this endeavor. He and his wife, Afifa Hadi, live in Greenville, North Carolina.

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2016 Hamid Hadi, M.D. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 03/30/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-0007-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-0008-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-0006-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016904782

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 6: The Durand Border Line: An Epicenter of All Conflicts

Chapter 7: The 9/11 Tragedy and Political Implications of a Long War on Terror

Chapter 8: Judgment of the Sword: Religion’s Footprints in the Arena of Politics and Terrorism

To my wife, Afifa, who immensely inspired and encouraged me in my endeavor and allowed me to impinge on her time so that I could finish this book.

Acknowledgments

In writing of this history book, I am enormously indebted to many friends and fellow scientists for their intellectual contributions.

Special thanks go to my friend Mr. Dean Muhammad for providing me with unique historic illustrations and photos of the old Afghanistan and the tribal people, to engineer Wali Tabiat for sending me the books and documents on the roots of the Pathan people, and to Mr. Qawi Koshan and Dr. Shaheer Alemy for allowing me to review their religious and historic collections on Afghanistan.

I also want to thank my colleague and friend Dr. Akram Shah of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) for his insight and debate about complex philosophical issues.

I am also indebted to the East Carolina University Campus Joyner Library’s employees. Both Mr. Clark Nall and David Hisle’s personal assistance was remarkable.

My thanks go to Mrs. Ann Wall for her typing and professional skill in the preparation of the chapters and pages of this book. Her dedication and commitment was unequalled.

Finally, thanks go to my wife, Afifa, the only one who carried the weight of my academic commitment by spending an enormous amount ot time helping me put this book together. I thank her with all my love.

July 2015, Greenville, NC

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Introduction

Winston Churchill once said, History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it. As I write this book, I believe that history will vindicate me for every chapter and page that I claim as historically true. In writing this book, which covered the history of Afghanistan and recounts the many horrifying events involing politics, religion, and terrorism, I may have made some of my friends and fellow countrymen uncomfortable. However, I attest to the fact that I have reviewed the events as they have occurred and have based my views on reason, debate, analysis of the events or subjects, and the testimony of most distinguished scholars in the field. Furthermore, I have not examined the events or looked at the subjects from a particular vantage point. Nor have I adopted a biased position or taken sides in controversial issues.

Living half of my life in Afghanistan as an intellectual Muslim allowed me to understand the fundamental character, disposition, and culture of this multiethnic and highly complex society. Moreover, my higher education, teaching, and research for four decades in academic institutions of medicine in the United States as well as continuous study and observation as political, religious, and terrorism issues evolved granted me the ability to produce and present this body of work to the public. The purpose of this book is twofold. First, it describes the history and importance of Afghanistan as it relates to terrorism and current global turmoil. Afghanistan is one of the most difficult, complicated, poorly understood, and yet strategically unique country on earth. Second, in a series of narratives, debates, and discussions throughout eight chapters, I have presented the origin of the contemporary terror networks and elucidated the interplay between politics, religion, and terrorism—an often avoidable tragedy that has led many countries into war, bloodshed, and unimaginable misery.

This history book critically addresses important topics such as the origin of Taliban, Afghanistan’s history, Soviet invasion of the country, the civil war, the 9/11 tragedy, and religion. More importantly, the chapters of this book are linked to one another and elicit a chain of events so that the readers can easily perceive how the dynamics of the sinister politics, religious extremism, and terrorism have culminated in numerous wars and conflicts.

As a point of departure, the author has elected to begin the first chapter in a dramatic fashion with the unprovoked onslaught of the Taliban and the Al-Qaeda terror groups on the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif in Afghanistan. In order to better understand the depth of the Taliban’s horror and their inherently evil tendency to annihilate any sign of civilization, the author has brought part of the text to the surface as a prelude to this introduction.

The city of Mazar and the ancient province of Balk in northern Afghanistan are also known as the land of Aryans and the mother of all cities, a cradle of civilization in Transoxiana, where the inhabitants worshipped Anahita. The legendary Zoroaster, the prophet of the Zoroastrian religion, was also born here.

In the era of the Great Kanishka, it was here that the Jewish houses of worship (the synagogues), the Christian churches, and the Buddhist temples were built side by side, tolerated, financed, and supported by the government.

Mazar recalls Alexander the Great, the Greeko-Bactria culture, the Diodatus, the Antiachus II, and poets and philosophers such as Rumi, Beruni, Avicenna, and many others. Avicenna was a physician and a philosopher, one of the most famous proponents of the Muslim universalism, and an eminent figure in Islamic learning.

Mazar is also distinguished with a majestic mausoleum and blue mosque where, according to legend, the slain body of Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam, was buried. The splendid structure of the mausoleum with its geometric friezes on blue tiles and marble is an architectural allegory depicting the ethos or the fundamental character and spirit of early inhabitants.

As part of the heritage of this city, on the first day of the first month of the year, the feast of the equinox or Nowruz, meaning New Day, is held, and people offer prayers for the peace and prosperity of the nation.

It was here in Mazar on a hot day in August 1998 that a nightmare engulfed the city. A group of the most primitive and barbaric students of the Islamis madrassas of Pakistan (called the Taliban) who were interspersed with the Pakistani military Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) and armed with heavy artilleries and shrouded in a mysterious international intrigue entered the city of Mazar. They created enormous fear and awe as they captured an estimated four to eight thousand Hazara Shia men inhabitants of the city and slit their throats in the courtyard of Ali’s mausoleum. Then in a frenzy of vengeance killing, a paroxysm characteristic of the religious terror groups, they massacred men, women, and children around the city. They didn’t take pity on religion, culture, civilization, rank, age, race, or the wailing women they abducted and gang-raped. They looted, plundered, and destroyed everything in their path. They burned schools and libraries. Religious terrorists consider books to be the dangerous enemy of their twisted ideology.

The massacre went on and on until no soul was left alive and no eyes remained open to weep for the dead. For the next few days, thousands of corpses lay in the streets and alleys, as they were forbidden to be buried. Stray dogs started gathering around the victims’ bodies. The heavy fog, smoke, and clouds overcast the sky and prevented the sun from divulging the hidden carnage and telling the world about this story of cruelty. The late president of France Francois Mitterrand in an interview with Elie Wiesel in his book Memoir in Two Voices (published by the Arcade Publishing) said; The fact remains, we have still not evolved beyond the barbaric stage of evolution. We see that taking place here now, before our very eyes.

This is the true face of religious terrorists. In her book Holy War, the distinguished historian Karen Armstrong blamed crusades for today’s conflicts in the Middle Eastern countries. She wrote in her introduction, I now believe that the crusades were one of the direct causes of the conflict in the Middle East today. I know that this is a startling statement and I welcome the opportunity to explore it in depth. In his book God’s War, Christopher Tyerman echoed the same concept and wrote, Francis Bacon in the early 17th century mocked the crusaders as a ‘rendezvous of cracked brains that wore their feather in their head instead of their hat,’ or condemned by the 18th century Scottish philosopher and historian David Hume as the most signal and most durable monument of human folly that has yet appeared in any age or nation."

Here during the era of the Taliban, one can vividly see that violence that the state has approved and the religion has supported. As indicated in chapter 2, following the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the players of the new game entertained the formation of the religious army (the Taliban) in order to occupy the postwar-shattered Afghanistan and extend the gasoline pipeline from untapped Central Asian reservoirs through Afghanistan to the coastal city of Karachi at the Arabian Sea. The parties that perpetrated this adventure included Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, politicians of the West, and the oil companies, namely Unocal. As extensively described in this book, each party pursued its own interest. This plan, which costs thousands of lives, disastrously failed because of a lack of understanding about Afghanistan.

Chapter 3 of this book explores the fundamental understanding of the character, the spirit, the disposition, and the moral elements of the groups and communities of Afghanistan—something essential in fighting terrorism and transforming a rogue nation into a state of democracy and rule of law. Historians agree that no other country of comparable size and population to Afghanistan has seen so much action in the course of history. No nation has experienced so much bloodshed, intrigue, gallantry, savagery, devotions, patience, or sacrifice.

The invading armies of Timurlane, Alexander the Great, Babur, Akbar, Britain’s Auckland, Mcnaughten, Pollack, Napier, and communist invaders during the three Anglo-Afghan wars all have experienced the savage spirit of Afghan people for freedom and witnessed their resistance to foreign invaders and colonialists. During the last fifteen years, American efforts to stabilize the country have not achieved the desired goal.

Despite the presence of American troops and their sacrifice in the war against terrorists in Afghanistan, notwithstanding billions in taxpayer dollars for financial aid and reconstruction projects, the input is known, but the outcome is not assessed. The country is still a battleground for insurgency and suicide bombers, a wilderness for the religious fundamentalists and warlords, an international heroin market with widespread rings of thugs and thieves in the highest legislative, executive, and judiciary branches of government. In the historic course of democracy, Afghanistan is the only country where a president was appointed to the office before the people’s votes were counted. In summary, victory in Afghanistan means understanding Afghanistan.

The Durand borderline between Afghanistan and the neighboring Pakistan and its millions of the ungoverned tribal population in regard to peace and stability in the region are extensively discussed in this book. Together, we will reach the following conclusions: The Russians had three intentions for invading Afghanistan in December of 1979. First, the Soviet Union was always interested in establishing a cordon sanitaire or creating buffer states on its frontiers. Second, Brezhnev’s doctrine declared that the Soviet Union had a right to come to the assistance of an endangered fellow socialist country that, without direct assistance from the Soviets, could not survive against growing resistance from Mujahideen or freedom fighters. Third, it was always a strategic desire for the Soviets to get closer to the Persian Gulf and warm waters of India.

I have also emphasized that we should not ignore the America role in the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Once Soviets invaded Afghanistan, former President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, gloated in Washington for his success in a predesigned plan to lure the Soviets into invading Afghanistan. After the Red Army entered the country, Brzezinski sent a note to President Carter and said, Now Soviets are going to have their own Vietnam in Afghanistan.

Several years later when Soviets withdrew their troops, Afghanistan descended into chaos, and Kabul was transformed into a theater of conflicts. Americans were no longer interested in helping people who defeated the Red Army. The civil war resulted in a massive influx of migrants, terrorists, Pakistani Taliban, and members of the ISI through a porous southeastern border into the country. This 1,640-mile border and its tribal population—Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) and North Western Frontier Province (NWFP)—from North and South Waziristan to Quetta have functioned as a source of terrorism between the two neighbors, and more recently, these areas have actively harbored terrorists. After studying the 9/11 tragedy, I presented a striking finding. The chronology of Islamic terrorist attacks on American people and institutions from 1837 to 2013, a period of 176 years, showed interesting and appauling results.

It was quite evident that since the year 1979, terrorists of the Islamic faith were overwhelmingly incriminated in attacks on American people and institutions. They were mostly Arabs, Middle Eastern, and/or Pakistani in origin. I believe that the year 1979, which coincided with Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, was a great watershed era in the creation of the contemporary terrorism in Afghanistan. In the evolution of this event, the two superpowers’ failed foreign policy played a primary role in this genesis. Russians were responsible for invading a poor and relatively peaceful small country. By doing so, they killed one million Afghans and destroyed the government institutions, and among other atrocities, they devastated the country’s intellectual wealth. Americans were blamed on the other side for luring the Soviets into invading Afghanistan and later abandoning the country when the Red Army was defeated. The fatal devastation occurred when Afghanistan was left in the hands of heavily armed Mujahideen, Pakistani religious terrorist groups, the ISI, and the Al-Qaeda terror network. Later the Taliban harbored Osama bin Laden, who attacked the United States of America.

In the chapter on 9/11, I have critically examined the Al-Qaeda network, and I have also presented the life of bin Laden from his birth to the 9/11 tragedy. The US response to the 9/11 tragedy, the Iraq War, was severely criticized around the globe. Beside an economic loss from this war, a number of federal laws were violated. Thousands of Americans and Iraqis lost their lives, and American prestige and image were tarnished abroad.

In regard to the Iraq War, I have explained the role of neoconservatives who imposed their long-held ambitious plan on George W. Bush. This group, which always touted American exceptionalism and expressed contempt for the international accords, was composed of students of Leo Strauss and Albert Wohlstetter. They harbored a dangerous ideology and asserted that the fundamental determinant of the relationship between states rests on military power and the willingness to use it. The lengthy discussion on the horrifying events of the torture chambers of the Iraq’s Abu Gharieb Prison is included in this chapter too.

The depth of the negative impact of the Iraq War on American prestige and image was so profound that Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet and philosopher, once described the Taj Mahal as a solitary tear, suspended on the cheek of time.

Religion is a pivotal concept in this book. All Abrahamic religions are historically associated with wars and human miseries. Here, the history and philosophy of all religions are presented, and the theories behind the origin of religions are explained for the public. The first two Abrahamic religions are reasonably reformed, and in its political systems, the separation of state from religion is successfully achieved.

Special attention is paid to the religion of Islam, where religion is not separated from the state, and we should note the Islamic laws and jurisprudence have not been reformed according to the changing time and environmental conditions.

At the end of the book, among many other contributory factors, a three-pronged conceptual framework for understanding the reason for the creation and surge of the contemporary terrorism and chaos is outlined. These three factors include

• the failure in the foreign policy of the two superpowers (the former Soviet Union and the United States of America) in Afghanistan;

• the failure to change the status of the ungoverned tribal border people between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the failure to overhaul the pro-terror cultural DNA of Pakistan and the Saudi Arabia; and

• the failure to reform the religion of Islam according to the changing time and environment as Prophet Muhammad recommended 1,400 years ago.

Prophet Muhammad recommended the reform of religion of Islam every hundred years because of change in time and environment.

Chapter 6

The Durand Border Line: An Epicenter of All Conflicts

But when you should cut them out of my dominions, they will neither be of any use to you nor to me: you will always be engaged in fighting or other troubles with them, and they will always go on plundering. As long as your government is strong and in peace, you will be able to keep them quiet by a strong hand, but if at any time a foreign enemy appears on the borders of India, these frontier tribes, who are people of my nationality and my religion, you will injure my prestige in eyes of my subjects, and will make me weak, and my weakness is injurious to your government."¹

—A letter from Amir Abdul Rahman of Afghanistan to British viceroy of India in 1893 about the map of the Durand Line, predicting the disastrous consequences of the border line demarcation

No patchwork scheme—and all our present recent schemes … are mere patchwork—will settle the Waziristan problem. Not until the military stream-roller has passed over the country from end to end, will there be peace. But I do not want to be the person to start that machine.

—Lord Curzon, Britain’s viceroy of India and foreign secretary

The history of the British-Russian rivalry over Afghanistan is a sweeping saga, chronicling the brutal wars and international intrigues of the nineteenth century in India and Afghanistan, the great game, which culminated in the siege of Kabul and other major cities and the death of thousands of innocent Afghans, British soldiers, their families, and the camp followers. As a result of this political game and British ambition and domination of small nations, the country was cruelly attacked on several occasions. Its people suffered tremendous and sweeping destruction, and for decades it lost the opportunity to stand as an independent nation. The British well-known policy of divide and rule weakened the very foundation of Afghanistan, something that is necessary for a nation to advance toward civility and freedom.

The design of the Durand Line in the south of the country, which divided the Pushtun tribes and cruelly separated thousands of families and their relatives from onea another, resulted in decades of war and unrest, and as time passed, it became the hotbed of terrorism in the region. Furthermore, the illegal Durand Line blocked a large mass of the Pushtun population from socioeconomic growth, and hence, it predisposed the population to infiltration by the neighboring and outside terrorist groups. More recently, the porous Durand border was used by Pakistan to unleash the forces of the Taliban cult and occupy Afghanistan.

The area across the Durand Line today belongs to Pakistan and includes Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) and North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The area is quite volatile and highly difficult to manage because of long-standing periods of lawlessness and a lack of education and socioeconomic development. In his book North-West Frontier, Arthur Swinson wrote,²

As is only too evident from episodes already recorded, crisis on North-West Frontier of India develop with alarming speed, usually when they are unexpected and almost invariably at the worse possible moment for those whose duty it is to defend the passes. McNaughton, who will be remembered, signaled that all was well, the day before he was murdered; Cavagnari sent a similar signal and in 1897, Sir Richard Udney, Commissioner of Peshawar, signaled that all was quiet on the Khyber, only hours before the news was received that the Afridi Lashkars were marching. As Lord Curzon once put it, ‘No man who has read a page of Indian history will ever prophecy about the Frontier.’ The third Afghan war, one of the most difficult campaigns fought on the frontier during the entire century that the British occupied it, could not have come at a worse time. It was May 1919. The Great War had dragged to its bloody conclusion only a few months earlier; the empire had lost a million dead and several million wounded. The nation was utterly exhausted and longed for peace. In India many of the British troops were due for repatriation and impatiently waiting for the day when they would march to Bombay and board the ships.

As the British invasion of Afghanistan through the frontier continued and the Afghan people enormously suffered, British troops and their marauding army were not immune. A commentary in the book titled Beyond the Kyber Pass alludes to the pain and misery inflicted upon British occupying troops as they invaded Afghanistan;³

As the darkness fell, the blaze of cantonment buildings, put to torch by the Afghans, illuminated the miserable rear-guard troops as they struggled to extricate themselves from their predicament. As they fought their way out of the Kabul plains in and effort to rejoin the main column, Lawrence was shocked to see a continuous line of poor wretches, men, women and children and dead or dying from cold and wounds—Camp followers who had already fallen victim to Afghan marauders. Those still alive but unable to move pleaded that someone should put them out of their misery Many children too exhausted to keep up, collapsed in the snow while their mothers wailed in despair until too numb with cold to cry. With each mile more fell by the wayside to clutter the route with their bloody and frozen bodies in a wrenching scene of tragedy unfolding … As dawn broke, a scene of undescrible chaos met the eye. Strewn about the ground were men who had been frozen in their sleep during the night. Poor old Macgregor, an aging noncommissioned officer, could be seen rigidly holding his sword aloft, a macabre statue of resolute devotion as he lay dead in the snow. Most serious, all of Shah Shoja’s 6th regiment had decamped in the night—better to face slavery in Kabul than to be frozen to death or slaughtered on the march. [For Shah Shoja’s soldiers, it may not have been too painful to return to Kabul, because they were not returning to a foreign country. Shoja’s army returned to their own country ruled by a different Afghan ruler.]

The Russian invasion from north, too, brought mayhem and widespread destruction of the social fabric of Afghan’s society. By inflicting unimaginable atrocities against innocent civilian population, the Soviet Army committed crimes such as arbitrary arrests, detentions without trial, tortures, executions, killing of prisoners, individual and collective rape, the killing of women and children, the bombardment of villages, and the massacre of Afghan civilians.⁴ As a result of widespread resistance, especially the sacrifice of the freedom fighters in the Punjsher Valley, the Red Army was defeated, and as its soldiers crossed the Amu River and returned to their country, they entered to a country that was shattered. Its false ideology was decomposing, and it had less than two years to live.

Given the occupation, the invasion, and the bloodshed of innocent people, we know the design and creation of artificial boundaries are not without consequences. For Britain, its marauding army, which had colonized and plundered almost every small, poor, and weak country around the globe, and its members had departed from the human norms of lawful conduct, gradually weakening the British. The shining sun of the colonial empire began to descend and fade as colonized nations broke the chains of bondage and claimed their independence. India became a free country. The partition of India was set forth in the Indian Independence Act of 1947, and it resulted in the dissolution of the Indian Empire and the end of the British Raj. This culminated in a struggle between the newly emerging Islamic state of Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent.

During the partition of India, up to 12.5 million people were displaced in the British Indian Empire, with estimates of the death toll varying from several hundred thousand to a million.⁵ As a remnant of the British colonial policy, the demarcation of the so-called Durand Line between Afghanistan and Pakistan still haunts the region and will probably plague global security for years to come.

Following this brief introduction, I will discuss the Durand Line, its history, its controversy, the people living on both sides of the boundary, its geography, the sociopolitical challenges of the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) and North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), and the implications of Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) or laws enacted by the British Raj in the Pushtun-inhabited tribal areas. In this chapter we will also explore the Afghanistan-Pakistan views and legal claims on the Durand Line as well as the international perspective for the creation of a peaceful region. Readers will learn how and when terrorism in this region was created and what factors promoted its growth. Finally, I will present the framework of a strategic plan to eliminate regional terrorism between Afghanistan and Pakistan and mitigate tension between the two countries.

Historic Aspects of the Durand Line

The Durand Line refers to a porous line between Afghanistan and Pakistan (see the map) that has divided the Pushtun tribes living in the area for hundreds of years. This borderline, which is approximately 1,640 miles long, was established in 1893 after an agreement between Afghan Amir Abdul Rahman Khan and British representative Henry Mortimer Durand, the foreign secretary of British India at the time. As a result, thousands of Pushtun tribes live on both sides of the line and are cruelly separated from their families and relatives. Therefore, this demarcation has resulted in revolts, lawlessness, a lack of socioeconomic growth, and the creation of a large population that’s ungovernable by the state of Pakistan. Obviously the combination of these factors has rendered the population in the area susceptible to terrorist infiltration and subsequent crisis in the region and abroad. The study and critical analysis of the Durand Line will lead us to the core of the conflict and origin of the evil that has created so much turmoil and unrest in the world.

Historically, in the era of the great game between Russia and the Britain, the British Empire made every effort to prevent Russian advance toward and influence in British India, the warm waters of the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean by creating the three-tier border between the two ambitious powers. Afghanistan and its southern border became the critical component of the barrier.

In the north of Afghanistan, the Amu (Oxus) River was determined the boundary line between Afghanistan and Russia. In a secret treaty in 1873 between British and Russian representatives, the Amu River was accepted as an undemarcated northern border between Afghanistan and Russia, and in return, Britain accepted the eventual absorption by Russia of all the Khanates territories that were under the suzerainty of the amir of Kabul. These actions were rarely seen and were almost unprecedented in the history of world diplomacy. In this secret treaty, neither the British nor the Russians consulted the amir of Kabul, and they made this decision without the participation of Afghanistan’s representative.⁶ As a result of this secret and illegal agreement between the two empires, Russians were encouraged to attack and occupy the city of Merv in 1884, the Punjdeh Oasis and other islands in 1885, and northern Afghanistan too.

The southern boundary of Afghanistan with British India, however, remained undefined and unsettled until correspondence and overtures were made between Amir Abdul Rahman and various viceroys of India, such as Lord Dufferin, Ripon, Landsdowne, and the secretary of state for India, Salisbury. The final negotiation was preceded by a map of the area and design of border demarcation, all of which was sent to amir by the viceroy. Amir Abdul Rahman Khan was not initially consulted about the demarcation of the line. The amir of Kabul was not happy with the details of the map, wherein all the Waziri territories, New Chaman, the railway station, Chageh, Bulund Khel, Mohmand, Asmar, Chitral, and other territories lying in between were marked as if they belonged to India. Thus, the Durand Line, which slashed almost half of southern Afghanistan’s territory and confiscated thousands of Pushtun villages and towns, remained as today’s seven semiautonomous agencies (Bajaur, Khyber, Kurram, Mohmand, Orkzai, South Waziristan and North Waziristan) named Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) as well as the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) tribal areas, which includes Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, and the Dera of Ismail Khan.

On November 12, 1893, Amir Abdul Rahman Khan and Henry Mortimer Durand signed the Durand Line Agreement. The text of the agreement reads as following:⁷

The text of the Durand Line Agreement

November 12, 1893

Whereas certain questions have arisen regarding the frontier of Afghanistan on the side of India, and whereas both His Highness the Amir and the Government of India are desirous of settling these questions by friendly understanding, and of fixing the limit of their respective sphere of influence, so that for the future there may no difference of opinion remain on the subject between the allied Governments, it is hereby agreed as follow:

1. The eastern and southern frontier of His Highness’s dominions, from Wakhan to the Persian border, shall follow the line shown in the map attached to this agreement.

2. The Government of India will at no time exercise interference in the territories lying beyond this line on the side of Afghanistan, and His Highness the Amir will at no time exercise interference in the territories lying beyond this line on the side of India.

3. The British Government thus agrees to His Highness the Amir retaining Asmar and the valley above it, as far as Chanak. His Highness agrees, on the other hand, that he will at not time exercise interference in Swat, Bajaur, or Chitral, including the Arnawai or Bashgal valley. The British Government also agrees to leave to His Highness the Birmal tract as shown in the detailed map already given to His Highness, who relinquishes his claim to the rest of the Waziri country and Dawar. His Highness also relinquishes his claim to Chageh [Chagheh].

4. The frontier line will hereafter be laid down in detail and demarcated, wherever this may be practicable and desirable, by joint British and Afghan commissions, whose object will be to arrive by mutual understanding at a boundary which shall adhere with the greatest possible exactness to the line shown in the map attached to this agreement, having due regard to the existing local rights of villages adjoining the frontier.

5. With reference to the question of Chaman, the Amir withdraws his objection to the new British cantonment and concedes to the British Government the rights purchased by him in the Sirkai Tilerai water. At this part of the frontier the line will be drawn as follows:

From the crest of the Khwaja Amran range near the Psha Kotal, which remains in British territory, the line will run in such a direction as to leave Murgha Chaman and the Sharobo spring to Afghanistan, and to pass half-way between the New Chaman Fort and the Afghan outpost known locally as Lashkar Dand. The line will then pass halfway between the railway station and the hill known as the Mian Baldak, and turning south-wards, will rejoin the Khwaja Amran range, leaving the Gwasha Post in British territory, and the road to Shorawak to the west and south of Gwasha in Afghanistan. The British Government will not exercise any interference within a mile of the road.

6. The above articles of agreement are regarded by the Government of India and His Highness the Amir of Afghanistan as a full and satisfactory settlement of all the principal differences of opinion which have arisen between them in regard to the frontier; and both the Government of India and His Highness the Amir undertake that any differences of detail, such as those which will have be considered hereafter by the officers appointed to demarcate the boundary line, shall be settled in a friendly spirit, so as to remove for the future as far as possible all causes of doubt and misunderstanding between the two Governments.

7. Being fully satisfied of His Highness’s good will to the British Government, and wishing to see Afghanistan independent and strong, the Government of India will raise no objection to the purchase and import by His Highness of munitions of war, and they will themselves grant him some help in this respect. Further, in order to mark their sense of the friendly spirit in which His Highness the Amir has entered into these negotiations, the Government of India undertake to increase by the sum of six lakhs of rupees a year the subsidy of twelve lakhs now granted to His Highness.

H. M. Durand,

Amir Abdul Rahman Khan

Kabul, November 22, 1893

The demarcation of the Durand Line was carried out by joint Afghan-British teams from 1894 to 1896, and the primary demarcation covered eight hundred miles. Detailed topographic maps locating hundreds of boundary demarcation pillars were published and kept in British libraries.⁸ Various British and Afghan individuals were assigned to mark the borderline. J. Donald and Sirdar Shireendil Khan settled the boundary from Sikaram Peak (34-03 north, 69-57 east) to Laram Peak (33-13 north, 70-05 east). (These numbers are the demarcation measurements in topographic terms to explain how the borderline between Pakistan and Afghanistan was drawn. This is reported in the historic text and provides detail for this topic.) This section was marked by seventy-six pillars.

The boundary from Laram Peak to Khwaja Khidr (32-34 north) was marked by H. A. Anderson in concert with various Afghan chiefs, and it was demarcated by thirty-nine pillars. British L. W. King marked the boundary from Khwaja Khidr to Domandi (31-55 north) with thirty-one pillars. The line from Domandi to New Chaman (30-55 north, 62-22 east) was marked with ninety-two pillars by a joint demarcation commission led by Henry McMahon and Sirdar Gul Mohammad Khan. McMahon also led the demarcation commission with Mohammad Umar Khan, and they marked the boundary from New Chaman to the tri-junction with neighboring Iran with the use of ninety-four pillars.

The long stretch from the Kabul River to China, including the Wakhan Corridor, was also declared as demarcated by virtue of its continuous and distinct watershed ridgeline. That left only the section near the Khyber Pass, which was finally demarcated in the treaty of November 22, 1921, signed by Mahmud Tarzi, chief of the Afghan government for the conclusion of the treaty, and Henry R. C. Dobbs, envoy extraordinary and chief of the British mission to Kabul. Later a very short adjustment to the demarcation was made at Arandu (Arnawai) in 1933–34.

The design and demarcation of the borderline between Afghanistan and British India deserves serious debate. All indications in the text of the agreement strongly suggest that the treaty was unilateral in design and that it was imposed on Amir Adul Rahman.

The agreement states in its third clause that the amir would relinquish his claim to the rest of Waziri Country, Dawar, and Chagheh (which were amir’s territory).

Clause 5 further alludes to the territories taken by the British India. Furthermore, the agreement asks that amir to withdraw his objections and at no time exercise his interference in the territories lying beyond Durand Line on the side of India. The territories beyond the Durand Line were, in fact, the amir’s territories. The agreement cynically concluded that the Durand border demarcation fulfilled the amir’s full satisfaction and had been carried out with due regard to the existing local rights of villages adjoining the frontier. The fact of the matter was that the Pushtun people on either side of the dividing borderline were not consulted and that their basic rights were ignored.

There were several pre-agreement negotiations between Amir Abdul Rahman and British viceroys in India. Because of the amir’s experience with the Russias concerning the northern border, when he was excluded from negotiations this time, he had apprehensions about the intentions of the British on the southern and eastern flanks of his country. Therefore, he was tactful and sometimes hesitant to accept Britain’s suggestions about the southern border demarcation.⁹

From 1887 to 1890, the amir corresponded and made overtures to British viceroys in India, including Lord Dufferin, Ripon, Lansdowne, and Salisbury, the secretary of state for India.

The English did not like the amir’s delaying tactics. According to amir’s own statement,¹⁰ The viceroy was so insistent on this matter that he addressed a letter to me, which was practically an ultimatum, to the effect that ‘The Indian government can not wait for your indefinite promises of uncertain date, and therefore after such-and-such a time, will draw its own conclusions.’ The viceroy’s ultimatum made the weak and fearful amir apprehensive. Hence, he took prompt steps to cool down the situation, and as he said, The matter should not become serious and irremediable.¹¹

The following is amir’s important narrative:

I immediately posted a letter to the viceroy on this subject, saying that Mr. Pyne [one of the English in the Amir’s service] is going to see your Excellency, taking with him my letter, to make all the necessary arrangements about the mission. The message was intended to satisfy the authorities in India, and to prevent their taking any serious steps in the matter. After posting this letter I gave Mr. Pyne one letter for the viceroy and another addressed to Sir Mortimer Durand, the then Foreign Secretary; and bade him, Mr. Pyne, go to India, with instructions to travel slowly and if possible to postpone or delay the mission for a few days, so that Lord Roberts, whose time for leaving India was very near, should leave for England. [Lord Roberts was appointed to the head of the mission to Kabul. Since he had fought against the Afghans during the second Afghan war, Amir thought it was unwise and unsuitable for such a man to be the head of the mission for border line discussions] … I succeeded in this plan; Lord Roberts left India and I at once invited the Mission to Kabul.¹²

The tone of the British conversation with Amir Abdul Rahman and the amir’s delaying tactics clearly indicate that the viceroys were dictating their policies and that the amir unwillingly consented because of duress and pressure. Hence, J. W. Spain states that in 1893, Amir Abdul Rahman of Kabul reluctantly agreed to delimitation of his eastern boundary.¹³ The Imperial Gazetteer of India (North-West Frontier Province) also stated the same. In 1893 the Amir consented to precise fixing of boundaries, and a mission, under Sir Mortimer Durand, proceeded to Kabul to discuss the question.¹⁴ According to Vartan Gregorian, In 1893, caught between Russian pressure, British intransigence, and his own unwillingness and unpreparedness to start a war with the government in India, Abdul Rahman signed the Durand agreement.¹⁵

Controversies and Legal Aspects of the Durand Line

Prior to signing the agreement with Henry Mortimer Durand in 1893, the amir of Kabul appeared to be unhappy about the border map sent to him, as a large part of his territories were marked as belonging to India. His letter to the British viceroy in India also reflected this unhappiness. In his letter, he warned the British authorities about the consequences when thousands of Pushtun tribal families and relatives were severed from one another. However, if the amir was not satisfied with the British design of the border ine, why did he sign the agreement? The answer is straightforward.

It is partly true that Amir Abdul Rahman was caught between British and Russian pressure and was not prepared for a war with British India. In my opinion, that amir had two options in dealing with the British intentions on the southeastern border of Afghanistan. He could have rejected the British plan and faced war and the downfall of his government, or he could accept the border map design, lose a great amount of territory to British India, and receive an increased annual subsidy and protection of his fiefdom in return. Amir opted for the second choice, even though it damaged Afghanistan’s national interest and resulted in its loss of territorial integrity. For those who are well acquainted with Afghanistan’s history, this pattern of behavior is not unprecedented in the politics of Pushtun tribal governments. With few exceptions, the Pushtun rulers of Afghanistan have had a tendency to function as mercenaries to foreign powers as long as their fiefdoms were protected, their personal interests were preserved, and their annual subsidies were paid. This kind of avaricious and venally prevailing disposition has been pervasively observed from the reign of Amir Dost Mohammad Khan (1843–63) to Hamid Karzai’s democracy of the twenty-first century. Parallel to the failure of the Pushtun’s family rule in Afghanistan, sadly, tribal nationalism and its primitive sociocultural ethos among the Pushtun tribes of the south and the east in this country have been maintained, and these core principles remained unchanged. This attribute came at the expense of all Pushtun people in the south and to the detriment of all other ethnic populations across the country.

There is no doubt in my mind that Britain coerced and intimidated Amir Abdul Rahman into signing the Durand Agreement. However, the following information supports the contention that Amir Abdul Rahman and subsequent Pushtun rulers supported the Durand Line and/or exploited the issue for the advancement of their own political gain:

After signing the agreement, Amir said, I renounced claims from the railway station of New Chaman, Chageh, and the rest of Waziri, Bulund Khel, Kuram, Afridi, Bajaur, Swat, Buner, Dir, Chilas, and Chitral. The Amir also stated that the misunderstandings and disputes which were arising about these frontier matters were put to an end, and after the boundary lines had been marked out according to the above-mentioned agreements by the commissioners of both governments, a general peace and harmony reigned between the two governments, which I pray God may continue forever.¹⁶ ¹⁷ Amir Abdul Rahman agreed to the demarcation of the line and permitted British and Afghan commissions for the demarcation of the boundaries. The Pushtun tribesmen who foresaw the eventual loss of their guarded territories opposed the demarcation, but to no avail.

Opponents of the Durand Line Agreement argue that the agreement was imposed over Amir Abdul Rahman’s objection, and that the original 1893 agreement was written in English with translated copies in Dari and Pushtu languages. Many also believe that Amir Abdul Raham Khan only signed the English version, a language that he could not read or understand.

The amir’s own statement contradicts the previously outlined criticism. In his own book, Crown of History, Amir Abdul Rahman wrote,¹⁸

Sir Mortimer Durand was a wise man and spoke fluent Dari/Persian. I asked my secretary Sultan Mohammad Khan to sit behind a curtain without being seen or heard and record verbatim the conversation between M. Durand and I. The record is maintained in the royal archives … On November 13, I held a Darbar public meeting in Salam Khana hall where my two eldest sons and the high-ranking of both civilian and military officers as well as chiefs of various tribes were attended. After an introduction, I presented the text of the agreement to the audience and an outline of the understanding agreed upon and the terms signed by the two sides. I praised God for maintaining the friendly relationship between the two countries.

In the Durand Line Agreement between Amir Abdul Rahman of Afghanistan and Mortimer Durand of the British India, Sahibzada Abdul Qayyum, a political agent of Khyber Agency, represented British India, and on Afghanistan side, Sirdar Shireendil Khan and Sahibzada Abdul Latif of Khost Province represented Amir Abdul Rahman Khan. In Afghanistan, Sirdar Shireendil Khan supposedly represented Amir Abdul Rahman Khan, but in reality, the discussion of the border agreement was conducted by only two men, the amir and H. M. Durand in the presence of a secretary behind a curtain. There wasn’t an Afghan parliament to study the issue, and the traditional loya jirga wasn’t called to deliberate on the problem.

At the height of first Pushtun dynasty of Ahamad Shah Durani in 1761, Afghanistan’s territory stretched from the Amu River in the north to Karachi and the Arabian Sea in the south and from Mashhad in the west to Lahore and territories close to Delhi to the east.¹⁹ (See the map.)

Pushtun rulers of Afghanistan were receiving money and protection from Great Britain. In return, they allowed the Britain viceroy and the foreign secretary in India to have a dominating position in guiding Afghanistan’s foreign policy. After death of Amir Abdul Rahman Khan in 1901, with the exception of Amir Amanullah Khan and Amir Shir Ali Khan, almost all other Pushtun kings of Afghanistan were universally functioning as Russian or British mercenaries and were relinquishing their country’s national interest in return for protection of their fiefdom and subsidy. As a truth of the matter, among the wide spectrum of factors, Pushtun leadership failure played the mot significant role in the degradation of Afghanistan for more than 250 years. More interestingly, such ineptness of the ruling parties has greatly contributed to terrorism and chaos in the country and the region.

Amir Abdul Rahman lost territories to British India, but a series of other Pushtun rulers of the country were also responsible for losing Afghanistan’s territories to neighboring countries. This fact is elicited in the following review and further analysis:²⁰

• In 1799, because of conflicts within the Sadozai clan of the Pushtun ruling tribes, the province of Punjab was lost to Sikhs.

• In 1819, as a result of failure of the regime in Kabul, the province of Kashmir was annexed into Sikh’s domain.

• In June 1838, the most notorious Pushtun ruler of Afghanistan, also widely known as the treasonous Shah Shoja, contrived and signed a secret plan with Ranjit Singh and Macnaughten of British India. He defeated Amir Dost Mohammad in Kabul and hence relinquished the province of Peshawar to British India’s Maharaja Ranjit Singh. (The interesting narrative history of Shah Shoja and Dost Mohammad follows a tale of British apprehensions about Russian advance toward Afghanistan and India.

On November 15, 1814, England and Persia signed the Treaty of Tehran in which the two countries agreed that Persia would assist Britain in case of war. Lord Auckland, the British governor general in India, tried in September 1836 to establish friendly relations with the amir of Afghanistan. Preceding the first Anglo-Afghan war, the two powerful opponents, Russia and Great Britain, were intensely competing in Afghanistan.

At the Persian siege of Herat in 1837, Captain Alexander Burns, also known as Alexander Bokhara Burnes, was the British envoy in Kabul. The Russian envoy to Kabul at this time was heavily involved in instigating the chaos and unrest. Lord Auckland urged Amir Dost Mohammad to intervene and stop Persian intervention in Herat. Amir Dost Mohammad agreed to meet the Lord Auckland’s demand provided that the Sikh’s trans-Indus territories were transferred from the British India to Afghanistan government. According to historian S. Rome, Lord Auckland was not ready to appease the Afghan Amir at the cost of the Sikh’s, who he considered the strongest ally. The English refusal to meet the demands of Dost Mohammad caused a tripartite alliance between Lord Auckland, Ranjit Singh and the deposed Amir of Afghanistan, Shah Shoja.

Thus, the British attacked Afghanistan through Bolan Pass (Kandahar-Ghazni) and Kabul was occupied. Amir Dost Mohammad left Kabul, and the former puppet Shah Shoja was enthroned by the British. This culminated in a widespread revolt against British forces and the first Anglo-British War of 1838.

Amir Dost Mohammad Khan was the first king of the Mohammadzai clan who ignored the country’s territorial integrity and paved the way for British imperial colonialism in Afghanistan.

• In 1857, Amir Dost Mohammad signed the Jamrood Agreement with British India. In this treaty, British India was represented by Sir John Lawrence, and the amir’s representative was Sirdar Ghulam Haider Khan. In this agreement, the amir of Afghanistan relinquished the right to the bank of the Sind River and Baluchistan Province to British India.

• In 1876, during Amir Shir Ali Khan’s reign, British troops occupied the city of Quetta.

• In 1879, another Pushtun ruler of Afghanistan named Amir Mohammad YaQub Khan, son of Amir Shir Ali, entered into terms with the British and concluded the Treaty of Gandumak. According to this treaty, he accepted all the demands of the British and ceded the territories of Kurram Valley, Pashin, Sibi, and the Khyber Pass to British India.

• In 1893, Amir Abdul Rahman signed the Durand Line Agreement with Britain’s Sir Henry Mortimer Durand and ceded the largest territories to British India.

• Amir Habibulla, son of Amir Abdul Rahman of the Mohammadzai clan of the ethnic Pushtun tribe, ruled Afghanistan from 1901 to 1919.

• On August 8, 1919, the government of Afghanistan reaffirmed and accepted the Durand Line Agreement in the Treaty of Rawalpindi. The Afghan government accepts the Indo-Afghan frontier accepted by the late Amir [Habibullah] (Article V of the August 8, 1919, Treaty of Rawalpindi).

• On November 21, 1921, during the reign of the Pushtun king of Afghanistan Amir Amanullah Khan, a peace treaty was signed between Afghan Foreign Minister Mahmood Tarzi and Britain’s Sir Henry Dobbs, and the Durand Line was officially accepted.

A significant feature of these agreements, especially the ones that were concluded during Amanullah’s reign, was that these were signed by high-ranking representatives in the Afghan and British governments, whereas the previous ones had been signed by the Afghan amirs. Hence, the English considered the previous ones personal, but the Afghans thought otherwise. Moreoever, during Amanullah Khan’s reign, the previously agreed Rawalpindi Treaty was accepted and reaffirmed in 1921. The two high contradicting parties mutually accept the Indo-Afghan frontier as accepted by the Afghan Government under Article V of the treaty concluded on August 8, 1919 (Article II of the November 22, 1921 finalizing of the Treaty of Rawalpindi).²¹

Furthermore, King Amanullah’s government had its political and trade consultants’ offices in Quetta and the Peshawar cities of Pakistan, suggesting that the Afghan government in Kabul treated these cities as foreign territories. British India also had its consulates in Jalalabad and Kandahar cities of Afghanistan. Today both India and Pakistan have their political consulates in the cities of Jalalabad and Kandahar.

Many believe that the third Anglo-Afghan war in 1919 allowed the British to reaffirm the Durand Line and abandon its imperialist ambitions over Afghanistan when Afghanistan declared its independence. Afghanistan celebrated its independence day on August 19 to commemorate the Treaty of Rawalpindi of 1919. Therefore, the Afghan government accepted (under article 5 of the Treaty of Peace, which was concluded at Rawalpindi on August 8, 1919, that the Afghan government accept the Indo-Afghan frontier as accepted by the late Amir [Habibullah]. They further agreed to the early undemarcated portion of the line west of Khyber, where the recent Afghan aggression took place, and to accept such boundary as the British Commission may lay down.²² Although Afghanistan attained independence, it was forced to recognize the Durand line.²³ In my view, Amanullah gained Afghanistan’s independence in return for the affirmation of the Durand Line, and a disappointed Britain, whose intransigence had declined as a result of Afghan’s fierce resistance and whose colonial wrath had been seriously mitigated, willingly yielded to Amanullah’s demand for independence, namely an end to British influence in Afghanistan.

It is also noteworthy that the demarcation of some areas of Durand Line, such as the boundary line between the Kabul River and the White Mountain (Safed Koh), was not defined until Amanullah’s reign and the conclusion of the third Anglo-Afghan war. This reaffirms the fact that Amir Amanullah Khan not only accepted the Durand Line but also brought the demarcation of the line to an almost complete status.

During the reign of Amir Habibullah (Kalakani), the only non-Pushtun ruler of Afghanistan, no attempt was made to repeal the Durand Line Agreement. During the reign of the Pushtun ruler Mohammad Nadir Shah (1933) and his son, Mohammad Zahir Shah (1934), a very small adjustment to the boundary demarcation was made at Arandes (Arnawai). Nadir Shah, who was born in India, was brought to Afghanistan at age eighteen. He worked with the Afghan