Pakistan deserves little sympathy for the violence it is suffering. Sowing the wind in Afghanistan, Pakistan is reaping the whirlwind
The bitter falling out between Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers is one of the striking ironies of contemporary history. Islamabad could not have done more for the Taliban. It was instrumental to their establishment. Its support in the form of the training and arming of their troops, and stiffening of the latter’s ranks with the deputation of Pakistan Army’s officers and men, enabled them to establish their first regime over most of Afghanistan in September 1997.
During the US-led campaign against the Taliban in 2001, Pakistan airlifted, with American consent, a large number of its army personnel and agents of the Directorate-General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), along with top commanders and fighters of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, from Kunduz in November 2001. It, of course, did not, in keeping with its usual duplicitousness, tell Washington DC that Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders and rank-and-filers would also be evacuated.
Pakistan’s support continued in an enhanced and expanded form after an alliance, spearheaded and guided by the United States, post 9/11, ousted the Taliban from Afghanistan in December 2001. Pakistan harboured their leaders, allowed them to function freely in its territory, and, besides arming and training their troops, provided them with sanctuaries in the border areas from where they could foray into Afghanistan. The Taliban would not have survived without Pakistan’s support. All this, of course, should not obscure the fact that relations between the latter and Afghanistan were bitterly hostile until Islamabad’s provision of support to the Afghan mujahideen following the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. The hostility became manifest immediately after Pakistan’s independence in August 1947 when Afghanistan was the only nation to oppose Pakistan’s entry into the United Nations. It also actively supported armed separatist movements in the Pashtun inhabited territory and Balochistan in Pakistan.
The primary bone of contention between the two countries has been the Durand Line, which was drawn by Sir Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat and civil servant, and Abdul Rahman Khan, emir of Afghanistan, on 12 November 1893, as the official boundary between India (of which Pakistan was then a part) and Afghanistan. Subsequent to Abdul Rahman Khan’s death, Afghanistan ceased accepting it as the legal border as more Pashtuns, the dominant Afghan ethnic group, lived on the Pakistani side. Kabul wanted the line shifted eastward towards the Indus River to bring Pashun-majority areas in Pakistan within its fold, and free movement of people across it till then. To this end, it had supported armed ethnic Pashtun and Baloch secessionist elements in Pakistan. The latter, on its part, has persistently tried to have an Afghan government that was subservient to it and allowed it to use Afghan territory to gain strategic depth in its confrontations with India.
The antagonism had infected the populations of both countries. There were attacks on their respective diplomatic establishments on the soil of the other, leading to a break in their diplomatic ties between 1961 and 1963, and border clashes. It is now clear that the Taliban share their country’s historical stand on the Durand Line, which, if anything, has become a bigger source of tension and conflict than perhaps at any time earlier.
There have been armed clashes between the border forces of the two countries leading to periodical closure of border crossings including the principal ones at Torkham and Spinboldak. The clashes have been caused not just by the border dispute but an overall deterioration of the relations between the Taliban and Pakistan resulting from Pakistan’s allegation that Kabul was supporting the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which has been carrying out violent terror strikes on its soil. At a press conference on November 8, 2023, Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister, Anwar ul-Haq Kakar, launched a scathing attack on the Taliban saying that their support to TTP had contributed to a major increase in violence in his country, causing the death of 2,867 Pakistanis since the Taliban captured power in August 2021.
According to Afghanistan’s TOLO news, the Taliban administration spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, has denied the allegation and stated, “We will not allow anyone to use Afghanistan’s soil to threaten other countries. Pakistani authorities should understand their responsibilities.” Not surprisingly, the dispute continues, aggravated by cross-border terror strikes in Pakistan and the latter’s airstrikes against the TTP’s bases in Afghanistan. Things have worsened by Pakistan’s campaign to deport what it describes as foreigners without valid visas or registration documents as refugees. The principal victims are Afghans, numbering nearly four million, who have poured into the country since the Soviet Union’s invasion of their country. According to reports 450,000 of them out of a total number of 1.77 million such people (according to the Pakistani authorities) have left Pakistan. The condition of those who have been forced to leave is miserable, and the uncertainty of those living in the shadow of deportation must be nerve-wracking. The inhumanity of Pakistan’s campaign is unpardonable, particularly given the horrible human rights situation and the gender apartheid prevailing in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Pakistan deserves little sympathy for the violence it is suffering. The monster it has created is striking back. As the Old Testament (Hosea 8.7) says, "For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."
(The author is a Consulting Editor, at The Pioneer. The views expressed are personal)
