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'Pashtunistan'
issues linger behind row
Recent tensions between Kabul and
Islamabad show that mutual suspicions still exist in an old dispute known
as the "Pashtunistan question". And it is a question with a fundamental
bearing on the foreign policies of both countries.
By Ron Synovitz for RFE/RL (27/3/06)
The idea of a Pashtun national homeland along the Afghan-Pakistan border
has been largely dormant for the last 40 years. Dormant - but unresolved.
And now, arguments from the century-old debate are surfacing again in a
way that is affecting the international effort against terrorism.
For many ethnic Pashtuns, "Pashtunistan" is an historic homeland that was
divided in 1893 by the Durand Line - a 2,450 kilometer demarcation line
drawn by a British cartographer through Pashtun tribal lands to suit the
defensive needs of British colonial India.
For Islamabad, the issue represents a territorial claim against Pakistan -
particularly parts of Pakistan's Balochistan province and the tribal
regions where Pakistani security forces are battling pro-Taliban
militants. The reason is that Pakistan inherited the Durand Line from
British colonial India as its northwestern border with Afghanistan.
An old and pivotal dispute
"The current tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan are actually
nothing new," says Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghanistan at New York
University's Center for International Cooperation. "They have been the
normal state of relations between those two countries ever since the
founding of Pakistan in 1947. Afghanistan was the only member of the UN
General Assembly at that time to vote against the admission of Pakistan,
on the grounds that it had not given the right of self-determination to
its Pashtun inhabitants - and particularly those in the tribal
territories. Afghanistan has never recognized the Durand Line between the
two countries as an international border."
Rubin says Pakistan's concerns about Pashtun territorial claims had been
one of the reasons why "old-school elements" within Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence supported the Taliban during the 1990s.
He says the issue also underscores why it was in the interests of
Pakistan's foreign-policy goals for madrasahs to provide a fundamentalist
Islamic education to the children of the millions of Afghan refugees who
fled to Pakistan during the 1980s and 1990s.
Pakistan "did have a long-term commitment, going back 30 years, toward
supporting ethnic Pashtun religious extremists in Afghanistan in order to
ensure that an Afghan government would side with Pakistan against India -
and would not raise the issue of the Pashtun territory," Rubin says.
The reason is that "Pashtun Islamists are not nationalists and do not
support that kind of ethnic issue against a fellow Muslim country - unlike
the Pashtun nationalists," Rubin says.
Rubin also links the tensions between Islamabad and Kabul to Pakistan's
concerns about the strengthening of ties between India and the government
of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
"This is, of course, embedded within the competition in South Asia between
Pakistan and India," he argues. "Throughout most of the period since 1947,
Afghanistan has tended to be closer to India, which it uses to balance
Pakistan. The government of Hamid Karzai has also resurrected the old
policy of former Afghan governments of having direct relations between the
Afghan government and Pashtun political leaders and tribes within
Pakistan."
Catching al-Qaida, not catching the Taliban?
Ahmad Rashid, a Pakistani journalist and author of the book "Taliban",
agrees that the Pashtunistan debate and the strengthening of Afghan-Indian
ties are both sources of concern for Islamabad.
Rashid says officials in Kabul think Islamabad has often turned a blind
eye toward Taliban fighters in Pakistani territory over the past four
years because some elements in Pakistan still want to use fundamentalists
to influence the policies of the Afghan government.
"Pakistan is doing quite a lot to catch the Arabs and al-Qaida," Rashid
says. "But the Afghan accusation stems from the fact that [Kabul] believes
Pakistan is differentiating between catching al-Qaida and not catching the
Taliban."
Rashid notes that as relations between Kabul and Islamabad have
deteriorated, Pakistani officials have resurrected old accusations against
Afghanistan. For example, Islamabad recently accused Kabul of supporting
Indian agents along the Afghan-Pakistani border. It also has accused Kabul
of aiding separatist movements by ethnic Pashtuns and ethnic Baluchis on
Pakistan's side of the border:
"Pakistan is saying that Afghanistan is interfering in Balochistan
[province and that] it has allowed India to support the insurgency in
Balochistan through its consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad," Rashid
says. "Pakistan is also saying now most recently that al-Qaida militants
are arriving from Afghanistan and stirring up trouble in [the ethnic
Pashtun tribal region of] Waziristan."
Washington and the 'Pashtunistan question'
Teresita Schaffer, director of the South Asia program at the
Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the
United States is trying to encourage Afghanistan and Pakistan to have the
best possible relationship. But she says the administration of U.S.
President George W. Bush does not seem to realize the sensitive nature of
Pakistani-Afghan relations.
Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah has been telling journalists in
Washington this week that the West must have a better understanding of
what he called "the continuing war of words" between Kabul and Islamabad.
Abdullah says disagreements between the two countries must been seen in
the context of "domestic and regional" relations as well as the
international war against terrorism.
On 23 March, Karzai told a counterterrorism conference in the Turkish
capital, Ankara, that extremist tendencies and terrorism in Afghanistan
have emanated from "political agendas and the pursuit of narrow interests
by governments".
Referring to Pakistan's support for the Taliban during the 1990s, Karzai
described the rise of the movement as a kind of "hidden invasion propped
up by outside interference and intended to tarnish the national identity
and historical heritage" of Afghanistan.
Samina Ahmed, an Islamabad-based expert with the International Crisis
Group, says relations between Kabul and Islamabad are likely to worsen if
violence in the border region escalates during the coming months. Ahmed
says Islamabad is particularly concerned about how the dispute affects
Pakistan's relations with Washington.
Source: International Relations and Security Network (ISN)
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