Page 2 of 5 SPEAKING
FREELY All along the watch
tower By Peter J Middlebrook
and Sharon M Miller
interest groups, as
well as the absence of political commitment and
diplomacy to cement Afghan-Pakistan and Indian
relations, the current international peacekeeping
and counter-insurgency effort remains heavily
compromised.
To all intents and purposes
the current conflict is probably best described as
the continuation of civil war, and framing the
problem as such will go a long way to overcoming
the discontents of
history. The Taliban,
terrorism, insurgency and the rise of the opium
economy are manifestations (not causes) of
historical grievances that were neither addressed
during the signature of the Durand Agreement of
1839 or the 2001 Bonn Agreement.
British imperialism toward the Hindu
Kush The defeat of the First Anglo-Afghan
War continued to haunt the British for decades.
Indeed, the years following the 1842 defeat have
become characterized as a period of great
vacillation in British policy toward Afghanistan;
largely caused by two opposing camps that John C
Griffiths refers to as the "half-hearted
imperialists and ill-informed liberals". [4]
At that time, the "half-hearted
imperialists" favored what was seen as a "forward
policy" that protected British interests in India
by securing all areas up to the Hindu Kush so that
part of Afghanistan (and of course Pakistan),
including Herat, would be under British control.
The liberal view held that Afghanistan should be
little more than a buffer zone between the British
and Russian empires. To this end, in 1872, Britain
and Russia signed a bilateral agreement; with
Russia agreeing to recognize the border of
northern Afghanistan (in particular the Amu Darya
River) as the outer extent of their sphere of
influence in Central Asia.
With this
agreement in hand, the British did not provide
military support to Sher Ali, the emir of
Afghanistan, reportedly much to his distain.
Following the election of British prime minister
Benjamin Disraeli in 1874, a more proactive
forward policy was again re-asserted. However,
according to records, in July 1878, Russia
dispatched a diplomatic envoy to Afghanistan and
less than one month later the British requested
Shir Ali to grant similar access to a British
diplomatic mission.
For various reasons
[5] Shir Ali did not respond in a timely fashion
and the British dispatched a "small" military
force to enter the Khyber Pass - where Afghan
authorities openly refused permission to enter. In
response to other triggers, British forces entered
Afghanistan at three points on November 21, 1878,
and gained control of much, but not all, of
Afghanistan. [6]
Under the Treaty of
Gandamak, Sher Ali's son (Yaqub) who inherited the
position as head of the Afghan state following his
father's death, signed over all Afghan foreign
policy affairs to the British. However, in 1880,
following large-scale military domination, the
British realized that even after defeating Afghan
tribes in southern Afghanistan and what is now the
North West Frontier Province, [7] the Federally
Administered Tribal Areas and Balochistan,
military occupation was never translated into
overarching control.
Rather, simmering
insurgency across the Hindu Kush was viewed as a
rather intractable problem not least because
historical grievances were deeply rooted in local
culture and the political dispensation of the day.
Anyhow, following the election of a liberal
government in Britain, the forward policy was
eventually revoked and a more liberal watching
brief was established. The events that
precipitated this u-turn in UK foreign policy
paved the way for the eventual demarcation of the
Durand Line between British-administered India and
Afghanistan, therefore representing the outer
limit of British (de facto) interests in the
region, as a march further north was constrained
by the Russian Empire.
The Durand Line
disagreement The Durand line is the 2,640
kilometers (1,519 miles) long "invisible" line
which divided British India from Afghanistan; or
more precisely British India from the outer extent
of Russian penetration into Central Asia, with
Afghanistan (in)conveniently positioned as the
buffer state. The 1839 Durand Line Agreement,
whose legality is still contested by many
Pashtuns, was established to secure the border
between British India and Afghanistan following
British defeat in the second Anglo-Afghan war, as
well as to demarcate British (East India British
Company) [8] and Russian interests as part of what
is now referred to as the Great Game. [9]
Following two wars against Afghans, the
British succeeded in 1893 in imposing the Durand
Line, dividing Afghanistan and what was then
British India. It could be argued that the issues
that the Durand Line sought to obscure continue to
fuel the current crisis; which partially explains
why the boundary is both poorly marked and heavily
contested.
Amir Abdul Rahman, who signed
the agreement on behalf of Afghanistan, talked
publicly about his discontent and on September 30,
1947, Afghanistan formally rejected Pakistan's
admission to the UN over the issue. Furthermore,
in 1949, the Afghan loya jirga (tribal
council)rejected the agreement seeing that one
signatory had in fact subsequently been dissolved
(ex parte) - ie British India.
Further, it
is clear that as the seeds of discontent continue
to fester, reconciliation and resolution through
the UN and international courts is perhaps the
only way to formally overcome the failures of
history. Failure to acknowledge this fact reveals
that the very foundation of the current
stabilization and reconstruction initiative is in
fact on sinking sand. The costs of encampment
therefore remain exorbitant and occupation is
fraught with uncertainty.
In 1947, the
Indian Independence Act also foresaw the creation
of an independent state of Balochistan following
the annulment of the 1876 treaty signed with the
British, around alliance, defensive and offensive
matters.
However, following handover of
British control to the ruler of Balochistan in
that year, Balochistan declared full sovereignty.
The government of Pakistan, led by Mohammad Ali
Jinnah, sought to regain control of Balochistan,
forcing the government into exile. Interestingly,
and in spite of somewhat fractious relationship
between the Baloch and British, at least self
interest allowed the British to support the Baloch
to stop the Pashtun tribes of the Suleman
Mountains invading, which had risked undermining
the Quetta-Taftan trading route.
Even
though the post-colonial concept of uti
possidetis juris is still deemed legally
binding (where binding bilateral agreements with
or between colonial powers are "passed down" to
successor independent states) , [10] that this
principle has never been
