Durand Line and Bhutto’s Afghan policy

Pakistan is the result of the partition of Indian, of which we were the driving force. We claimed that in the post-British scenario, we considered our rights insecure because of the Hindu majority. But obviously the only reason our rights were insecure was because of religion. The opposite view was that the India of the future would be secular. And in a secular state, the religious majority and the minority are meaningless.

Meanwhile, some forces have laying the groundwork for an illegitimate Zionist state in the Middle East in the name of religion. And the state, in future, would restrict the real heirs of the land of Palestine under the umbrella of these world powers. In other words, it was to prove in practice that in case of religious differences, two large units cannot coexist.

Another noteworthy aspect of today’s history is that the wave of nationalism that has swept across the West has made the concept of a “nation state” insecure. Because now millions of people in the United States themselves are opposing the framework of “American nationality” and are advocates of “white nationalism.” These activists claim that in the event of a complete victory, they will carry the first coffin of liberal democracy, which is the root of all mischief.

From the lyrical and spiritual structure of white supremacy, it seems that the matter is purely racial in nature, and the West is returning to the basic human collective identity, the identity of which the Qur’an has also clarified. But on closer inspection, these sloganeers are not only spewing poison against the two religious units, but their political agenda also includes ambitions to deal with both Muslims and Jews without any ambiguity.

On the other hand, if we look at the situation in India, after partition, it followed the path of secularism. The Muslims who are left behind are still being exploited in spite of this secularism, but our pro-India forces have repeatedly given examples of secularism in India as an ideal. This ideal reference of these forces is now being grounded because at the same time when the West is facing the wave of nationalism, India has also stepped on the path of nationalism instead of secularism.

Now that Hinduism stands on the basis of “caste”, the change that is taking place in India is called nationalism, but it is a matter of religion. And so, in fact, India’s current scenario is proving that those who got a separate homeland on the basis of the “two-nation theory” were on Sirat-e-Mustaqeem.

Thus we should be thankful to Narendra Modi that he is helping us not only verbally but also practically to prove the legitimacy of the two-nation ideology, while also proving that secularism is nothing but a political hypocrisy. Not only India, but also the West itself has made it clear to the Muslim countries over the last seventy years by exploiting millions of tons of dynamite that their political spirit is also completely religious. The claims of secularism are just deceptions.

In this context, if we look at the situation in Afghanistan, they have been quarreling with us for a piece of land since day one. There is no doubt that a certain part of the Pakistani side of the Durand Line was once a part of Afghanistan. This part was formally handed over to Britain but was later transferred to Muslim-majority Pakistan. But isn’t it strange that when the part was transferred to Pakistan the Afghan government suddenly remember its claim on it?

One interesting aspect of this dispute is that Afghanistan’s Tajiks, Uzbeks, or other tribes are not interested in the Durand Line claim. The significance of this point can only be better understood in the context of our claim to Kashmir.

Pakistan’s claim on Kashmir belongs not only to the Punjabis, Sindhis or Pashtuns but to all the nations and tribes of Pakistan. This means the claim is based on religion not nationalism, while  Afghanistan’s claim is in fact an ethnic claim.

Afghanistan’s 1.5 million Pashtuns, which makes country’s 42% of population, are certainly the largest linguistic unit, but Afghanistan is still not a Pashtun-majority country. And interestingly, the Pashtun population in Pakistan is 40 million, more than double.

Even if these 40 million people become part of Afghanistan, the biggest blow will fall on the Tajik and Uzbek nations, because it will make their proportion in the population low. That is why Tajiks and Uzbeks shy away from Durand Line claims.

Afghanistan’s Pashtun nationalist governments have always tried to use Pakistan’s Pashtun nationalists in this regard. And the situation for these nationalists is that they are a “minority” in their own nation on both sides of the border. The majority of Pashtuns on both sides have religious views.

When Pakistan tried to talk about the issue in the previous era of Afghan students, Mullah Zaeef had once said, “It’s not our mandate, we just came to save the Afghan nation from civil war.” Obviously, the response of the then Afghan ambassador was not just personal, but the position of the Afghan students. So if you look closely, with this answer, the students preferred to get rid of the Durand Line instead of talking about it.

Durand Line was the main reason due to which the Afghan government had announced enmity with Pakistan immediately after the establishment. In 1948, they set up their first military camp and not only trained some Pakistani nationalist elements, but also perpetuated terrorism in Pakistan.

And for the next 27 years, these camps were set up in different periods. The military operations carried out by Ayub Khan and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto were against the same terrorists who used to get trained from these camps in Afghanistan.

Thus, as a result of 27 consecutive years of being a victim of Afghan terrorism, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto formulated the Afghan policy which was later attributed to General Zia by our pro-India circles to facilitate propaganda against him. While maintaining the basic principles of this policy, General Zia and the late Agha Shahi must have improved it, but the creator of our Afghan policy is Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. And the policy is still very successful today.

Its importance can be gauged from the fact that after 9/11, when the nationalist riot forces came to power in Afghanistan again with the help of the United States, military camps against Pakistan were re-established there. And now that these forces are out of power again, it was reported three days ago that Afghan students had arrested about 80 Baloch terrorists who had been sitting in training centers there before August 15.

You can witness the hypocrisy of the world secular powers that the propaganda is being made to prove that we have persuaded the Afghan students that they will not allow Afghan soil to be used against any other country. However, it was the United States under whose umbrella Afghan territory had been used against Pakistan for the last twenty years.