Karzai Orders Removal Of Pakistani Border Gate

By RFE/RL's Radio Azadi

April 15, 2013 11:27 CET Updated April 15, 2013 13:02 CET

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks at a press conference in Kabul in January.

KABUL -- Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi has accused Pakistan of violating “international norms” by installing a border gate and checkpoint along a disputed border line between the two countries.

Azimi told reporters on April 15 that Kabul will consider "all options" to remove the installations.

In a national security council meeting on April 15, Karzai instructed his ministries of Defense, Interior, and Foreign Affairs to take "immediate action" to see the removal of the installations along the British-drawn Durand Line.

ALSO READ: Border Talk Crosses The Line In Afghanistan

Karzai also sought clarification from the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan on whether it assisted Pakistan in the building of the installations.

Afghan Defense Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi said of the new border gate that it was erected without coordination with Kabul.

"Establishing a gate or any other construction must be in conformity of both sides," Azimi said. "Without conformity, establishing a gate on the Durand Line and inside Afghanistan is against all international norms and it's against all the roles and relations of both sides."

He added: "We have all options at hand to remove this [Durand Line] gate and protect Afghanistan's sovereignty."

Pakistan views the Durand Line -- established by British India and the Kingdom of Afghanistan in 1893 -- as an international border.

Scroll over map to see the Durand Line

Kabul, however, has consistently refused to recognize the Durand Line, a boundary that cuts through the ethnic Pashtun heartland.

The United States also considers the Durand Line the modern-day border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The arrival of the British in northern India in the 19th century posed a major challenge to the Afghan and Turkic powers that had dominated the subcontinent for centuries. After losing a major war to the Afghans in 1842, the British eventually captured parts of Afghanistan and formally annexed them through an arbitrary treaty in 1879. Their forces occupied Kabul at the time.

The contentious 1893 treaty between Afghan King Amir Abdur Rahman and Mortimer Durand, the foreign secretary of British India, formalized the areas under the control of the two governments.

Afghan-Pakistani Border

1/13 Pakistani paramilitary troops guard a border checkpost in North Waziristan, in western Pakistan's volatile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) - A long-standing border dispute between Islamabad and Kabul has bolstered the view from Pakistan that it must seek to contain Afghanistan and keep in check Afghan nationalists who might otherwise assert claims to Pakistani territory.

2/13 Afghan nationals brought to Pakistan's Chaman border-crossing for handover to Afghan authorities after their detention for traveling on false documents - Critics claim that Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda have exploited the lack of central authority and local sympathies in Pakistan's border regions to provide a haven for their terrorist activities. Their suspected presence has kindled animosity among three declared allies in the U.S.-led counterterrorism effort: Kabul, Islamabad, and Washington.

3/13 Afghan refugees return from Pakistan in April 2007 under a UN-backed voluntary-repatriation plan - The UN refugee agency has described Pakistan as "home to the world's largest refugee situation, the largest assisted repatriation in modern history, and the largest registration of refugees ever conducted."

4/13 A doctor attends to a sick child who is among the displaced persons in the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak - In 2001, the UN said that more than 3 million Afghan refugees were either in camps (1.2 million) or cities and towns (2 million) throughout Pakistan.

5/13 A Pakistani tribesman works among opium poppies in the FATA's Muhmand Agency, near the Afghan border - Afghanistan's fundamentalist Taliban regime was supported politically and militarily by Islamabad, while it enjoyed ideological and ethnic support in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Those areas enjoy a high degree of autonomy from central authorities.

6/13 Three Taliban prisoners -- two Pakistanis and an Afghan -- who confessed to having crossed the border from Pakistan on a "jihadi" mission before a prolonged firefight in Paktika Province - In fact, much of the Taliban leadership grew up in refugee camps in the FATA; many also received their religious, ideological, and military training in seminaries and affiliated facilities operating in those same areas.

7/13 U.S. soldiers burn a suspected Taliban shelter on the Afghan-Pakistani border in March 2007 - There are fears that operations near the tense border could bring NATO and Pakistan into direct conflict, either through third-party provocation or accidental fire. Skirmishes in the area in May 2007 reportedly killed at least a dozen people; a U.S. soldier who was escorting a delegation to negotiate an end to that violence died after he was shot by a man dressed in a Pakistani Frontier Corps uniform.

8/13 Afghan President Hamid Karzai gestures toward visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in January 2007 - Afghan officials first suggested that insurgents or terrorists were crossing over from Pakistan in 2003, triggering an attack on Pakistan's embassy by an angry mob. Relations have run hot and cold ever since.

9/13 A Pakistani paramilitary troop frisks a Pashtun tribesman as he crosses the border - But in fact, mutual relations have been strained from the start, when Afghanistan voted against nascent Pakistan's United Nations membership over Kabul's refusal to recognize the so-called Durand Line, which demarcated British colonial India. No Afghan government has ever recognized the legitimacy of that 19th-century border.

10/13 Pakistani troops fence part of the Afghan border near Chaman in January 2007 - Pakistan recently moved ahead with plans to fence portions of its border with Afghanistan despite fierce opposition from Kabul, where officials want to avoid any perception that they endorse the Durand Line. Islamabad defends the move by citing frequent Afghan accusations of Pakistani laxity, or even complicity, that allows cross-border attacks on the central government in Kabul.

11/13 A masked tribesman patrols near Wana, in South Waziristan, where torrid fighting that pitted tribesmen against Uzbek and other foreign militants in March 2007 left more than 100 dead - Almost from the outset of the post-Taliban insurgency that began in 2002-03, Kabul has accused Islamabad of supporting the insurgents, or at least of failing to prevent their activities inside Pakistan.

12/13 Tribal elders from Khyber, one of the seven semi-autonomous agencies in the FATA, meet in Peshawar in May 2006 to discuss ways to quell violence in North Waziristan - Much of the Afghan criticism was focused on the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) -- which includes the Tribal Areas -- and Baluchistan Province.

13/13 A Pakistani Army soldier looks out over the rugged Afghan-Pakistani border from the Pakistani tribal belt - Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said in May 2007 that Islamabad is likely to remain a U.S. ally based on the need for cooperation over neighboring Afghanistan. He added that he thinks Washington understands Pakistan's "fundamental" role in Afghanistan's future.

With additional reporting by khaama.com and online.wsj.com

RFE/RL's Radio Azadi

RFE/RL's Radio Azadi is one of the most popular and trusted media outlets in Afghanistan. Nearly half of the country's adult audience accesses Azadi's reporting on a weekly basis.

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Karzai Orders Removal Of Pakistani Border Gate

ALSO READ: Border Talk Crosses The Line In Afghanistan

Afghan-Pakistani Border

With additional reporting by khaama.com and online.wsj.com

RFE/RL's Radio Azadi

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