ONE of the most explosive spots on earth today is the so-called Durand Line, the 2,640 kilometer border, much of it in harsh mountain country, between Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is where the United States and its NATO allies are battling the Taleban -- and are facing the possibility of military defeat. Of all the challenges which will face the new American administration next January the ongoing war across the Afghan-Pakistan border could be the most difficult and dangerous. It is likely to overshadow the contest with Russia in the Caucasus, the rise of Iran as a major regional power, the search for an honorable exit strategy from Iraq, the impact of the collapsing Arab-Israeli peace process, and even the horrors of global warming. The Durand Line was a British creation. It was demarcated and then signed into a treaty on 12 November 1893 between the ruler of Afghanistan, Amir Abdul Rahman Khan, and Sir Mortimer Durand, foreign secretary of what was then British India. The idea was to create a buffer zone to protect British India from possible Czarist Russian aggression in what was then the ‘Great Game' between the British and Russian empires. When British India was partitioned between India and Pakistan in 1947, the Durand Line was recognised as the Pakistan-Afghan border. However, successive Afghan rulers repudiated it. Even Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's current President, has called the Durand Line a ‘line of hate', because by cutting through tribal lands it artificially divides the Pashtun people, whom Kabul would like to claim as Afghans. The Durand Line was always something of a fiction -- and perhaps never more so than in the 1980s, when the United States and Pakistan recruited Mujahideen from all over the world to fight the Soviets, then occupying Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of militants were trained, armed and funded in the Pakistan tribal areas and then infiltrated across the Durand Line into Afghanistan. The United States and Pakistan are now reaping what they sowed. Pashtun nationalism has been aroused. Pashtun leaders on both sides of the border do not recognize the Durand Line which, in any event, has always been porous. The tribal customs, traditions and war-fighting abilities which the Americans mobilized against the Soviets have now been turned against the Americans themselves. Large numbers of tough, brave, well-armed Pashtun tribesmen – as well as sympathizers from many parts of the world – have joined the resurgent Taleban movement in a determined effort to expel the invading US forces and their coalition allies, just as they expelled the Russians 20 years ago. The tribal areas on both sides of the Durand Line have always been autonomous. Anxious to safeguard this autonomy, the tribes resist control by the central government, whether in Islamabad or Kabul. For centuries, their overriding impulse has been to protect their Muslim religion and their traditional way of life from foreign interference. They do not want a Western model of society forced upon them. The morality they live by is that of the Pashtunwali Code, which means giving asylum and hospitality to visitors (which today may include members of Al-Qaeda as well as a wide variety of common criminals) and avenging any slight or attack. When the Taleban were in power in Kabul in 2001, poppy growing in Afghanistan was greatly reduced. But President George W. Bush's campaign against Al-Qaeda after 9/11, and the overthrow of the Taleban that followed, led to a vast explosion in poppy growing and the rise of corrupt warlords, as well as of corrupt Kabul elites. The huge illegal traffic in drugs and arms across the Durand Line in recent years has contributed to making the tribes rich and confident, and has doomed to failure Bush's ‘Global War on Terror', at least in these crucial tribal areas. A major mistake was the diversion of US military effort from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2003 – a policy largely driven by neo-cons in Bush's Administration, primarily concerned to destroy Iraq in order to enhance Israel's security environment. But the switch of focus proved immensely costly in men and treasure. US armed forces are overstretched; deficits have ballooned; the shattering of Iraq has handed Iran a strategic victory; and the Taleban have been able to regroup their forces on both sides of the Durand Line and are now a formidable force. The US-backed Karzai government in Kabul has a tenuous hold on power. The insurgency has spread to many parts of the country, indeed to Kabul itself. The military situation for the US and NATO is worse today than it has been since 2001. At the same time, neighboring Pakistan has been destabilized. President Asif Ali Zardari, like his predecessor President Pervez Musharraf, has to face a public which has become fervently pro-Taleban, and as fervently anti-American. Bush's secret authorization last July – recently revealed by the New York Times – to launch US airstrikes and ground operations across the Durand Line, without consulting Islamabad, has aroused fury in Pakistan. The population, the politicians and the military establishment are united in hostility to the activity or presence of foreign troops on Pakistani territory, and in bitter anger at civilian casualties from American raids. If it were possible for the US and NATO to deploy, say, an additional 150,000 troops to Afghanistan, the situation might be reversed. But there is no sign that reinforcements on this scale would be available, or that Western public opinion would tolerate the opening of such a major front. A fundamental rethinking of Western strategy is therefore urgently required. This could include: * The declaration of a unilateral ceasefire. * Political negotiations with the Taleban and the Pashtun tribes in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the aim of separating them from Al-Qaeda. This would most probably involve guaranteeing the autonomy of the tribal areas, substantial financial subsidies, and offering the Taleban a share in government. * Winning support from the main regional powers for a peace settlement across the Durand Line – Pakistan and Afghanistan, of course, but also India, Iran and even China. The Indian-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir and their competition in Afghanistan has contributed to stoking the fires of revolt across the Durand Line. Finding a solution to the Kashmir problem should be a priority for the international community. Afghanistan would also greatly benefit. Pakistan's perennial fear is of being squeezed between India on one flank and an Indian-dominated Afghanistan on the other. The resolution of conflicts, rather than the use of military force – whether in south and central Asia or in the Middle East -- is the only way to lessen, and ultimately defeat, the threat from terrorism. But it is not a lesson the United States has yet learned. __
