afghanistan
lines had been marked out according to the above-mentioned
agreements by the Commissioners of both Governments, a general
peace and harmony reigned between the two Governments, which
I pray God may continue for ever. 40The idea that the Durand Agreement was only valid for a century is
even more disingenuous since the preamble states the intention was ‘to
remove for the future, as far as possible, all causes of doubt and misun-
derstanding’, while Clause 6 states that the articles were ‘regarded by the
Government of India and His Highness the Amir of Afghanistan, as full
and satisfactory settlement of all the principal differences of opinion which
have arisen between them in regard to the frontier’. The Amir later mused
that he had ‘a great fancy for a little piece of sandy desert... in order to
bring the country in touch with the ocean’, 41 either in the Persian Gulf,
which, of course, was not remotely feasible, 42 or the Indian Ocean, and
suggested at some point Britain might consider ceding Afghanistan a
narrow corridor to the sea. This ‘fancy’ for a warm water port would be
seized on later by Pushtun nationalists and became entwined with the
polemic about Pushtunistan and the Durand Line.
Following the signing of the Durand Agreement, a joint Anglo-Afghan
Commission surveyed the frontier from April 1894 to May 1896 and its
officials were required to ‘adhere... with the greatest possible exactness to
the line shown in the map attached to this agreement’. 43 The commissioners
held extensive consultations with tribal leaders and all parties agreed to any
changes to Durand’s original map. Boundary pillars were then constructed
at regular intervals and their locations carefully recorded. Copies of the
final demarcation, including detailed descriptions of each section of the
frontier and large-scale maps, were presented to the Amir and filed in
the archives of the British and Indian governments. In 1919, under the
Anglo-Afghan Treaty, the Mohmand region was demarcated and further
slight adjustments were made in 1921 and 1932. Both the 1919 and 1921
treaties reaffirmed the Durand Line as ‘accepted by the late Ameer’ and
were negotiated and agreed by none other than Mahmud Tarzi, the father
of Afghan nationalism.
Despite the Durand Agreement, the Amir continued to meddle in
affairs across the frontier, particularly Chitral, and high officials in his
government covertly encouraged ‘fanatics’ on the Indian side of the border.
As for the Afghan tribes themselves, they paid little heed to the Durand
Line, as the frontier was known, and continued to cross the border without
bothering to obtain official documentation, a practice that continues to this