The Durand Line: Pain, politics, perception 

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When Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid, Afghanistan’s acting defense minister, was recently pressed by Afghanistan’s Tolo News regarding allegations that the Taliban provides safe haven to militants striking Pakistan, he didn’t offer a diplomatic pivot or a standard denial. Instead, he reached for a grievance that predates the Taliban, the Cold War, and even the state of Pakistan itself.

“The real pain,” Yaqoob said, “is Durand.”

In those four words, Yaqoob distilled eight decades of regional toxicity— and even more before that. The Durand Line, the 1,600-mile border carved through the mountains by British colonial administrators in 1893, remains an open wound in Central Asia. To Islamabad, it is a settled international boundary. To Kabul— whether ruled by kings, communists, or clerics— it is a colonial fiction that sliced through the Pashtun heartland.

But a new scholarly intervention is challenging the emotional architecture of this Afghan narrative. Dr. Lutfur Rahman, a researcher from Lower Dir and an ethnic Pashtun, has spent years sifting through the “dust-covered files” of history to author Revisiting the Durand Line. His findings suggest that the “pain” Yaqoob describes may be less a matter of legal ambiguity and more a product of political utility.

The Afghan........

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