The Story of the Durand Line Negotiations. Part IV
The negotiations begin. Emir had ordered his secretary to write every spoken word during their negotiations and for some reason he had ordered him to remain unseen so that Durand could not identify him.
And as planned, Durand would open the delicate question of the trans-Oxus provinces, Roshan and Shignan, which Russia was claiming on behalf of Bokhara. Durand was much worried about how the Emir would react to it.
“This is a matter between you and me and the Russians, my people will not care or know, whether I go backwards or forwards in Roshan or Shignan, but they care very much to know exactly how they stand on your side,” said the Emir, interrupting Durand before he had completed his speech.
With this, the negotiations began on what later would become the Durand line. During the negotiations, it appeared to Durand that Emir was genuinely interested in delimiting his boundary with the British India. Emir believed that the British were encroaching into his territory and that he might soon lose Afghanistan to them. He had begun the negotiations by stating that he wanted to have a wall around his country, so that he might know exactly where he was. He pressed hard over Chitral, Bajaur, Swat, and Waziristan territory, and would oppose British claims to tribal areas. “He was disposed to claim for Afghanistan everything that former Afghan monarchs had possessed, arguing that the British occupation of India was a thing of yesterday, and that he had far more right to press his claims to Kashmir and Delhi than [the British] had to talk of [their] fifty year connection with the Waziris and Afridis and Bajauris.”²³
But gradually as the negotiations continued, he seemed to have lost almost every argument against Durand. Every area that he wished to annex with Afghanistan was some way or another retained for British India. The only area that was granted to the Emir was Kafiristan. And that too — as later Durand would write in a secret letter to the Viceroy — was granted to the Emir because Kafiristan was “miserably poor” and its difficult strategic position had made it a difficult place to govern.
Kafiristan was severed from Chitral by Shawal Mountains, and the area was too difficult to supply during every season of the year. But Emir was happy to keep the area, because as far as the Emir’s wishes went, he wanted to send his army to Kafiristan and convert the people to Muslims, which would “greatly please [his] subjects.”²⁴
Similarly, in the North, the decision was mostly in the favor of the British. There Emir initially refused to hold Wakhan, and he did not seem to agree that he should get out of Roshan or Shignan. Emir said he had “a hand cut off at Somatash the other day, and he [was] not going to stretch out a long arm along the Hindu Kush to have that shorn off also.”²⁵ But for Durand, this was a major issue, because if he agreed to that, the entire idea of putting Afghanistan as the “buffer zone” between India and Russia would become meaningless. Without Wakhan in between, Russia would be in direct border with British India.
But once again, Durand succeeded in convincing the Emir to retreat from Roshan and Shignan; instead, Emir was convinced to keep a much smaller area of Darwaz in the cis-Oxus, which back then laid under the possession of the Emir of Bokhara. And moreover, the Emir agreed to hold Wakhan in return for 6 Lakh Rupees extra to his already 12 Lakh British subsidy.²⁶
And then there was the issue of Waziristan. It rose to be the most complicated of all. At the southwest corner of Waziristan, at Wana, the British had constructed a military post, which the Emir did not like. But the British deemed Waziristan important. The area held two important passes called Tochi and Gomal, which were used by thousands of Kuchis every year for their annual migration to and from the plains of India. The Gomal Pass was of a significant commercial importance as it served as the chief route between Ghazni and India.
But this was something that Durand considered, the Emir himself would continuously insist that the area was poor and was not of any significant importance to the British. To which Durand finally looked at the Emir and asked,
“After, Amir Sahib, if there is so little population and wealth in the country you describe, what good will it do you?”²⁷
“Naam Dara”²⁸ replied the Emir, simply expressing his desire for the honor and prestige that the area would bring to his kingdom.
And Durand knew how to fix that. He later agreed to let the Emir “keep some of the Wazir territory”, which of course excluded the important passes.
Finally, when both parties agreed over the disputed territories, they were ready to draw a physical line over the map. And one final resistance that the Emir showed was that he refused to use the British
maps, deeming them inaccurate.²⁹ Once again Pyne stepped in and used his skills of dealings with the Emir and the line was drawn.
An agreement was finally concluded and signed on Sunday, 12th of November in 1893. The next day the Emir ordered a public Durbar in his fortified residence. About 400 of Emir’s chief Sardars and officers attended the public Durbar. The Emir gave a speech, which Durand describes as an “exceedingly good and straightforward”.
In this speech, the Emir basically justified his position on the boundaries, he announced that the British should now be considered as a friend and he asked those present to transfer the friendly sentiments to their children. The deal was over.
In the following days, the Emir would ask Durand to ask the Government of India to recognize the role of Pyne in the better relations between the two countries. Emir would also ask Durand to pass his best regards and messages of friendship to the Queen and the Viceroy in India. And finally the Emir would send some decorations, swords of honor, and other gifts to the Mission and see them off on the morning of 15 November.
In February 1894, a British Engineer Sir Thomas Hungerford Holdich would begin the physical demarcation of the Boundary. He was ordered by the British Government to organize three detachments of surveyors and begin the delimitation from Landi Kotal northward to Kunar valley, from the slopes of Safed Koh southward through Kurram, Domandi, Zhob, Gomal, the deserts of Baluchistan, and up to the Persian frontier. But when the work of delimitation of the Waziri country began, the Wazirs resisted the demarcation. It appeared that the Waziris did not accept the boundary at all.
Armed Waziri men assembled and attacked the surveyors and killed some officials and their security guards. The demarcation work wouldn’t start until the following winter. And finally when it started again, the surveyors began a difficult and sometimes life threatening task which took almost two years to complete. Holdich would write in his book that most of the problems were due to the fact that Durand’s Mission did not include a geographical expert on the team.
Moreover, when the first survey team assembled at Peshawar, they received a message from the Emir saying the Emir did not have any geographic expert either. Instead, he sent tribal leaders who were in conflict between themselves and they would arrive at the British camp by separate routes in an attempt to avoid any bloodshed.
These following instances tell a lot about the failure of the negotiations. Although the negotiations may have ended up in agreement of some sort between the two men, but the end results were not necessarily according to the wishes of the deeply divided and yet independent people in the area.
It all ended up in a widely unpopular and unpractical boundary. In Baluchistan, the borderline had to be drawn 70 miles south of the position agreed by the Kabul agreement.³⁰
Today, more than a century later the boundary remains a source of discomfort for not only the two countries — Afghanistan and Pakistan (formerly part of British India) — but in a way to the rest of the world. The regional political strategies have allowed the area to evolve into the hotbed of Islamic extremism whose reach has been felt as far as Europe and United States. And a possible solution is nowhere to be seen.
²² Page 210 Sir Mortimer Durand, Author: Sir Percy Molesworth Sykes. Reprinted by Al-Biruni,1977. Lahore. Originally: Cassel and Company Limited. London. Toronto. Melbourne. Sydney.
²³ Ibid. Page 18.
²⁴ Ibid. Page 211.
²⁵ Page 219. Sir Mortimer Durand, Author: Sir Percy Molesworth Sykes. Reprinted by Al-Biruni,1977. Lahore. Originally: Cassel and Company Limited. London. Toronto. Melbourne. Sydney.
²⁶ Pages 11–23. From a report written by Durand to the Foreign Department, India. From the book: The Durand Line Border Agreement 1893, Author: S. Fida Yunas. Areas Study Center, University of Peshawar. 2003. Peshawar.
²⁷ Page 217. Sir Mortimer Durand, Author: Sir Percy Molesworth Sykes. Reprinted by Al-Biruni,1977. Lahore. Originally: Cassel and Company Limited. London. Toronto. Melbourne. Sydney.
²⁸ A Farsi phrase which could be translated as “it has prestige to it”
²⁹ Page 211. Sir Mortimer Durand, Author: Sir Percy Molesworth Sykes. Reprinted by Al-Biruni,1977. Lahore. Originally: Cassel and Company Limited. London. Toronto. Melbourne. Sydney.
³⁰ Page 239. Holdich, Thomas Hungerford, Sir, 1843–1929. The Indian Borderland,1880–1900. London: Methuen and Co., 1901. Hardcover.