Thread: Durand Line Agreement: 1893 pact had no expiry limit

Friday, September 30, 2005 E-Mail this article to a friend Printer Friendly Version

Durand Line Agreement: 1893 pact had no expiry limit: expert



By Mohammed Rizwan

LAHORE: As the controversy over the Durand Line Agreement has resurfaced, leading experts in international law say the 1893 pact between the British and Afghan governments had no expiry limit as recently claimed by the Afghan Interior Minister.

The Foreign Office spokesperson has already contradicted a statement by the NWFP governor that the Durand Line agreement had expired.

In the backdrop of Pakistan’s offer to the US to fence the western border with Afghanistan, the decades-old dispute between Pakistan and Afghanistan has resurfaced as Afghan minister questioned the legal status of the Agreement on the basis that it had expired after its hundred years validity in 1993.

The Afghan minister also stressed the need for what he called permanent settlement of border issue before Pakistan undertakes such an exercise. “The Durand Line Agreement has no expiry limit and the interpretation of a hundred-year limit is not legally tenable,” said Ahmer Bilal Soofi, President of Lahore-based Research Society of International Law. “Neither the text of the 1893 Agreement nor the subsequent treaties of 1919 and 1921 which affirmed the said agreement mention any time limit,” said Soofi, who along with another RSIL fellow, Saifullah Mahsud, has done extensive research on the subject.

“According to Article 62 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties it is accepted by all that whenever a new state or new country is carved out of an existing colonial domain, all international agreements and undertakings that the previous ruler of the region had entered into, are transferred to the new independent national government.” “So,” argues Soofi, “after independence in 1947, Pakistan is rightly the party which succeeded the British Indian government and inherited the agreement.”

Moreover, the Seato Communique of May 8, 1956, also confirmed Durand Line as an internationally recognised border. “Para 8 of the communiqué states the members of the council severally declared that their governments recognised that the sovereignty of Pakistan extends upto the Durand Line, the international boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Soofi. “Hence, there is no documentary evidence of the requirement of renewal of the agreement after 100 years,” he said.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default...-9-2005_pg7_12

I couldn't find the post on the Durand Line and the issue of Afghan Pashtoons and the Paksitani Pahtoons and so I posted a new thread.

Now if the Durand line has no expiry limit, what is the status now of the people on either side and their aspirations which are said to be common in the form of Pakhtoonistan and things like that?

I do hope our Afghan poster also contributes.