Disquiet is rising in Pakistan over the recent border skirmishes with Taliban fighters along the Af-Pak border. After a kerfuffle at the Durand Line over fencing, former Senate Chairman and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leader Raza Rabbani on Friday questioned the Imran Khan government's eagerness to support the Afghan Taliban, when the latter was not ready to recognise the border with Pakistan.
Last week, Taliban fighters had disrupted border fencing along Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and took away spools of barbed wire, the Dawn newspaper reported. The fighters had then also warned Pakistani soldiers against resuming fencing. The incident led to a tense situation in the area where it occurred. Defence ministries of the two sides later held talks on the issue. The Taliban ministry of the border and tribal affairs also reportedly took part in the parleys. Taliban Defence Minister Mullah Yaqoob visited the area on Wednesday and defused the situation. "The dispute has been quietly and calmly settled," he said.
Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Rabbani demanded that Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi should take Parliament into confidence on this incident. "They are not ready to recognise the border, so why are we moving forward," he asked. Pakistan on Sunday hosted the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) foreign ministers' summit and urged the international community to lift sanctions on the Afghan Taliban regime. Rabbani also warned the government over reports emerging in local media about the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) regrouping in Afghanistan in a bid to possibly fuel terrorism in Pakistan. On what terms is the state talking about a ceasefire with a banned outfit, Rabbani questioned.
Pakistan has been fencing the 2600-kilometer-long border with Afghanistan since 2017 to end terrorist infiltration and smuggling despite very intense opposition from the neighbouring country. Besides the erection of a fence, the project also includes the construction of border posts and forts, and the raising of new wings of Frontier Corps, the paramilitary force that guards the border. A large part of the fence has been constructed in inhospitable terrain and in some places at very high altitudes. The fencing is expected to be completed at a cost of about $500 million. Fencing has been a contentious issue in Pakistan-Afghanistan ties because the Afghans dispute the border demarcation done during the colonial period. Pakistan, however, insists that the line separating the two countries, also called the Durand Line, is the valid international border.
Islamabad had always hoped that the Afghan Taliban would help in settling the longstanding matter. However, that has not been the case. The Taliban did not resolve the issue when they were in control of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and have not done anything substantive to address it this time either so far, the Dawn report said. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, who is currently the acting culture and information minister, said in an interview days after the takeover of Kabul by the group on August 15, rejected the fencing of the border by Pakistan. "The Afghans are unhappy and oppose the fencing. The fencing has separated people and divided families," he had said.
