Content area
Full Text
After the 1947 Partition of India, the government of Afghanistan found an opportunity to reclaim the lands lost to British India as a result of the Durand Line Agreement in 1893. These lands, known as Pashtunistan, were annexed to Pakistan. The issue of Pashtunistan's fate became the backbone of Afghanistan's foreign and domestic policies. This article explores the reasons for the Pashtunistan issue's significance to Afghanistan's royal family and how a policy of advancing Pashtun nationalism was conducted by the government, and what the issue meant for newly established political parties.
The emergence of the Pashtunistan issue was one of the most important political developments in Afghanistan after World War II.1 During the war, Axis propaganda in Afghanistan made the idea of the return of lost territories appealing both for young members of the royal family, such as King Muhammad Zahir Shah and his powerful cousin Sardar Muhammad Daud Khan, and for some nationalist intellectuals.2 The issue of reclaiming Pashtunistan had a tremendous influence on both domestic and foreign politics, figuring into a power struggle within the royal family and eventually drawing Afghanistan into the Cold War. It began in 1947, with the departure of Great Britain from the Indian subcontinent, the subsequent Partition, and the incorporation of Pashtun-inhabited territories to the east and south of Afghanistan that were an- nexed to the new country of Pakistan.3
These territories had originally been removed from Afghanistan in 1893 as a re- sult of an agreement between British India and Emir 'Abd al-Rahman of Afghanistan that created the Durand Line,4 formally separating the territories of the Raj and the emir.5 The Durand Line passed through the tribal areas between Afghanistan and In- dia, thus dividing Pashtun communities.6 With the 1947 Partition of India, the Durand Line became the official border between Afghanistan and the new independent state of Pakistan. Since then, successive governments in Afghanistan have claimed the line was never meant to be a formal international boundary, voicing support for Pahstuns in Pakistan either to join Afghanistan or form a separate state. In June 1947, Afghanistan's government called for an independent Pashtunistan and denounced the 1893 agree- ment; in 1949, Afghanistan's parliament declared that it did not recognize the legality of Durand Line.7 The government...