Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Monday conceded that there were”some complications” pertaining to the fencing of the Pak-Afghan border but added that the matter was being bandied with the Afghan Taliban government as he criticized” certain culprits”for blowing similar incidents out of proportion.
Qureshi made these reflections during a press conference in Islamabad when he was asked about a videotape circulating on social media purportedly showing Taliban fighters extracting a portion of the hedge along the Pak-Afghan border, claiming that the fencing had been erected inside Afghan home.
In a separate videotape being participated on Twitter, Afghan Defence Ministry spokesperson Enayatullah Khwarizmi was seen saying that Pakistan had no right to guard the border and produce a peak, adding that such a move was” unhappy and against the law”.
This isn’t the first time similar vids have made the rounds on social media. Last month a videotape went viral on Twitter that showed Taliban dogfaces seizing spools of acerbic line, with an elderly sanction asking Pakistani dogfaces posted at security posts in the distance not to try to guard the border again.
Pakistan has fended utmost of the km border despite affirmations from Kabul, which has queried the British- period boundary discrimination that splits families and lines on either side.
The fencing was the main reason behind the disaffection of relations between the former US-backed Afghan government ( led by Ashraf Ghani) and Islamabad. The current standoff indicates the issue remains a contentious matter for the Taliban, despite their close ties to Islamabad.
The lawless mountainous border was historically fluid before Pakistan began erecting an essence hedge four times agone, of which it has completed 90 percent.
When asked about the rearmost vids showing Taliban forces trying to remove walls, the foreign minister said”We learned that similar incidents passed in the once many days and we’ve taken up the issue with the Afghan government at the politic position,” Qureshi said.
The minister, still, de-emphasized the incident, tellingDawn.com” Certain culprits are raising this issue unnecessarily, but we’re looking into it and we’re in contact with the Afghan government. Hopefully, we’d be suitable to resolve the issue diplomatically.”
Fencing amounts to dividing a nation Taliban spokesperson
While Qureshi said the issue was being blown up by certain culprits, Taliban spokesperson and Afghanistan’s acting information minister Zabihullah Mujahid’s statement seems to suggest something else.
Mujahid said there was no need for border fencing by Pakistan as the issue of the Durand Line hadn’t yet been resolved.
“ The issue of the Durand Line is still an undetermined one, while the construction of fencing itself creates rifts between a nation spread across both sides of the border. It amounts to dividing a nation,” Mujahid said in a recent interview with an original YouTube channel in Kabul.
“ As this issue is still undetermined, there was no need for fencing at each,” he told the Paktiawal Official channel.
Mujahid said the people living on both sides of the border had connections with each other and fencing was like creating a dissociation between them.
Read More: Taliban stop Pakistani troops from fencing border
“ The Durand Line has divided one nation along both sides. We don’t want it at all. We want a rational and logical result to the problem,” the Taliban spokesperson maintained.
Like the former Afghan governments, the Taliban autocrats also consider the border as an artificial line, while Pakistan considers the border with Afghanistan as a settled issue and an unrestricted chapter.
The Durand Line agreement was inked between Afghan King Abdul Rahman Khan and British India’s Foreign Secretary Sir Mortimer Durand in 1893. The Durand Line constitutes part of the current border between Pakistan and Afghanistan and not the entire collective border.
Meanwhile, Afghan Defence Ministry spokesperson Enayatullah Khwarizmi toldDawn.com that the same nation lived on both sides of the border and it was “ logically not applicable to produce a gulf among a nation.”
A Pakistani security functionary toldDawn.com that the Taliban claim of Pakistani forces trespassing into the Afghan side of the border to erect the hedge was false.
The functionary was speaking on condition of obscurity following a videotape making rounds online about the junking of a hedge in Nimroz that borders Balochistan.
