Great Game’s final move still haunts region

A MONG the most famous things the British ever did and one that still echoes across continents is drawing lines on maps. One such line was drawn across one of the most misunderstood terrains on earth, dividing people and histories forever. On November 12, 1893, a single-page document was signed between Henry Mortimer Durand, Foreign Secretary of British India, and Amir Abdur Rahman Khan of Afghanistan, an agreement that created one of the world's most enduring geopolitical fractures: the Durand Line.

During the 19th century, the British Empire and Tsarist Russia were locked in a century-long strategic rivalry known as the Great Game, a struggle for power and influence across Central Asia. Afghanistan, caught between the two empires, became both a prize and a battleground. The First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-42) ended disastrously for the British as their army was nearly wiped out while retreating from Kabul. Yet undeterred, they returned decades later in the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878-80), forcing Afghanistan into submission and placing it within the British sphere of influence after the Treaty of Gandamak.

The aftermath of the second war left the British eager to secure a stable frontier that could keep Russian ambitions at bay. The powder keg was ignited in 1885 when Russian forces seized Panjdeh, bringing them dangerously close to Herat, a location of strategic importance for India. Alarmed, the British began to consider where their northwestern frontier should lie, prompting the need for a clear demarcation of influence between British India and Afghanistan. This led to the negotiation between Rahman Khan, already under considerable British influence, and Durand. The resulting agreement drew a line that divided spheres of control between the two powers. But in doing so, it cut through the Pashtun heartland, slicing across tribal territories and villages that had lived as one for centuries.

For the British, the line was a strategic necessity, a defensive buffer against northern threats. For the Pashtuns, it remains a colonial wound marked in their history. When Pakistan was created in 1947, it inherited both the line and the resentment that came with it. Afghanistan refused to recognise the border, arguing that the agreement expired with British rule.

More than a century later, recent skirmishes between the Taliban regime and the garrison state have just brought it back on papers, but the contestation stands far from being erased. The Durand Line remains an unsettled scar, a line drawn in imperial ink that continues to shape the geopolitical destiny of the region.