Why is Pakistan eager to help Afghan Taliban when they don’t recognise the border, PPP leader Rabbani asks

Islamabad, December 24

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.

On Wednesday, Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khwarazmi said that the Taliban forces had stopped the Pakistani military from erecting an ‘illegal’ border fence along the eastern province of Nangarhar.

No one from the Pakistan government has formally issued a statement on this issue so far.

Pakistan has completed almost 90 per cent fencing work of the 2,600-km border despite protests from Kabul, which has contested the century-old British-era boundary demarcation that splits families on either side.

Successive regimes in Afghanistan, including the US-backed governments in the past have disputed the border and this has historically remained a contentious issue between the two neighbours.

The border, known internationally as the Durand Line, is named after the British civil servant, Mortimer Durrand, who had fixed the limits of British India after consultation with the then Afghan government in 1893.

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.

The seasoned politician also warned 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. —PTI