Qatar removes 'border' reference in Pak-Afghanistan ceasefire statement

Afghanistan Defence Minister Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid said no Durand Line discussion occurred in Doha talks, calling it a matter between nations, Tolo News reported

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Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday updated its official statement on the recent ceasefire agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan by removing the word "border", which had drawn widespread reaction from Afghan officials.

According to Tolo News, Afghan officials had linked the "border" reference to the Durand Line, which marks the boundary between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In its earlier statement, Qatar's Ministry of Foreign Affairs had expressed optimism that the ceasefire would help de-escalate tensions along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

"The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed the State of Qatar's hope that this important step will contribute to ending tensions on the border between the two brotherly countries and form a solid foundation for sustainable peace in the region," the statement read.

Later, Qatar's MoFA updated the statement, saying, "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed the State of Qatar's hope that this important step will contribute to ending tensions between the two brotherly countries and form a solid foundation for sustainable peace in the region."

The Ministry removed the phrase "on the border between the two brotherly countries" from the earlier version, replacing it with "between the two brotherly countries" in the revised statement.

During an online press conference, Afghanistan's Minister of Defence, Mohammad Yaqoob Mujahid, who led the Afghan delegation to Doha for peace talks with Islamabad, said that no discussion took place on the Durand Line during the negotiations, pointing out that the issue is a matter between nations, Tolo News reported.

The Durand Line, established in the Hindu Kush in 1893, connected Afghanistan and British India via tribal lands.

It is a legacy of the 19th-century Great Game between the Russian and British empires in which Afghanistan was used as a buffer by the British against a feared Russian expansionism to its east.

The agreement demarcating what became known as the Durand Line was signed between the British civil servant Sir Henry Mortimer Durand and Amir Abdur Rahman, then the Afghan ruler, in 1893.

Abdur Rahman became king in 1880, two years after the end of the Second Afghan War, in which the British took control of several areas that were part of the Afghan kingdom. His agreement with Durand demarcated the limits of his and British India's "spheres of influence" on the Afghan "frontier" with India.

The seven-clause agreement recognised a 2,670-km line, which stretches from the border with China to Afghanistan's border with Iran.

With independence in 1947, Pakistan inherited the Durand Line, and with it also the Pashtun rejection of the line and Afghanistan's refusal to recognise it.