Afghanistan’s Taliban regime has said it will not allow Pakistan to erect any form of fencing on the Durand Line, a media report said, issuing a stern warning to Islamabad, for fencing the border between neighboring countries. Amid rising tensions over the controversial issue, a media report said.
“We (the Taliban) will not allow fencing in any form, at any time. Whatever they (Pakistan) did earlier, they did, but we will not allow it now. There will be no fence now,” Taliban commander Maulvi Sanaullah Sangeen told Afghanistan’s Tolo News on Wednesday.
Sangin’s sharp reaction comes after comments by Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi earlier this week, when he said the issue would be resolved peacefully through diplomatic channels.
He said, ‘Some mischievous elements are raising this issue unnecessarily, but we are looking into it. We are in touch with the Afghan government. Hopefully, we will be able to resolve the issue diplomatically,” Qureshi said during a press conference in Islamabad on Monday.
The 2,670-km long international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan on the Durand Line has been clashing between the armies of these two countries from time to time.
Last month, a skirmish was reported along south-east Nimroz province, when Pakistani forces tried to put up barbed fences in Afghan territory, with Taliban forces retaliated quickly and broke them.
Similarly, on 22 December, according to the Khama Press news agency based in Afghanistan, this time with the eastern Nangarhar province, the two sides were again face to face.
Pakistan has completed nearly 90 percent of the fencing along the 2,670-km border despite protests from Kabul, which challenged the British-era border demarcation that divides families on both sides.
Successive regimes in Afghanistan, including US-backed governments in the past, have disputed this demarcation, which has historically been a contentious issue between the two neighbours.
The border, known internationally as the Durand Line, was named after a British civil servant, Mortimer Durand, who demarcated British India in 1893 in consultation with the then Afghan government.