Pak-Afghan Border: FM Quershi Says Issue To Be Resolved Diplomatically, Video Of Taliban Uprooting Fence Goes Viral

Pakistan has fenced most of the 2,600km border des­pite protestations from Kabul, which has contested the British-era boundary demarcation that splits families and tribes on either side.

Pak-Afghan border (AP News)

New Delhi: During a press conference the Foreign minister of Pakistan Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Monday acknowledged that there were certain complications relating to the Pak-Afghan border but not the way some miscreants have tried to blow up out of proportion, reported Dawn News.

In a press conference in Pakistan capital, Islamabad, he was asked about a certain video that has been circulating all over social media showing Taliban fighters uprooting fencing between Afghanistan and Pakistan while claiming that the fencing had been erected inside Afghan territory.

#AFG Taliban soldiers destroying fencing on the Durrand line , Southern Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/k02Qmq7b3Q

— BILAL SARWARY (@bsarwary) January 1, 2022

According to the Dawn report, there was a separate video, which was shared on Twitter, Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khwarzmi was seen saying that Pakistan had no right to fence the border and create a divide stating it was "inappropriate and against the law".

The report also states that this wasn't the first time such a video has circulated, last month, a video went viral on Twitter that showed Taliban soldiers seizing spools of barbed wire, with a senior official asking Pakistani soldiers stationed at security posts in the distance not to try to fence the border again.

Pakistan has fenced most of the 2,600km border des­pite protestations from Kabul, which has contested the British-era boundary demarcation that splits families and tribes on either side.

When asked about the latest videos showing Taliban forces trying to remove fences, the foreign minister said: "We learned that such incidents occurred in the past few days and we have taken up the issue with the Afghan government at the diplomatic level," Qureshi was quoted as saying by Dawn.

Downplaying the situation he further he said, "Certain miscreants are raising this issue unnecessarily, but we are looking into it and we are in contact with the Afghan government. Hopefully, we would be able to resolve the issue diplomatically."

However, Taliban spokesman and Afghanistan's acting information minister Zabihullah Mujahid's statement seems to suggest otherwise. Mujahid said there was no need for border fencing by Pakistan as the issue of the Durand Line had not yet been resolved.

“The issue of the Durand Line is still an unresolved 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 a local YouTube channel in Kabul.

“As this issue is still unresolved, there was no need for fencing at all,” 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 disconnect between them.

“The Durand Line has divided one nation along both sides. We do not want it at all. We want a rational and logical solution to the problem,” the Taliban spokesman maintained.

Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman Enayatullah Khwarzmi told Dawn.com that the same nation lived on both sides of the border and it was “logically not appropriate to create a gulf among a nation.”