Abbas Stanekzai: We don’t recognize Durand as an official border at all

Shir Mohammad Abbas Stanikzai, deputy foreign minister of Afghanistan, said Durand was only a hypothetical line.

The Deputy Foreign Minister made the remarks Thursday, February 15 at a meeting marking the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from the country in his hometown, Logar Province.

“We do not accept the Durand Line as the official border and in the past no Afghan has accepted this line as the border,” Stanikzai said.

This is not the first time that an official of the Islamic Emirate has called Durand a hypothetical line; before Noorullah Noori, acting minister of borders, tribal and tribal groups, also said during a visit to the Torkham crossing that Afghanistan does not have an official border with Pakistan.

This comes after Pakistan’s acting prime minister, Anwarul-Haq Kakar, in a special interview with an Afghan media outlet, reacted to the supposed reading of Durand by the host of the program, referring to it as an international border line.