QUETTA: “I wonder what has come over the rulers of my country,” said Sardar Mohammad Akram Khan, an Afghan Prince in exile, now enjoying the hospitality of Pakistan, when [the Dawn Special Representative] had the occasion to meet him here this morning [June 7].

The Sardar’s comment was provoked by a report which appeared in a recent issue of a Lahore newspaper according to which the Afghan Government’s official organ, the Kabul newspaper Anis, had lately frontpaged an article demanding the “amalgamation with Afghanistan” of the entire 600-mile territory between the Durand Line and the River Indus. The Anis is reported to have asked for a revision of the 1893 boundary demarcation and obliquely hinted that if Pakistan did not agree thereto she would have to face “internal trouble”.

Sardar Akram Khan … went on to say: “Speaking as an Afghan who knows Afghanistan’s people better than their present rulers, perhaps, I can assert that such an utterly unjustifiable demand has no popular backing among the Afghan masses or intelligentsia. It only represents the territorial ambitions of a handful of autocrats … .”

Published in Dawn, June 9th, 2023