But beyond the military flare-up, it is an old geographical scar that is reopening: the border separating the two countries, known as the Durand Line, does not stem from a natural boundary but from an agreement concluded in 1893 between the Emir of Afghanistan and Sir Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat representing the Empire of India; it was drawn in the colonial era to establish a zone of influence, not to respect the human realities on the ground. Sir Mortimer Durand was neither Afghan nor Pakistani — Pakistan did not yet exist at the time — but a senior official of the British Empire tasked with securing the north-western frontier of colonial India against imperial rivalries, particularly Russian ones; his name has remained attached to this line, approximately 2,600 kilometers long, which crosses mountains and valleys without regard for the tribes settled there for centuries.
This line split entire communities in two, particularly the Pashtuns, dividing families, tribal alliances, and trade routes on either side of a boundary that many in Afghanistan have never considered fully legitimate; for Pakistan, however, the Durand Line constitutes an official international border, untouchable, a condition of its sovereignty and territorial integrity. This fundamental disagreement explains why every border incident takes on an existential dimension: it is not merely a military clash, but a confrontation over the very definition of territory and state authority.
In this already explosive context, the mediation offer put forward by Iran adds a note of strategic irony: a predominantly Shiite regional power, Teheran proposes to facilitate dialogue between two Sunni actors whose rivalry is rooted in a border inherited from British colonialism; this diplomatic move fits into broader geopolitical stakes of regional influence, as Iran seeks to consolidate its role as an arbiter and to weigh on the strategic balance of a pivotal zone between South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East.
Thus, the current escalation cannot be understood without grasping the historical depth of the Durand Line and the symbolic weight it carries: it concentrates geopolitical stakes of sovereignty, national identity, control of cross-border movements, and the balance of regional powers, turning each exchange of fire into a brutal reminder of a colonial past that has never been fully digested.
An Afghanistan veteran, I do not see how this beginning of a conflict can end well for civilian populations.
*Author is a former member if the UN senior staff