Some places need soft borders
Monday, December 14, 2009 at 11:00PM ARTICLE: The War in Pashtunistan, By SCOTT SHANE, New York Times, December 5, 2009
Really nice piece of writing that's worth perusing, because it will make you that much smarter about the region and the issues at hand.
Key bit:
Today, the enemies of the United States are nearly all in Pashtunistan, an aspirational name coined long ago by advocates of an independent Pashtun homeland. From bases in the Pakistani part of it -- the Federally Administered Tribal Areas toward the north and Baluchistan province in the south -- Afghan Taliban leaders, who are Pashtuns, have plotted attacks against Afghanistan. It is also from the Pakistani side of Pashtunistan that Qaeda militants have plotted terrorism against the West.
And the essential strategic problem for the Americans has been this: their enemy, so far, has been able to draw advantage from the border between the two nation-states by ignoring it, and the Americans have so far been hindered because they must respect it.
That is because Pakistan and Afghanistan care deeply about their sovereign rights on either side of the line, but the Pashtuns themselves have never paid the boundary much regard since it was drawn by a British diplomat, Mortimer Durand, in 1893. "They don't recognize the border," said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council, a Washington policy group. "They never have. They never will."
And that has enormously complicated the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Gets me back to Musharraf's bit about needing a "soft border" for Kashmir. Eventually it seems to me that we'll need to do the same for Pashtunistan.
(Thanks: VacationLaneGrp)
Reader Comments (2)
More and more I hope that there is a special place in hell for those that draw arbitrary lines on maps.