The countries of southern central Asia do not correspond neatly to the western, Treaty of Westphalia conception of the nation-state. Southern central Asia is a region of tribal loyalties Afghanistan is a prime example of where a state has been created that does not correlate to any sense of nationhood. Afghanistan is, moreover, the result of competition between the British and Russian empires in the 19th century. The idea of an Afghan nation is artificial: Afghanistan is only ever an entity when confronted with an outside enemy, be it Russian or American. The religious contentions in the region make it almost impossible for the creation of a stable central government in Kabul.
Afghanistan comprises three main factions: in the North, there is a significant Tajik population, 'about one-fifth of the population' (Encyclopaedia Britannica) , to the West you have a large population of Persian speakers, who hold an affinity towards Iran, and in the East a Pashtun population. The Pashtun community sprawls the international frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan. For the Pashtun community of Afghanistan the border does not exist. This evidently causes problems for regional security and the nation-building currently being undertaken by ISAF forces.
So...creating a 'Pashtunistan' might be a reasonable solution to current instability in the region. Effectively, you would be realigning the borders to match the ethnic devision of the region, thus creating a sense of social cohesion which is a better foundation for building a state, whatever the regime type. This proposition would, evidently, face strong opposition by Pakistan's authorities. The experience of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980s shows that even with a very centralist approach, the various ethnicities of Afghanistan cannot be welded together as they stand to form a durable Afghan State.
In the post-colonial era, the world has to realign the geopolitics of South-central Asia to represent governable regions. The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is 'a 2450km demarcation line drawn by the British through Pashtun tribal lands to suit the defensive needs of British Colonial India' (Synowitz, 2006) in 1893. It was designed to express the limit to which Britain was willing to allow the Russian empire to expand. In 1893, the geopolitical effects of this border were not considered in the context of independent nation states. If you were to redefine the frontiers in this region, you would move the Iranian border east, the Tajikistan border south into Afghanistan. The remainder, consisting of the Pashtun community, would create a new state which would include a considerable part of Pakistan's tribal border regions that have been costing the government in Islamabad dearly in terms of resource diversion.
Afghanistan comprises three main factions: in the North, there is a significant Tajik population, 'about one-fifth of the population' (Encyclopaedia Britannica) , to the West you have a large population of Persian speakers, who hold an affinity towards Iran, and in the East a Pashtun population. The Pashtun community sprawls the international frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan. For the Pashtun community of Afghanistan the border does not exist. This evidently causes problems for regional security and the nation-building currently being undertaken by ISAF forces.
So...creating a 'Pashtunistan' might be a reasonable solution to current instability in the region. Effectively, you would be realigning the borders to match the ethnic devision of the region, thus creating a sense of social cohesion which is a better foundation for building a state, whatever the regime type. This proposition would, evidently, face strong opposition by Pakistan's authorities. The experience of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan in the 1980s shows that even with a very centralist approach, the various ethnicities of Afghanistan cannot be welded together as they stand to form a durable Afghan State.
In the post-colonial era, the world has to realign the geopolitics of South-central Asia to represent governable regions. The border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is 'a 2450km demarcation line drawn by the British through Pashtun tribal lands to suit the defensive needs of British Colonial India' (Synowitz, 2006) in 1893. It was designed to express the limit to which Britain was willing to allow the Russian empire to expand. In 1893, the geopolitical effects of this border were not considered in the context of independent nation states. If you were to redefine the frontiers in this region, you would move the Iranian border east, the Tajikistan border south into Afghanistan. The remainder, consisting of the Pashtun community, would create a new state which would include a considerable part of Pakistan's tribal border regions that have been costing the government in Islamabad dearly in terms of resource diversion.
