Quote Originally Posted by Distiller View Post
Some other stuff I did, and across this theme I came:

What about uniting Pakistan and Afghanistan?
You are talking states (Afghanistan and Pakistan) when you should be talking about nations (Pashtuns, Tajiks, Balochis...)

I do not think the fusing of Pakistan and Afghanistan is a good idea.

I also do not think that "westerners" should dictate any changes to political boundaries in that region or any other region in the developing world.

However, if there is consensus on both sides of the Afghanistan and Pakistan border for the creation of an independent Pashtunistan I think our best COA is to get out of the way, let it happen, and then begin a working relationship with the new state to include providing the assitance and advising we are currently offering in Afghanistan.

However, I do not know what the second and third order effects of this new state would with reference to the other major ethnic concentrations in the area. Would Pakistan and Afghanistan cease to exist as states? Would other ethnic groups like the Balochis get their own state? Would still others like the Uzbek and Tajik populations in Afghanistan choose to start their own state or would they opt to join Uzbekistan and Tajikistan? How would Iran, India, and the other states in the region the changes? For example, would Uzbekistan try to foricibly annex the Uzbek areas of Afghanistan?

Does the name you gave to this hypothetical new state, Durristan, imply that the state will be comprised solely of the Durrani Pashtuns? What of the Ghilzai and other tribes?

You might find the following paper interesting:

Artificial States by Alesina, Easterly, Matuszeski

Abstract: Artificial states are those in which political borders do not coincide with a division of nationalities desired by the people on the ground. We propose and compute for all countries in the world two new measures how artificial states are. One is based on measuring how borders split ethnic groups into two separate adjacent countries. The other one measures how straight land borders are, under the assumption the straight land borders are more likely to be artificial. We then show that these two measures seem to be highly correlated with several measures of political and economic success.

In reference to the paper though. It would appear the Durrani line is an exception to the findings of the paper because the Durrani line is not generally straight because it is drawn along moutains which have the same ethnic group residing on both sides.