Durand is but one of hundreds of dusty, discarded bits of Euro colonial baggage laying about the globe for the disrupted populaces left behind as the tide turned to continually trip over.
Some lines were drawn intentionally to disrupt; others did so inadvertantly, but disrupt is disrupt, regardless of original motives and intent. There will be few easy answers and likely several wars over generations for these things to all sort out to a new balance established by the actual residents of where these things linger on.
My understanding is that for Pakistan Durand is an issue they cannot compromise on. I appreciate well why they would believe that, for if Durand went away Pakistan would be immediately as vulnerable to their neighbor as Israel is to hers. Do we really need two nuclear armed countries with no strategic depth or defendable terrain? This puts far too hair of a trigger on the nuclear weapons they possess.
One solution might be to look at a "lesser included" form of sovereignty for Pashtuns, that extends across Durand, granting rights of dual citizenship to all Pashtuns, while at the same time creating a kind of "indian reservation-like" region of Pashtunistan with its own internal governnace, but without actually carving from the hide of the two countires that it spans. Makes sense to me, but may be as unworkable as the current approach, I really don't know. We need to not think we can reach in from afar and "fix" this for them, as we will inevitably be wrong. The consequences are far to high to get wrong. Time and local solutions will cure this as it does all things. No need to hurry it along just because it complicates a problem we are currently fixated upon.
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