‘Pashtunistan’: The Challenge to Pakistan and Afghanistan

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Analysis: The alarming growth of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the Pashtun tribal region of north-western Pakistan and southern Afghanistan is usually attributed to the popularity of their messianic brand of Islam and to covert help from Pakistani intelligence agencies. But another, more ominous reason also explains their success: their symbiotic relationship with a simmering Pashtun separatist movement that could lead to the unification of the estimated 41 million Pashtuns on both sides of the border, the break-up of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the emergence of a new national entity, ‘Pashtunistan,’ under radical Islamist leadership.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are fragile, multiethnic states. Ironically, by ignoring ethnic factors and defining the struggle with the jihadists mainly in military terms, the US is inadvertently helping al-Qaeda and the Taliban to capture the leadership of Pashtun nationalism. The central political problem facing Pakistan, largely shielded from international attention by the ‘war on terror’, is how to deal with the deep ethnic tensions between the Punjabi majority, which controls the armed forces, and Baluchi, Sindhi and Pashtun minorities that have been denied a fair share of economic and political power.

If history is a reliable guide, the prospects for the survival of the Pakistani state in its present form, with its existing configuration of constituent ethno-linguistic groups, cannot be taken for granted. There is no precedent in the history of South Asia for a state consisting of the five ethno-linguistic regions that made up Pakistan as originally constituted in 1947, or even for the truncated Pakistan consisting of the four regions that remained after Bangladesh seceded in 1971. The ideologues of Pakistani nationalism exalt the historical memory of Akbar and Aurangzeb as the symbols of a lost Islamic grandeur in South Asia. By contrast, for the Baluchis, Sindhis and Pashtuns, the Moghuls are remembered primarily as the symbols of past oppression.

In Afghanistan, where the Pashtuns are the largest single ethnic group, they bitterly resent the disproportionate influence enjoyed by the Tajik ethnic minority in the regime of Hamid Karzai, a legacy of US collaboration with Tajik militias in overthrowing the Taliban. More importantly, it is the Pashtuns who have been the main victims of US-NATO bombing attacks on the Taliban, who are largely Pashtuns and operate almost entirely in Pashtun territory. In one authoritative estimate, civilian casualties in Afghanistan have numbered nearly 5,000 since 2001.

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Selig S. Harrison
Senior Scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington and Director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy

Pakistan that make up the ‘Pashtunistan’ region.

I don't expect a viable solution to include the U.S. version of democracy and the Islamic religion replaced with a U.S. version of Christianity.

As the article points out, the Pashtun population straddles the Afghanistan border.

The Pashtun areas of Afghanistan are the South and Southeast parts of the country, with other ethnic groups dominating the north and west. There are both linguistic and religious differences between the Pashtuns and the Tajiks, Hazara and other groups formerly dominated by the Pashtuns when they formerly controlled Afghanistan and the part of Pakistan west of the Indus.

In Pakistan, they Pashtuns are dominated by the Punjabis. Any solution in Pakistan that splits Pashtun areas off is unacceptable to the Punjabis because the part of Pakistan east of the Indus is too narrow to be effectively defended against India.

lasting solution.

IMO that's why CIC Obama should order our troops to stop combat operations and provide only logistics support.