PAKISTAN by https://padlet.com/alejandrofernandez/if5y0sm01zu0 en-us 2017-02-04 10:55:50 UTC 2017-05-17 04:54:28 UTC hello@padlet.com alejandrofernandez https://padlet.com/alejandrofernandez/if5y0sm01zu0/wish/151599259 In their fascinating account of a series of interviews with a Taliban tactician in Tuesday’s New York Times, Jane Perlez and Pir Zubair Shah point to “one distinct Taliban advantage: the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan barely exists for the Taliban.”

In previous posts on The Lede, we’ve mentioned that Pakistan and the rest of the world believes that Afghanistan ends (and Pakistan begins) more or less where a 1,600-mile line was drawn on the world map in 1893, at the direction of a British colonial officer named Henry Mortimer Durand, who sought to define the outer edge of what was then British India. At the time, the Afghans grudgingly accepted the map, despite the fact that what became known as the Durand Line cut right through Pashtun tribal areas and even villages that they considered part of Afghanistan.

]]> 2017-02-04 11:11:29 UTC https://padlet.com/alejandrofernandez/if5y0sm01zu0/wish/151599259 alejandrofernandez https://padlet.com/alejandrofernandez/if5y0sm01zu0/wish/151599323 As the British sought to expand their empire into the northwest frontier, they clashed with the Pashtun tribes that held lands extending from the western boundary of the Punjab plains into the kingdom of Afghanistan. The Pashtuns strongly resisted British invasions into their territories. After suffering many casualties, the British finally admitted they could not conquer the Pashtuns. In 1893 Sir Mortimer Durand, the foreign secretary of the colonial government of India, negotiated an agreement with the king of Afghanistan, Amir Abdur Rahman Khan, to delineate a border. The so-called Durand Line cut through Pashtun territories, dividing them between British and Afghan areas of influence. However, the Pashtuns refused to be subjugated under British colonial rule. The British compromised by creating a new province in 1901, named the North-West Frontier Province, as a loosely administered territory where the Pashtuns would not be subject to colonial laws.]]> 2017-02-04 11:13:03 UTC https://padlet.com/alejandrofernandez/if5y0sm01zu0/wish/151599323