Pashtunistan – the land of the Pashtuns- straddling an area of more than 100,000 square miles, historically stretches from the Indus to the Hindu Kush. Today, this land and its people stand divided by the British-era controversial Durand Line into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Consequently, the Pashtuns, despite being the largest Muslim tribal population in the world, are without a state of their own.
Though divided between two countries, the Pashtuns share a common ideology of descent, a common religion, common ethnic, cultural, linguistic, and familial bonds, common historical memories, and a common code-Pashtunwali- the way of the Pashtun. These unifying bonds make it possible to see them as a single entity inhabiting a single piece of real estate, distinct from their neighbors. Moreover, the present division of the Pashtuns is just one of the several avatars that this land has been subject to over the centuries.
Throughout most of history, the Pashtun region now included within the boundaries of Afghanistan and Pakistan has witnessed more invasions than any other in Asia, or perhaps the world. From the Aryans in about the second millennium BCE, to the Greeks, the Persians, the Sakas, the Kushans, the Hephthalites (White Huns), the Arabs, the Mongols, the Turks, the Mughals, the British and the Soviets, to the US, the region has perhaps seen it all. Uniquely, each time the invasions were motivated not by any intrinsic value of Pashtunistan in terms of resources or riches but due to geostrategic reasons. For millennia, landlocked Pashtunistan, located as it was at the crossroads of Central Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and East Asia, was the transit route to the riches of India. Most invaders attempted to conquer and subdue the Pashtuns but ultimately failed giving the land the moniker of ‘The Graveyard of Empires’. The reason was that, as all invaders found out, the Pashtun tribesmen would not be defeated. As has been well put.
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