Knowing the increased border tension between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US I decided to research the cause. We caused it we we will not resolve it!

As usual I was lying in Bed this morning having my coffee and listening to the news. Knowing we keep hearing that Bin Laden is in the tribal area's and what we are being told is Al Qaeda has been reinforcing the Taliban in Afghanistan and increasing violence in Pakistan with threats of unseating the Government and throwing the entire region into turmoil and bush is adding 3,000 marines and their support equipment and fighter aircraft to Afghanistan along the border with Pakistan's tribal area, I heard this morning that anyone caught crossing the border illegally will be considered an invader. Knowing how we have indiscriminately set Muslim borders in many Instances and have caused these problems ourselves by dividing and cutting off whole peoples I decided to once again look at the forming of modern Afghanistan, the border there, and the forming of Pakistan from India.

Afghanistan is an ancient land. Its early history, like the early history of the republics of Central Asia to the east of the Caspian Sea, is virtually the same as the history of ancient Iran. even knowing this I was pretty surprised looking at the failures of the Brits and others to impose there will there over the years to no avail and here we are attempting to do it once again and it will fail once again. You will want to read the rich history of the region. I was impressed. Anyway: In 1893, when the Durand line was drawn and modern Afghanistan was created, the region of present-day Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was populated by two main ethnic groups: Indo-European and Turkish. Some pockets of Arab nomads, Hindus, and Jews also lived in the region mostly close to the Panj River valley. The Indo-European population was a continuation of the dominant Indo-Iranian branch in the north and west centered in the cities of Bukhara and Tehran, respectively. The Hindu Kush mountain divided this Indo-Iranian population into four ethnic zones: Pushtuns to the south and southeast; Tajiks to the northeast of the Hindu Kush range; Parsiwans to the west; and Baluch to the southwest

The Pushtuns, who later (1950's) made an unsuccessful attempt at creating a Pushtunistan, numbered about 13,000,000. They populated what is present-day southern Afghanistan and the Tribal Agencies and Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. The Tajiks, over 10,000,000, populated what are the present-day republics of Tajikistan, southern Uzbekistan, and northeastern Afghanistan. The Parsiwan, about 600,000, populated the western region of present-day Afghanistan. And the Baluch, numbering 100,000 populated southwestern Afghanistan. The Turkic population lived in the north. Ethnically, they were Uzbeks, Kyrgyzes, and Turkmens who had entered Central Asia some as early as the 11th century, others during the 15th and 16th centuries. In addition, there was a relatively large population of Hazarahs who lived in the central highlands of present-day Afghanistan. The Hazarahs and Aimaq are usually regarded as remnants of the Mongol hordes that invaded Central Asia in the 13th century.

The Afghanistan that emerged from the Russian/British agreement of 1893 consists of partial populations from among the groups mentioned above, especially after the expansion of the Uzbek group at the expense of the Tajik. Afghanistan's present-day ethnic mix includes some 8 million Pushtuns; 5.6 million Tajiks; 1.5 million Hazarahs; 1.5 million Uzbeks; 60,000 Parsiwans; 125,000 Turkmens; and 200,000 Baluchis. Several thousand Kyrgyzes, Arabs, and other ethnic groups also make Afghanistan their home. the forming of Afghanistan

Along side this Britain Broke up india forming amongst other things Pakistan also dividing whole Religions and peoples at their whim!

Pakistan was created for a very simple reason: religion. The sprawling land mass that was colonial India under British rule was partitioned into three distinct places. Each one of these was created because the majority of its inhabitants worshiped one of two religions, Hinduism and Islam. This happened in 1947, and trouble has ensued ever since. The independence movement in India began in earnest in the last half of the 19th Century. It then gained strength in the early part of the 20th Century, as nationalism swept Asia and Africa as it had Europe a century before. Crusaders such as Mohandas Gandhi began campaigning for independence from Britain. The independence campaign gained international focus, thanks in large part to the actions of Gandhi and a few other brave people, and the pressure was finally too much for Britain to ignore.

India, however, was not just one country full of like-minded people when it came to worship. Two fundamentally different religions dominated the soulful landscape of the world's second most populous country. The conflict between followers of those two faiths transcended the partition from Colonial India into India and Pakistan. Hinduism, one of the world's oldest religions, had millions of adherents living in India. Islam did as well, though its history was much shorter. The British partitioned Colonial India according to population concerns. India was then and continues to be populated mostly by Hindus. Pakistan, on the other hand, had and continues to have a mostly Muslim population. However, neither of these are homogenous, and the partition separated many people from their families.

Much like the building of the Berlin Wall did, the partitioning of India created more problems than it solved. India was a mostly Hindu country, yes, but it had a sizable Muslim minority. The same was true, in reverse, for Pakistan, which was actually two landscapes to begin with. In 1947, Pakistan was actually West Pakistan and East Pakistan, with India squarely in the middle. India divided both Pakistan's without a way to connect the two. East Pakistan became Bangladesh in 1971. The sudden division of the colony into two separate countries led to mass exodus. Muslims went to Pakistan and Hindus to India. Some estimates put the "population exchange" at more than 14 million. The exoduses led to mass chaos and mass hysteria, often accompanied by violence. In many cases, faith-based massacres occurred behind country lines. Why was Pakistan formed

** It just blows me away knowing Africa was divvied up at the Berlin Conference and after Colonization ended new lines were drawn up dividing Muslim people and others that hate each other, and what we did in the same regard to the middle east, and here with Pakistan and Afghanistan, I continue to be blown away that Bush the idiot can stupidly say we did nothing wrong! We did nothing to deserve 9/11, well! That aside I refuse to believe that we think we are going to impose our will in Pakistan and Afghanistan despite the history and what we have done. We have not and will not be able to separate Muslim blood or make one get along with the other. We are succeeding at digging the hole deeper and deeper!