Pakistan’s Pashtun Challenge: Moving from Confrontation to Integration

Robert Boggs

Robert Boggs is a Professor at the National Defense University’s Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies. Previously he served for 32 years as a US diplomat and intelligence… Continue reading Pakistan’s Pashtun Challenge: Moving from Confrontation to Integration read more

The Pashtun populations of Afghanistan and Pakistan have long been a source of bilateral contention, with each government inciting Pashtun tribals against the other. Now that the majority of Pashtuns live in Pakistan, Islamabad is using its Pashtun connections to project influence into Afghanistan. As a result, both Afghanistan and Pakistan are threatened by runaway Pashtun militancy. Peace and stability in both countries will be impossible until political reforms have been implemented in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. Reforms, with international support, would undermine radical networks and could be leveraged to improve Afghanistan–Pakistan relations.