Buffer States, Part 2: Afghanistan

Part 1: Himalayas

As Russia conquered the independent Turkish kingdoms of Tashkent and Bokhara (modern-day Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan), the southern border of the Russian Empire crept closer and closer to British India. At one point in the mid-19th century, Russian, British, and Chinese territorial claims (although not actual control) overlapped in the Hindu Kush Mountain range. Of course, the remote and desolate region had no resources and few assets, but the three empires, particularly Britain and Russia, knew a common border meant war.

So what did they do? They set up a buffer state: Afghanistan.

Russia and Britain gave up just enough territory in the Hindu Kish to give Afghanistan that strange “Ëœfinger’ of territory that stretches out to touch China, and make sure that Russia Turkestan and British India did not touch. All conflicts would be with Afghanistan, not with each other.

Tragically, as we are seeing today, the borders were drawn with no regard for the ethnic makeup of the region. Uzbeks and Tajiks live outside of their designated state homelands in the north, Nuristanis and Pashtuns live on both sides of the border with Pakistan, and Balochi communities are split up between Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. The state is an ethnic polyglot that for all intents and purposes should not exist. It is little wonder that the region has been so unstable for much of its modern existence.

(See more maps of Afghanistan’s ethnic divide here, here, and here.)