Pakistan’s Ethnic Fault Line
Key to keeping Pakistan stable is understanding its ethnic conflicts.
The Pakistani army is composed mostly of Punjabis. The Taliban is entirely Pashtun. For centuries, Pashtuns living in the mountainous borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan have fought to keep out invading Punjabi plainsmen. So sending Punjabi soldiers into Pashtun territory to fight jihadists pushes the country ever closer to an ethnically defined civil war, strengthening Pashtun sentiment for an independent "Pashtunistan" that would embrace 41 million ... Full Story »
Posted by Kaizar Campwala
There's a tendency among journalists to reduce a conflict between to groups like this to "historical ethnic hatred," or some such platitude (think Hutu and Tutsi, for example). The reality is more complex, as this piece shows.