Even though the vast majority of soldiers and officers in the Pakistan Army are from Punjab. The Pakistani military expeditions both over and covert have depended to a large extent on the renowned fighting ability of the Pathan or Pashtun tribes living along the Durand Line.
However, since the rise of the Taliban in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The issue of Pathan identity and Pashtun nationalism has created problems for Pakistan.
The main factor behind this issue is the fact that for the Pashtun tribes on both sides of the Durand Line, tribal identity and clan loyalty are more important than their ties to the nation-state of Pakistan.
The Pashtun nationalism across Durand Line is problematic for Pakistan as it focuses on loyalty to the clan rather than the country.
The borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan have been a hotbed for global terrorism and jihad for the last four decades.
. The British empire wanted to have a ruler in Afghanistan who would be sympathetic to their interests and guard against Russian expansion into Kabul. Three wars were fought (1828-42, 1879-80, and 1919) between the British and different Afghan Amirs.
It was during the second of these Anglo-Afghan wars in 1893 that Amir Abdur Rahman, while negotiating with Mortimer Durand, a British diplomat in Kabul agreed, somewhat arbitrarily to the drawing of a borderline between British India and Afghanistan.
The state of Afghanistan, therefore, emerged mainly as a result of the laying down of borders, and not laborious state-building. This border called the ‘Durand Line’ and would demarcate the future nation-states of Afghanistan and Pakistan.