The Defiant Border

Elisabeth Leake is a Lecturer in International History at the University of Leeds. She previously held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published articles in The Historical Journal, Modern Asian Studies, and The International History Review. She is coeditor, alongside Leslie James, of Decolonization and the Cold War: Negotiating Independence (2015), and has coedited a special issue of Contemporary South Asia on South Asia's 'wider worlds'.

This book explores why the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands have remained largely independent of state controls throughout the twentieth century.

Introduction. 'A doughty and honorable opponent': historicizing the Afghan-Pakistan borderlands; 1. The Pashtun tribes; 2. Geopolitics and state-building; 3. Book structure; Part I. 'Using a Crowbar to Swat Wasps': The Frontier Tribal Area in Imperial Defense: 4. India in interwar British imperial strategy; 5. Indian nationalism, the Indian army, and regional relations; 6. The 1936-7 revolt and its aftermath; 7. Indian nationalists, the subcontinent's defense, and the war effort; 8. The Pashtuns and the war effort; 9. Conclusion; Part II. The 'Opening of Sluice Gates': Plan Partition and the Frontier: 10. The end of war, imperial decline, and plan partition; 11. Reconciling independent South Asia and imperial defense; 12. The NWFP and the 1945-6 elections; 13. British policy towards the frontier tribal area; 14. Nehru's visit to the frontier and the local decline of the congress; 15. Afghanistan, regional relations, and India's Pashtuns; 16. The NWFP referendum and the future of the tribal zone; 17. Independence and evolving tribal identity; 18. Pakistan and the frontier tribal area; 19. Conclusion; Part III. 'We are One People and Ours is a Land': The Demand for Pashtunistan, 1948-52: 20. Britain, the emerging Cold War, and the Kashmir conflict; 21. Kashmir in Indio-Pakistan relations; 22. The development of independent Pakistan; 23. The rise of Afghan-Pakistan tensions; 24. Pakistan and the frontier tribal area; 25. Pashtunistan in regional and international relations; 26. Conclusion; Part IV. A 'Friendly Point of Return': Pakistan and the Global Cold War: 27. The emergence of the United States-Pakistan alliance; 28. The impasse in Afghan-Pakistan relations; 29. The frontier tribal area and the one unit plan; 30. Renegotiating Afghan-Pakistan relations in the Cold War; 31. Conclusion; Part V. An 'Eye for an Eye': Mohammad Ayub Khan and the Collapse of Regional Relations: 32. India and the United States: democracies reunited; 33. Ayub Khan's ascendancy; 34. Domestic change and integrating borderlands; 35. Daud and Afghan modernization; 36. Violence returns to the borderlands; 37. The 1960 Afghan-Pakistan rupture; 38. The failure of US mediation; 39. The aftermath of the encounter; 40. Conclusion; Part VI. Conclusion. 'Religion, Land, Lineage, and Honour': The Afghan-Pakistan Borderlands Then and Now: 41. Pashtunistan then and now.