00:00Pakistan, a large country in South Asia that on paper doesn't look like that hard of a starting
00:05position to be in, but make no mistake, if real life was like a game of Sid Meier's Civilization,
00:10then playing Pakistan would be one of the most difficult civs in the entire game to win as,
00:15because their starting position is absolute hot garbage. And here's why.
00:21Pakistan's political borders don't really make a lot of sense when you study them a bit more
00:25closely. If we switch map styles to a topographic map, you can see that none of Pakistan's borders
00:30really follow any clear geographic boundaries, like rivers or mountains. And when we switch to
00:35an ethnic map, you can also see that Pakistan's borders don't really appear to follow any clear
00:40ethnic divisions either. What Pakistan's borders do follow, instead, is the religious border between
00:46the majority Muslim and majority Hindu areas of the Indian subcontinent. And that's not by accident.
00:53It was designed that way from the beginning on purpose. And like most messy border problems
00:58across the world, it's all the fault of the British. A long time ago, the entire Indian
01:04subcontinent was ruled by the British, but in 1947, they decided to let it all go and grant
01:10independence. But when they did, they decided to partition the colony of India into two separate,
01:16newly independent states. A majority Hindu country that became India, and a majority
01:21Muslim country that became Pakistan. The two were separated exclusively based upon the borders of
01:27the majority Muslim and the majority Hindu areas in the empire, without any regard to natural
01:32geographic boundaries. And this has created hosts of problems for both countries. In the case of
01:38Pakistan, this created a long border with India from the Arabian Sea through the salt marshes of
01:44the Ran of Kutch, the vast inhospitable Tar Desert, the fertile plains of the Punjab, and up through
01:51the high mountains of the hotly contested province of Kashmir. Most of this border is recognized and
01:57accepted by both Pakistan and India until it gets to the Kashmir area, which is a territory claimed
02:02entirely by both of them. They've both fought multiple wars against each other for control over
02:08the whole thing, and as it stands now on the ground, the line of each other's actual de facto control
02:14across the province looks like this. Which is effectively the border between them, even though
02:18nobody actually recognizes it as such. This line was created upon the ceasefire line that concluded
02:24the 1971 war between them. But there was one incredibly stupid problem with it. It doesn't
02:31extend across the entire province, it literally abruptly just ends right here. Which left a lot
02:38of vague uncertainties as to who exactly controlled what beyond it towards China. The reason that the
02:44line ended where it did was because it was at the foothills of the colossal Karakoram mountain range.
02:50So all of the land beyond it was just extremely inhospitable and effectively impassable glaciers.
02:57The UN just assumed that neither side would really care about it, but care they did. Beginning in
03:031984, both sides realized that there was an active geographic hole in their de facto border that the
03:09other side could take advantage of. And so they both attempted to plug it up with thousands of
03:14troops trying to outmaneuver the other in order to secure the strategic high ground and mountain
03:19passes that led into each other's sides. The high altitude combat 6,000 meters up above sea level
03:26took place here in the Siachen Glacier area, and the elements claimed the lives of thousands of men
03:32from both sides. By the end of the conflict in 2003, India had secured the high ground in the
03:38area and control over the main passes through, which gives them the geographic advantage in the
03:43area to this day. India is, without a doubt, Pakistan's biggest rival on the world stage,
03:49and the whole border between the two is considered to be one of the most dangerous places in the
03:54entire world. And if all-out war ever were to break out between them, Pakistan has really weak
04:01geographic armor for defenses across the entire line. As the situation in Kashmir stands today,
04:07the Indian military occupies a line that's only 83 kilometers away from the center of the Pakistani
04:14capital, Islamabad. If Pakistan could control all of Kashmir, it would push the Indian lines
04:19far away from the capital city and establish a massively significant mountain shield that the
04:25Indian army would struggle to punch through to get there. This is partially why Kashmir is of
04:30such massive strategic value to Pakistan. But as it is now, the Indian army controls most of it and
04:36is within striking distance of the capital. The only big mountains that Pakistan controls along
04:42the Indian border that could be used for defense are all located in the far north of the country,
04:47far away from all of Pakistan's major population and economic centers, which means that any Indian
04:54advance could just simply ignore them. The Indus river is one of the biggest rivers in the world
04:59and would make a great defensive line, but unfortunately it runs roughly through the
05:03middle of the country, which means that falling back behind it would mean surrendering half of
05:08the country by that point. The system of Indus tributary rivers that runs through the Punjab
05:13province are somewhat defensible, but even still, the Indian army could punch through all of these
05:19highlighted areas without ever having to cross a river. And that includes some of Pakistan's
05:24most major population centers, like Lahore, Faisalabad, Hyderabad, and the capital Islamabad.
05:30Further complicating things is that Pakistan is a relatively easy country to blockade.
05:34She only has a narrow stretch of coastline here in the south on the Arabian sea, and only a handful
05:40of significant ports on it that if eliminated, can effectively transform Pakistan into a landlocked
05:45state. The port of Karachi alone handles 60% of all of Pakistan's cargo, owing to its strategic
05:53location near the Strait of Hormuz. Or it can trade routes in the world where 25% of all the
05:59world's oil passes through. This heavy reliance on a single city for supplies makes Pakistan
06:05exceptionally vulnerable. If just Karachi can be blockaded or captured, that immediately halts
06:1160% of Pakistan's cargo and supplies from getting inside of the country. But the border with India
06:17and the over-reliance on a single port are not the only crappy border situations that Pakistan
06:22has to deal with. There is another, and it's another British-created mess here with Afghanistan.
06:29The British also created this border back in 1893 as the boundary between British India and
06:35Afghanistan, and Pakistan simply inherited the mess for themselves upon independence in 1947.
06:41The main problem with it is that it divides the ethnic territory of the Pashtun people between
06:45Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is awkward because the Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group inside
06:52of Afghanistan, and they largely rule that country. So the Pashtuns of Afghanistan have long desired
06:59to be reunited with the rest of the ethnic Pashtuns across the border in Pakistan, and Afghanistan
07:05often lays claim to an extended border that stretches this deep into Pakistan to cover it.
07:10As recently as 2017, the President of Afghanistan has stated that Afghanistan will never recognize
07:17the border with Pakistan as it stands today. When Pakistan joined the United Nations in 1947,
07:24there was only a single country who voted against them joining it, and it wasn't India. It was
07:29Afghanistan. So because of these messy borders left over by the British, Pakistan faces enemies
07:34on both of her flanks who openly claim territory that Pakistan also claims or controls. This means
07:41that the prospect of a two-front war against both parties if they ever allied with one another
07:46against Pakistan is a very real possibility. Therefore, it has always been within Pakistan's
07:53best interests to seek influence in Afghanistan and attempt to pacify their government by any means
07:59necessary in order to keep this from happening. It also doesn't help though that the border runs
08:04right through the middle of the extremely mountainous part of the Pashtun tribal lands,
08:09which makes the border extremely difficult to govern, police, and control for both countries.
08:14Drug smugglers, terrorist groups like the Taliban, and other seedy individuals routinely cross it
08:20between both sides, which also makes this border one of the most violent and unstable places in the
08:26entire world, meaning that Pakistan has two inherently unstable borders on either side.
08:32This only leaves Pakistan borders with two other countries, Iran and China. The border with Iran
08:39is through the sparsely inhabited arid province of Balochistan, which like the Pashtuns, cuts the
08:44Baloch people between Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. Unlike the Pashtuns though, the Baloch
08:50don't have an independent state of their own, so they can't pose an existential threat to Pakistan
08:55in the same way that the Pashtuns of Afghanistan do. Iran and Pakistan cooperate to an extent on
09:02squashing Baloch separatism in their respective zones of control, but a working alliance between
09:06the two is severely complicated by Iran's Shia government and Pakistan's Sunni government.
09:12This leaves only China as a potential geographic ally for Pakistan in the region, and sure enough,
09:18China is without a doubt Pakistan's closest ally on the world stage. The geography of Pakistan
09:25is more challenging and difficult than most, but with strong leadership,
09:30shrewd alliances, and careful diplomacy, even a difficult situation like this can be made manageable.
09:36Now, difficult situations come in all different shapes and sizes.
09:41There's macro-difficult situations like Pakistan's
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