Afghanistan’s greatest peril comes from the Taliban which is fighting for a society run according to a strict interpretation of Islam. This movement is largely drawn from the Pashtun tribes inhabiting rugged mountains spanning southeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan.

These fearsome tribes have a long history of guarding their independence, fighting against Afghan kings, British imperialists, Soviet communists and currently an alliance of democracies. In Afghanistan their interest in national politics has had its ups and downs. In Pakistan the government has left them largely free to live as they please in the so-called tribal areas.

Meanwhile Pashtun dreams for an independent land, Pashtunistan if you like, persist. Indeed it might be said for all intents and purposes the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is meaningless for Pashtun society. Now the Pashtuns, as Taliban, are on the march in Afghanistan raising fears that peace and a modicum of development among the first shoots of democracy may be lost. Foreign military commanders are certain the Taliban’s renaissance depends on supplies and support from their Pashtun kith and kin just over the border in Pakistan.

In October, the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London concluded that European and North American governments cannot muster the political will to provide adequate men, materiel and coordination to achieve their goals in Afghanistan. The report is timely because in recent months Taliban have attacked in peaceful areas of Afghanistan far from their strongholds along the Afghan-Pak border.

This is a stark turnaround from six years ago when the Taliban’s national government, installed by the gun in the 1990s, was falling to an American-led invasion of Afghanistan. In Pakistan the situation is not dissimilar. A weak government, in this case an increasingly unpopular military junta, also lacks the will to tackle rebellious Pashtuns. Offensives by the Pakistani military against Pashtuns in the tribal areas have achieved little.

Oddly the same military regime can muster the resolve to trample democracy, club unarmed judges and lawyers, and haul opponents off to jail. This reflects, in part at least, close ties between elements of Pakistan’s security establishment developed with the Pashtun society in Pakistan and Afghanistan, when they fought the Soviets in the 1980s.

A fair few Pakistani soldiers and spies drew inspiration from the Pashtun creed of an austere version of Islam at a time when President Zia al-Huq, a military dictator ruling Pakistan, was giving Islamic codes a greater role in society. Today Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf, the army commander, struggles to save his regime, and perhaps his skin, from mainstream politicians and he claims, the rising strength of radical Islamists, rooted along the northwest frontier. Musharraf, unlike al-Huq, says he is for a moderate, contemporary Islam.

Clearly one of the major causes of friction in both Afghanistan and Pakistan is a conflict over what form of Islam and by extension society should prevail. However it is a relatively new conflict drawing sustenance from older clashes of ethnicity and nationhood. Conflicts between Pashtuns and wider society are the biggest cracks in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

What then is the point of trying to impose an idea of society and state upon the Pashtuns who clearly want none of it? It is doing nothing for international security. It fuels the instability wracking Pakistan where politics turn darker by the day and threatens hard-won gains in Afghanistan. It is time to consider a radical option. Cut loose the Pashtun lands of northwestern Pakistan and southeastern Afghanistan rolling them into a new state, Pashtunistan.

Pashtunistan will of course be responsible for its own affairs. Taliban and al-Qaeda will no longer lie beyond reach of justice or retribution because of Pakistan’s compromised security establishment and the protection afforded by a line on a map. Serious repercussions will result should Pashtunistan allow Taliban guerrillas to attack either Afghanistan or Pakistan, or give sanctuary to terrorists like al-Qaeda perpetrating outrages abroad.

For patriots in Afghanistan and Pakistan the cuts will be painful, but the gains potentially great. Shorn of these troublesome areas the economic outlook for both countries should brighten. Concerned powers can start by easing the loss with aid, investment and trade. In particular prospects for energy pipelines from Central Asia through Afghanistan to Pakistan should improve, at least from a security perspective. Afghanistan and Pakistan should both be free to spend less on bleeding armies and budgets in fruitless civil wars and more on tackling the scourge of poverty.