Thoughts on Afghanistan and Pakistan

So I am watching a Newsnight segment on the resignation of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, and they are talking about 'building democracy' and so forth and all I could think was that in no period of history that I know of have Afghanistan or the volatile tribal areas of Pakistan like Baluchistan or North Waziristan have ever been successfully ruled by any form of central authority, you cannot create a country where there was none originally. Even when the British Raj was at its height it got chased out of Afghanistan, twice. The most they could do was pay off the tribes and their chiefs.

Even the geography of the area goes against it, deep valleys divided by high mountains, often cut off from each other during winter, hardly conducive to creating a country or democracy. The tribal bond goes deeper than any national bond as well.

Which is why the attempts by the UK, Canada and its NATO allies to impose some form of democracy or central control in Afghanistan will fail and the attempts by Pakistan to bring their tribal areas under central control also will end in failure and more bloodshed.