Book on Pashtuns' role in Pakistan-Afghanistan relations

New Delhi, May 20 (IANS) Many accounts claim that the instability gripping Afghanistan and Pakistan is rooted in Pashtun history and culture, but a new book is contests this claim, a statement said Tuesday.

In the book "The Pashtuns: The unresolved key to the future of Pakistan and Afghanistan", journalist Abubakar Siddique, a Pashtun himself, tells a different story.

The story is about the failure and unwillingness of both Afghanistan and Pakistan to include the Pashtuns into their state structures and incorporate them into the economic and political fabric, which is central to South Asia's problems, and a critical failure of nation- and state-building in both the countries, said the statement by the book publisher.

Partly an eye-witness account and partly researched, the book makes clear that religious extremism is the product of these critical failures and responsibility for this lies to a large degree with the elites of both the countries.

In this comprehensive account, the author focuses on the suffering of the ordinary Pakistanis and Afghans, attempts to relate their views on extremism and terrorism, and offers a roadmap towards peace in the region built on the cross-border connections of the Pashtuns, the world's largest tribally organised society.