What is "pashtunistan"

Pashtunistan (, Pax̌tūnistān; also called Pukhtunistan, or Pathanistan, meaning the "land of Pashtuns") is the geographic region inhabited by the indigenous Pashtun people of modern-day Afghanistan and Pakistan. Alternative names historically used for the region included " Afghānistān" and " Pashtūnkhwā" (for present Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province specifically, since at least the 3rd century CE onward). Pashtunistan borders Punjab to the east, Persian and Turkic speaking regions to the west and north, Kashmir to the northeast, and Balochistan to the south.

For administrative division in 1893, Mortimer Durand drew the Durand Line, fixing the limits of the spheres of influence between King Abdur Rahman Khan and British India. This porous line that runs through the center of the Pashtun region forms the modern border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Roughly, the Pashtun homeland stretches from areas south of the Amu River in Afghanistan to west of the Indus River in Pakistan, mainly consisting of southwestern, eastern and some northern districts of Afghanistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and northern Balochistan in Pakistan.