29-05-2010, 06:27 PM
AFPAK bothers me especially, personally. It's one of those provisional terms that hints at eternal war sans frontiers.
I'm not sure this is true, and it's probably folk or apocryphal etymology, but I was listening to an old radio programme called The Pacific Story, intended to give Americans some basic information on countries around the Pacific at the onset of World War II, and the narrator explained that PAKISTAN is an acronym: P is for Punjab, A is for Afghanistan, K is for Kashmir, I is for India, plus the Persian -stan for land. Probably false, but it would make AFPAK look either redundant, or a poorer metaphor for endless war.
I'm not sure this is true, and it's probably folk or apocryphal etymology, but I was listening to an old radio programme called The Pacific Story, intended to give Americans some basic information on countries around the Pacific at the onset of World War II, and the narrator explained that PAKISTAN is an acronym: P is for Punjab, A is for Afghanistan, K is for Kashmir, I is for India, plus the Persian -stan for land. Probably false, but it would make AFPAK look either redundant, or a poorer metaphor for endless war.