outh Asia is beset by the colonial legacy of contested borders riddling the region with perennial conflict and instability, exacerbated by the stakes and compulsions of geopolitics.

The Durand Line between Pakistan and Afghanistan is one such demarcation. Drawn in 1893 by the British diplomat Sir Mortimer Durand and the Afghan ruler Abdul Rahman Khan through a treaty, the 2,640 kilometre-long Durand Line demarcated the frontier between British India and Afghanistan. After independence, Pakistan, as the successor state, inherited the border, recognised under international law. For Afghanistan, the Durand Line remains a historical injustice. Kabul maintains that Abdul Rahman Khan acquiesced to the agreement under duress and that it was intended to define spheres of influence rather than create a boundary between the two countries. Afghanistan has never recognised the border.

Running through the ethnic Pushtoon heartland, the Durand Line divided the Pushtoon population between the two countries. Leveraging the division, Afghanistan espoused the nationalist call for Greater Pushtoonistan, employing the narrative to seek the region’s secession from Pakistan, while also laying irredentist claims on territory east of the River Indus. Successive Afghan governments kept shifting the goalposts with regard to resolving the issue. This continues to plague the relationship between the two nations.

Since the coming to power of the Taliban in 2021, the two countries have witnessed heightened hostility. Pakistan continues to face attacks on its security forces - the bloodiest in a decade, which it is convinced are carried out by Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, based in Afghanistan. Islamabad further maintains that the Taliban government has not done enough to rein in the terrorist organisation. The Taliban deny the allegations, even as their relationship with the outlawed organisation remains “strong and symbiotic,” based on the camaraderie from when they fought together against the US-led coalition forces - Pushtoonwali. There is also the question of the Taliban regime’s capacity to take action against the well-armed group and its will to do so, given the presence of the rival Islamic State Khorasan Province in some parts of Afghanistan, lest the TTP join it. Fencing and other border controls across the Durand Line since 2017 have further sharpened misgivings in Kabul, even as the steps were deemed necessary by Islamabad to curtail the TTP incursions in the wake of the Army Public School, Peshawar, attack in 2016.

The recent retaliatory airstrikes by Pakistan on TTP sanctuaries inside Afghanistan, have once again foregrounded the schism over the Durand Line, with the Taliban defence minister calling it an “imaginary” line, underscoring the centrality of the issue.

The China-Afghanistan border in the rugged Wakhan strip is another colonial cartographic wonder that can prove critical were it to factor in the new great game of clashing interests and histories, set rolling by South Asia’s contested lines.

The Line of Control, between India and Pakistan is another key delimitation. Dividing the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, it has been the cause of four wars and an extended state of acrimony between the two countries. The Kashmir issue, of which the LoC is a component, remains the main stumbling block to peace in the region. It was also the cause of the recent war between Pakistan and India. A terrorist attack on tourists in the picturesque region of Pahalgam, Kashmir, became the immediate trigger for the war in May 2025. New Delhi has long accused Islamabad of harbouring non-state actors carrying out cross-border terrorism on its territory. The Pahalgam attack was framed in the same vein. Pakistan has also raised concerns over the nature of India’s relationship with various dispensations in Afghanistan and the acts of terrorism emanating from the latter on Pakistan’s soil.

The conflict dynamics across the LoC and the Durand Line are often perceived to be connected, be it “The road to Kabul runs through Kashmir” thesis or Pakistan’s tactical pursuit of strategic depth in Afghanistan. The recent visit of the Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to New Delhi and the Taliban’s earlier condemnation of the Pahalgam attack, amidst deteriorating relations with Islamabad should be viewed within the same logic of intertwined conflicts across the LoC and the Durand Line. The reset in the India-Afghanistan relationship marks a realigning of the region’s strategic dynamics.

The McMahon Line, is the de facto boundary between China and India in the eastern Himalayas, another frontier of discord. Established in 1914 as part of the Simla Convention, it continues to bedevil the relationship between the two Asian competitors. While India identifies the McMahon Line, as the legal boundary between the two countries, China has refused to acknowledge it, questioning the legitimacy of its unilateral imposition – The Republic of China was not a party to the agreement. China, instead claims the Ladakh territory, building a highway through it: the Xinjiang-Tibet Highway. As the situation escalated, the two countries went to war in 1962, sowing a deep-rooted antagonism in their bilateral relationship. The war also established the notional, Line of Actual Control – LAC. Coined by the Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in a 1959 note to the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the LAC in Ladakh was an informal ceasefire line between the two countries. China and India agreed to respect the LAC in a bilateral agreement in 1993, without actually demarcating the line.

This, too, has been a site of recurrent skirmishes. A major confrontation on the LAC broke out in June 2020, when besides other factors, China raised objections to the development of key Indian military infrastructure near the LAC. The said military infrastructure was also very close to the Karakoram Pass, the gateway to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor – a flagship project of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Earlier in August 2019, New Delhi had undertaken a series of constitutional changes, bringing the Ladakh territory under central control. Beijing construed this to be directed against its claims on the region. Beijing remains overtly sensitive on matters of sovereignty.

The 2020 conflict on the LAC in Ladakh, brought India’s arch rivals, China and Pakistan closer in their embrace, raising the spectre of a possible two-front war against India. Ladakh, previously a part of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, also hosts the LoC, alongside the LAC, further interlocking India’s conflict with China, with that of Pakistan.

For these arbitrary lines to come full circle, quite literally, there remains a key strategic, albeit challenging, link: the China-Afghanistan border in the rugged Wakhan strip - another colonial cartographic wonder that can prove critical were it to factor in the new great game of clashing interests and histories, set rolling by South Asia’s contested lines.

The writer is an academic, author, and political commentator