Whenever there’s a map of Asia or Afghanistan on CNN, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is a broad red line, while other national borders on CNN maps are thin and white. Why?
Can you provide an example? On this map, which I found right on the CNN homepage, there’s no red line – they’re all thin and white.
Well I don’t have a picture available, since I’ve only seen it on air, but they had this red line between Afghanistan and Pakistan (and only there), even if it’s a general map of Asia and the particular bit of news is not at all connected to the Afghansitan War.
Schnitte is correct about the red border line. Wondered about it myself.
Might it be that red is the standard border colour? I thought all the other countries adjoining Afghanistan had sealed their borders, so maybe they are in a different colour to indicate this?
that usually means the border is being disputed.
I have also seen CNN’s red line on the Pakistani-Afghan border, and wondered about it. A possible explanation:
As hegel notes, the red line may indicate a disputed or not formally defined border. The Pakistani-Afghan border dates back to the late 19th Century and the British Empire in India. It is known as the “Durand Line” after the British colonial official who devised it. The British essentially partitioned the territories of the Pashtun or Pathan tribes, who are an important ethnic minority in Pakistan, and form the dominant ethnic group (either a plurality or a majority) in Afghanistan. The Pashtuns tended to be resistant to colonial rule, and in effect the British divided them, with some going to British India’s North-West Frontier Province, and the rest going to Afghanistan (the British made several notoriously unsuccessful attempts to secure Afghanistan as part of their colonial empire or at least sphere of influence, but the country mainly served as a buffer state between the British in India and the Russian Empire which was expanding into Central Asia during this period).
Many Pashtuns on both sides of the line have never really accepted the validity of the Durand Line, and this attitude has at times been officially reflected by the government of Afghanistan (conversely Pakistan has been eager to have the line’s status as a recognized international border confirmed). As the Columbia Encyclopedia notes:
As this page shows, this is very much a live issue in some quarters.
So, this controversy may be what CNN is reflecting with its peculiar red border.
It could be that they are using a red line just for emphasis to show that the border between the two countries is an area where most of the fighting is going on and stuff like that. It could just be for emphasis.