ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses all the extra-Himalayan territory between the alluvial plains of the Indus and the Afghan and Iranian boundaries. These boundaries, except for short stretches in the extreme north and along the Safed Koh, pay little attention to physical features. There is little or no natural difference between the Kabul and Kunar valleys east and west of the border, or between Iranian and Baluchi Makran; and for the most part the frontier peoples straddle the actual boundary. The population of Baluchistan, excluding the lowland areas, was 1,300,000 in 1961 –about 10 to the square mile, and obviously much less in the western deserts. The western boundary of the region is of course arbitrary –the Durand Line, the political boundary between Afghanistan and India. The eastern boundary from the Vale of Peshawar southwards is taken as the daman where the hills sink under the basins along the Indu–roughly the old Sikh border.
