Where do Boundaries Come From?

 
Reflections on Central Asia                                                             
                                     
                                    
   by
Mary M. Flad

It always perplexes me when I look out of the plane window that the national borders drawn so precisely on maps are rarely visible.

Occasionally, of course, a river or ocean provides some clear and neat definition of a edge of a place; but much more frequently the lines were set down by some guy with a political agenda, niggling away at the control of territory with his pen……………..