This is a border with no boundaries, boasting a frontier town with no frontier, said Jason Burke in describing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border at Chaman in an article in The Independent published on 21 January 1999: Frontline: Chaman, Pakistan-Afghan frontier – Legacy of the Raj: fine railways and lousy borders.

Even the home secretary in Quetta – the second-most senior civil servant in the province – admits the frontier, effectively created as the western boundary of British India, is a farce: “It is an imaginary border. You Britishers built us good railways but gave us some lousy boundaries.”