James W. Spain, a U.S. diplomat who served in Pakistan shortly after partition, returned to the frontier tribal area in the 1990s. In his subsequent book, Pathans of the Latter Day, he marveled, “To me, the most important fact is that the Pathans are basically the same now as when I first met them. They live in the same places and share the same values. They remain concerned above all with religion, land, lineage and honour.” While these were Spain's personal feelings, they hardly seem fair as a historical assessment of developments in Pakistan's frontier tribal zone. By the time Spain returned to the Afghan–Pakistan borderlands, upheaval had rocked the region: a series of regime changes within Pakistan, the secession of Bangladesh, a coup in Afghanistan by Mohammad Daud Khan, Daud's subsequent assassination, and finally the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In the arduous insurgency against the Soviets, Pakistan's frontier tribal area served as a primary contact point for the entrance of money, weapons, and men into Afghanistan. Ironically, the fluid border, which had led to so many disputes in years past, allowed for easier transport of goods into the occupied country.

So did the frontier tribal area of the 1990s resemble the frontier tribal area of the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s? In some ways, yes. The political integration of the tribal zone into the Pakistani state remained unfulfilled, and in this way, local Pashtuns largely remained as autonomous as they had in previous decades. But the Government of Pakistan also had continued endeavors to expand economic and social networks. As a government servant in the 1970s, anthropologist Akbar Ahmedargued that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto's reign served as a watershed moment in tribal policy, specifically from 1973–4: