Peshawar

Peshawar is a city high in the mountainous border of the Indian subcontinent. It maintains its place by its control of the strategic Khyber Pass, an area that has given much inspiration to poets and explorers and much headache to intelligence officers. The Khyber Pass is one of the main routes of military and mercantile traffic between Central Asia and India and most empires desired either to control it or be friends with those who did; which means they desired Peshawar.

The exact time of its founding is unclear. It is mentioned in Hindu and Persian Mythology, winning the acclaim as the "seventh most beautiful place on Earth". Later, Hellenistic pioneers set up in this area. After that came the Sogdians and latter the Kushans, another of the periodic nomad waves to establish a famed civilization, used this as one of their most important bases. The city was passed from Empire to Empire until it rested in the hands of the British.

To the British it served a place probably analogous to that it had served for many previous powers. It was a linchpin of the frontier, both a fortress and a forward base used to control warlike tribes and watch over the competing ambitions of the Russians. Generations of English officers knew it as a place where they would make their career.

After Independence it passed to the control of Pakistan, who used it much in the way England did. The tribes in the area remain much as they were, and recent wars make a listening post here imperative. Interestingly a Pakistani assigned here might feel his life was not so different from an English officer three generations before, and both might have much in common with a Sogdian or a Kushan, or a Sikh soldier defending this important post high up in the war-torn frontier. In many ways it is still the same town it has been for ages.

Tropes embodied by Peshawar include:

• Barbarian Tribe: All the tribes around it at least according to whomever owns Peshawar. Some might well meet the description.
• Citadel City : One of it's primary functions is to command the Khyber pass and serve as a base to watch over both local banditry and tribal warfare, and the intrigues of Great Powers.
• City of Adventure
• City of Spies
• The Empire: Whoever controls it.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Subverted. Oddly enough British officers considered this a plum spot. It was hardly comfortable. But the ambitious ones could count on action and hence promotions.

Mentions of Peshawar in Fiction include:

• Ballad of the King's Jest by Rudyard Kipling: A poem with beautiful descriptions of the setting around the framework of a two traders relaxing around a cook-fire at the Peshawar market and telling tales.
• Belisarius Series by Eric Flint and David Drake: Among the many threads in this alternate history, a Kushan warlord marries a Roman noblewoman, sets himself up as king in the city of Peshawar and revives the Kushan Empire.

• Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain has references to this area, it's how Venom Snake and Revolver Ocelot make their way to Afghanistan at the start of the game, which is set during the Soviet-Afghan War.