Afghanistan is similar. The Appalachians without modern highways would be the same, as would the Rocky Mountains.
Yemen is similar ~ civilization and agriculture takes place at the top of the hills. There's a burning desert at the bottom. The "elite" consists of guys with helicopters to hop from mountain to mountain. Before helicopters getting even a small percentage of the population to agree on anything was nearly impossible although they once conquered Egypt! Oh, yeah, and AlQaida and/or the Communists run the port areas ~ for whatever benefit that gives them.
Mountains break government authority into unmanageable units. The Alps break Europeans into dissimilar nationalities who, given the chance, will kill each other with abandon.
The Carpatho-Rhatians descend from a Cossack group sent into quell a rebellious new possession of the Czar. The Sa'ami withdraw from this, their Southernmost outpost, to the far North, and the Hungarians made war on the Romanians.
The place is still not settled. The Carpatho-Rhatians didn't succeed in their mission and are, themselves, a nearly forgotten yet divided community.
I'm never surprised at what folks can come up with in discussing mountain folk. Michelle Malkin probably ought to know better.
Good points. There’s more to say about the proffered framing of the issue, but it would be rolling up three thousand years of Eastern and Western histories to do so.
However, muayiwah, how do you integrate the government and social circumstance the many kingdoms in the Indian subcontinent before the arrive of the British into your “hills that divide us” construct?
You wrote:
“The Carpatho-Rhatians descend from a Cossack group sent into quell a rebellious new possession of the Czar.”
Who? I think your conflating the Carpatho-Rusyn with the Rhaetians. They actually live very far apart.