Learn English – Different pronunciations of “Pakistan” versus “Afghanistan”

My first thought is that I would tend to use DE-tail as a noun and de-TAIL as a verb, usually in the past tense.

That's an irrelevant DE-tail.

She de-TAILED her problems for us at great length.

However, I don't see any backup for this in the dictionary, so it must be regional (or familial!) for me. In fact, the accent on the second syllable seems to be the preferred pronunciation--since it's listed first. (That's still the custom, right?)

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/detail

Given all your examples of supposedly rhyming words (they all rhyme for me a GenAmE speaker) having different possible pronunciations, both within a dictionary and between dictionaries, leads me to believe primarily not that there is some variation in pronunciation in the GenAmE population (though there very well may be variation (but consistent) between regional accents), but rather that these dictionaries are not scientifically consistent within themselves.

Either you have discovered an substantive inconsistency among these entries or these dictionary makers have performed research on all these pronunciation as part of their preparation but are not printing the outcomes/final results of the data leading them to make distinctions that are not meaningful for actual pronunciation or hearing.

You may want to construct a diplomatically worded letter to the editor in order to discover the reasoning for these pronunciations. I wonder if it would help to show one dictionary what the other dictionaries say?