Word: mujahedeen
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...forces in southern Afghanistan on an increasingly murky battlefield. It's easy to see why Washington would be skeptical of any deal allowing safe passage for any Taliban fighters. Further south, the Taliban have often simply retreated and dispersed, handing towns and regions over to relatively friendly local Pashtun mujahedeen commanders who share their hostility to the Northern Alliance, and in some instances even to the U.S. They've left behind their tanks and artillery, but those wouldn't be much use to an army waging a guerrilla war from the hills. And the presence of thousands of dispersed Taliban...
...They drove out both Rabbani and his enemies, winning over most of the local warlords who dominate rural Afghanistan. Rabbani's ousted Tajik forces joined with the Shiite Hazari mujahedeen backed by Iran and with Dostum's Uzbek militia to create the Northern Alliance, which has now reclaimed Kabul thanks to the U.S. campaign against the Taliban. And while they're paying lip service to the notion of a "broad-based government," Rabbani is back in Kabul. Despite its internal divisions - Hazari fighters last week marched into Kabul to stake their own claim for a share of the Alliance...
...even as they vanquished the common enemy in 1992, the mujahedeen factions set upon each other, launching a ferocious civil war in which some 50,000 people are believed to havebeen killed. The issue was simply power, and its distribution both across different ethnic groups and among rival warlords within particular ethnic groups. In 1992, the victorious mujahedeen had agreed to appoint Tajik leader Burhanuddin Rabbani as president for one year. But Rabbani held on for four years, during which time the forces of Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar waged a vicious artillery campaign that turned the capital into rubble...
...number of cities in the south on the understanding that they shared a mutual enmity for the Northern Alliance. But rival Pashtun warlords quickly emerged to stake their own claim, setting up roadblocks, charging "tolls" and marking out their own fiefdoms by deploying armed men. And while the old mujahedeen carve the south into fiefdoms, Northern Alliance commanders appear to have done the same with the major towns of northern Afghanistan. Nobody is waiting for the king to lend his authority to a power grab, because he simply doesn't have any. Not surprisingly, Zahir Shah has no plans...
...danger of renewed fighting is growing, not only between the Northern Alliance and mujahedeen forces, but also on each side of that divide. And, of course, the Taliban remains a factor. Its soldiers for the most part retreated and dispersed without a fight, and may yet have an impact on the new power equation (particularly in the south) even though they'll be excluded from a direct political role...