Word: mujahedeen
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...unfolding of the post-Taliban political scenario, many may soon be reminded why the Taliban were actually welcomed by many residents when they first seized the city in 1996 - they hoped the fundamentalist militia would at least bring peace. Now rival warlords within the Northern Alliance and among former mujahedeen commanders in the Pashtun south are deploying fighters to stake their claim to post-Taliban Afghanistan, and next week's U.N.-sponsored talks in Berlin over the country's political future are part of an increasingly urgent effort to avoid a new civil...
...violent pastViolence, betrayal, intrigue and infighting have been endemic to Afghanistan's politics for the past quarter century, first among the royals, then among the communists and finally among the anti-Soviet mujahedeen - and right now its the latter who are reclaiming power. King Zahir Shah, who the U.S. hopes will return from exile in Rome and lead a democratic renaissance, was overthrown in 1973 by his cousin, Mohammed Daoud, who was himself overthrown by a communist military coup in 1978. But as infighting among two rival communist factions became more violent and chaotic, the Soviets invaded...
...Return of the mujahedeen...
...have taken over. Talibans are finished," he said. Anti-Taliban militants had hidden here the previous night before taking over the city this afternoon. I was later told by Pakistani officials at the border that Taliban forces had voluntarily surrendered and handed over Jalalabad to Younis Khalis, a former Mujahedeen commander, rather than lose it to Northern Alliance...
...Afghanistan became a hotbed of terrorism precisely because of the warlord culture that overcame and then replaced the Soviets. Rival mujahedeen factions turned on each other after seizing Kabul, launching a civil war that killed some 50,000 Afghanis. But by then the U.S. was no longer interested in Afghanistan. It paid little attention, too, when its longtime regional ally, Pakistan, organized the Taliban takeover in the hope of ending the civil war on Pakistan-friendly terms. Nor when Osama bin Laden, star fundraiser and organizer of the Arab volunteers who had fought alongside the mujahedeen returned to Afghanistan...