Word: northerners
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...Reaching the city after a trip over the mountains, we went through numerous strict security checks; 50 miles from the city, I saw warplanes and Apache attack helicopters in the air. There is a curfew in town, and tales of kidnappings abound. The capital's new rulers--the Panjshiri Northern Alliance--are determined to edge the Pashtun out of government. But the tension is high because the east is the Pashtun heartland. The ethnic card is being played on both sides of the country...
...ambitions to retake the throne. "My principle is that I am subject to the free will of the people," he told Time during a rare interview at his house in Rome. Sitting cross-legged on a living room couch in his contemporary-style concrete villa in the northern part of the city, Zahir Shah described his mixed emotions on the eve of his return: "It has been a great desire to be back among the Afghan people. But there will also be great sadness and nostalgia for all that has happened there...
...strength at Shah-i-Kot and in the performance of the Afghan forces initially deployed. Question marks over the reliability of local Pashtun militias were underscored by the Afghan government's decision midway through the battle to reinforce the allied contingent with 1,000 ethnic Tajik fighters from the Northern Alliance. But despite their solid battlefield performance, the Tajiks' presence has fueled ethnic resentment among the locals, even those fighting alongside the U.S. Pro-government Pashtun commanders in nearby Gardez have called for the Tajiks to be withdrawn, some saying their men would rather have the Taliban and al-Qaeda...
...Pashtun provinces of southeastern Afghanistan remain strongholds of Taliban support, and are gripped by ongoing power struggles between rival warlords. They regard with suspicion the interim government of Hamid Karzai, which is dominated by the ethnic Tajiks of the Northern Alliance. And that has prompted the Taliban and al-Qaeda to exploit Pashtun resentment in an effort to create a favorable climate for a new guerrilla war against the U.S. and its allies. Reports from the area cite mass distribution of pro-bin Laden pamphlets in the region, urging Afghans to fight the government in Kabul and its U.S. backers...
Williams too has everything, in a sense: a wife, three children, a home in San Francisco, a ranch in Northern California, Picassos and a private jet. The fact that he is again hitting the road at 50, sweating and joking and nursing a shoulder he dislocated in January, says something about his compulsion to hear people laugh...