Word: panjshiris
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...campaign has gained momentum of late. If southern voters stay home in large enough numbers, say analysts, there is a slight but not impossible scenario that northern voters could dictate the election's outcome in favor of Abdullah, further destabilizing the region. (Although half-Pashtun, Abdullah is identified with Panjshiri Tajiks.) (See pictures of Afghanistan's hit reality-TV show The Candidate...
...President Hamid Karzai's government is led by Pashtuns from the south and east of the country, and Tajiks from Massoud's Panjshir valley stronghold feel marginalized. Foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, the last member of the powerful Panjshiri elite to hold a cabinet post, was dropped by Karzai in a reshuffle earlier this year. "The Panjshiris who led the Northern Alliance are angry because they have been ostracized and shut out from positions of power by this government," said Michael Shaikh, an analyst with Human Rights Watch...
Many of the south's majority Pashtun believe that Karzai's government is dominated by Panjshiri Tajiks who fought in the Northern Alliance alongside the Americans--though Karzai is Pashtun. About 1.1 million Afghan refugees have flooded back into the country since the beginning of the year--many more than aid agencies had predicted--but according to unhcr registries, less than a third of them have resettled in the Pashtun provinces, suggesting most Pashtun exiles are staying away...
...zone. 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...
...northern border through the heart of the Hindu Kush, crossing the 13,000-ft. Anjuman Pass into the Panjshir Valley. It's a grueling three- or four-day journey?for those vehicles that make it. "This road wasn't built for human beings," says Mohammed Zikria, 25, a Panjshiri driver who nearly died last week when his jeep stalled and almost slid backward over a precipice into a foaming mountain river. "It's a road from hell...