Word: pashtun
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...post-Taliban government that would be founded largely on the Northern Alliance - the coalition of ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara former mujahedin warlords who had always fought the Taliban. A chieftain in the Popolzai tribe, Karzai was a prominent leader in Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, which is also the social base of the Taliban. Still, his power base was limited, and creating an effective government forced him to cut deals with all manner of unsavory characters. The CIA, it should be remembered, was doing the same thing: the hundreds of millions of dollars in suitcases that...
...General Stanley McChrystal, commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan; and the unnamed CIA station chief. Of those three, Karzai is said to trust only the CIA chief, who reportedly led the special-forces team that protected Karzai on his first forays into southern Afghanistan to turn the Pashtun tribes against Taliban rule. Karzai is said to be leery of Eikenberry, ever since the media leaked the contents of cables in which the ambassador frankly cataloged what he considered to be Karzai's many failings. Palace aides complain that McChrystal chooses to work around Karzai, whenever possible, dealing directly...
...concentration of opium production. So Operation Moshtarak is more than a military offensive; it is also the biggest counternarcotics operation ever attempted. It marks a new emphasis by the White House and the Pentagon on choking off the Taliban from their drug funds and ending their support among the Pashtun tribes of southern Afghanistan...
...suicide bombers - often God-struck kids in their early teens - down from training camps in the mountains to blow themselves up at a busy crossroads or police station. They kidnapped rich businessmen, doctors and lawyers for ransom. And they silenced the music, shutting shops and banning songs at rowdy Pashtun tribal weddings, calling them "un-Islamic...
Upon arriving in Kabul last spring, McChrystal flooded the Afghan countryside with counterinsurgency experts who came up with dire assessments and stated a need for more troops. Even Gates seemed blindsided by his own general. Gates had been public about avoiding a big American footprint in the Pashtun countryside. But after the McChrystal team's findings began leaking, Gates shifted course. To me, he said, "Once McChrystal said, 'This is what I need,' then I was there. And my goal was, how do we get Stan McChrystal as much of what he's asked for as quickly as possible...