Word: pashtun
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...tension. Amir is quiet, bookish and jealous of the attention his father bestows on the athletic, courageous Hassan. Angry and frustrated, he plays cruel jokes on his friend, guiltily justifying them on the basis of Hassan's low status: "Because history isn't easy to overcome. I was a Pashtun and he was a Hazara, and nothing was ever going to change that." Hosseini deftly turns Amir's struggle with race into a parable for Afghanistan. Amir's prejudices contribute to his downfall, much as the Afghans' rigid adherence to tribalism led to the country's implosion after the Soviet...
...Taliban's most dangerous ally, however, appears to be the warlord Hekmatyar. He, like the Taliban leaders, is a Pashtun with a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam and a hatred for the Americans and Karzai. His guerrilla fighting skills seduced the CIA and Pakistan into giving him billions of dollars of support and arms during the Soviet occupation. In May 2002, however, the U.S. tried to kill him with a Hellfire missile strike, and coalition soldiers have launched several operations in his traditional strongholds of Nangarhar and Kunar provinces. A diplomat in Kabul believes Taliban leaders don't trust Hekmatyar, whose...
...most of the movement's senior leadership have never been captured. Unlike the sophisticated Arab operatives of al-Qaeda for whom Afghanistan was simply another stopover in a globalized jihad, the one-eyed peasant mystic mullah is still believed to be at large somewhere on home turf. (The Pashtun heartland spans the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.) And the fact that he hasn't been found suggests a measure of support among the local population...
...Qaeda diehards. Such operations haven't proved particularly effective in eliminating the small, mobile enemy formations that continue to operate throughout eastern and southern Afghanistan, across the border in Pakistan's tribal areas (where the local elected leadership is openly pro-Taliban) and in the Taliban's Pashtun heartland...
...revenue streams. Even in Kabul itself, Karzai finds himself a virtual prisoner in the palace, guarded by U.S. personnel because the Northern Alliance troops of his defense minister, General Mohammed Fahim, may not be sufficiently trusted with Karzai's life. Fahim, of course, is quite happy for the affable Pashtun president in the coat of many colors to be the international face of a government dominated by his mostly Tajik Northern Alliance, although he's not exactly happy at the prospect of a truly national army eroding his power base. That's a concern he likely shares with warlords...