Word: pashtun
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...later, Haji Abdul Qadir, a Deputy President in Karzai's government, was killed in his car outside the Ministry of Public Works. Two gunmen, who had been hiding in bushes by the driveway, riddled the car with bullets. Qadir was one of the leading figures of Afghanistan's majority Pashtun community, and his death deals a grievous blow to the stability of Karzai's team...
...where U.S. propaganda has to contend with an overheated rumor mill in the teahouses and bazaars. Inevitably, Karzai is linked to America's mistakes. "In the eyes of ordinary Afghans," says a senior U.N. official, "this government's fate is intertwined with the American performance." Afghan exile Hamid, a Pashtun now in Quetta, Pakistan, says of Karzai, "He is nothing. Just the son of George W. Bush." Yusuf Hassan, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), remarks, "There's a sense down there, rightly or wrongly, of an occupied country...
...Much was riding on Qadir, a former mujahedin hero of the anti-Soviet resistance. As the leading representative of the country's disenfranchised Pashtun majority, Qadir was the centerpiece of President Hamid Karzai's maneuvers to integrate Pashtuns who have been effectively excluded from power by the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance that defeated the Taliban. Now that plan is threatened. "This has been caused by enemies of peace and stability," says Karzai's foreign affairs spokesman Omar Samad...
...Rather than base their new guerrilla campaign on resurrecting their own mediaeval Islamist ideology, the Taliban survivors have attempted to rally new support along ethnic lines. Their propaganda appeals to Pashtun nationalism, accusing Karzai of being beholden to the Americans and the Tajiks of the Northern Alliance. On that basis, they've sought to make common cause with former adversaries such as the notorious Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and local commanders once opposed to the Taliban...
...cabinet - after the U.S. special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, insisted that the loya jirga had its say on the posts as laid down by international peace accords. The defense and foreign affairs portfolios were retained by the mainly Tajik Northern Alliance, while the Interior Ministry went to a Pashtun regional governor, Taj Mohammed Wardak. When Wardak sought to go to his new ministry, police loyal to his predecessor briefly blocked the road. SOUTH AFRICA Ice Rescue A South African ship set out for the Antarctic to rescue 107 crew and passengers, including 79 members of a Russian research expedition, on board...