Word: pashtun
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...Qaeda forces in southern Afghanistan on an increasingly murky battlefield. It's easy to see why Washington would be skeptical of any deal allowing safe passage for any Taliban fighters. Further south, the Taliban have often simply retreated and dispersed, handing towns and regions over to relatively friendly local Pashtun mujahedeen commanders who share their hostility to the Northern Alliance, and in some instances even to the U.S. They've left behind their tanks and artillery, but those wouldn't be much use to an army waging a guerrilla war from the hills. And the presence of thousands of dispersed...
...Afghanis themselves, the battle at Kunduz may be a critical moment shaping the post-Taliban order. The various factions of the Northern Alliance are due to meet Monday in Germany with the Pashtun mujahedeen commanders and others who have taken over much of the south, as part of a U.N. effort to broker agreement on a new government. A bloodbath at Kunduz, where some 30,000 mostly Pashtun civilians are reportedly trapped, may sour the atmosphere for Monday's talks. But if large numbers of Afghan Taliban surrender and ultimately find themselves joining with Alliance fighters in facing down...
...notion of a "broad-based government," Rabbani is back in Kabul. Despite its internal divisions - Hazari fighters last week marched into Kabul to stake their own claim for a share of the Alliance's spoils - the anti-Taliban group appears to have little enthusiasm for giving their old Pashtun enemies too much of a role. Indeed, Rabbani on Tuesday described the Berlin talks as largely "symbolic...
...Prospects for an inclusive national government are bedeviled both by Afghanistan's awkward ethnic makeup, and its position at a geopolitical crossroads. There is no majority ethnic group in Afghanistan. The Pashtun are the largest minority, making up some 38 percent of the population, but like the Tajik (25 percent), Hazara (19 percent) and Uzbek (6 percent) they are part of a group whose majority lives in another country. Most Pashtuns live in Pakistan, Tajiks in Tajikistan, Uzbeks in Uzbekistan, and while the Hazaras are not ethnically linked with Iran, their Shiite brand of Islam gives them a common identity...
...Taliban rule collapsed so quickly that post-Taliban facts on the ground emerged before a wider political consensus had been achieved. Indeed, the Taliban appears to have even negotiated its withdrawal with relatively friendly non-Taliban Pashtun warlords in a number of cities in the south on the understanding that they shared a mutual enmity for the Northern Alliance. But rival Pashtun warlords quickly emerged to stake their own claim, setting up roadblocks, charging "tolls" and marking out their own fiefdoms by deploying armed men. And while the old mujahedeen carve the south into fiefdoms, Northern Alliance commanders appear...