Search Details

Word: pashtun (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first (reverse)


Usage:

...struggle over the poll also highlights the country's age-old ethnic divide. In the August poll, Abdullah won a clear majority of the Tajik vote in the north; Karzai the Pashtun vote in the south. Abdullah's ties to the late warrior-poet, Ahmed Shah Masood, killed by al-Qaeda a few days before 9/11, help Abdullah's support in the north because Tajiks revere Masood as an exemplary leader who single-handedly held off the Soviets and the Taliban. On the other hand, Abdullah's Masood connection is a turnoff to many Pashtun tribesmen, who viewed Masood...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Why Karzai's Rival Abdullah Won't Budge on Runoff | 9/21/2009 | See Source »

...Kandahar is the capital city of Afghanistan's Pashtun majority, home of both the Karzai family and Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban. It is where the Taliban began. It has been run, in a staggeringly corrupt manner, by Hamid Karzai's brother Ahmed Wali Karzai - who, according to U.S. investigators, has extensive links to the opium trade. As the Karzai government has grown more unpopular, the situation in Kandahar has deteriorated. The Taliban own the night, slipping death threats under the doors of those who would cooperate with the government. In Iraq the military's counterinsurgency strategy turned around...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: The Afghanistan Problem: Why Are We in Helmand? | 9/17/2009 | See Source »

...American with long experience in the country told me this story: a member of the Barakzai tribe was recently installed as a district leader in a Pashtun area. He was told to hire his top staff by merit. Instead, he hired only Barakzais - which caused the tribe's leaders to switch sides from the Taliban to the government ... and caused most of the other tribes in the district to switch from the government to the Taliban. Afghanistan, it turns out, befuddles even Afghans. And for foreigners, "victory" there is a handful of smoke...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: The Afghanistan Problem: Why Are We in Helmand? | 9/17/2009 | See Source »

Meanwhile, the Pakistani comrades of the Afghan Taliban are now locked in battle with the Pakistani army, and this has slowed the number of Pakistani volunteers infiltrating across the border to kill American soldiers. These frontier Pashtun tribesmen, who once provided the Afghans with a steady flow of weapons, young fighters and suicide bombers, are suddenly too pinned down to give anything but a trickle of support. Mullah Omar and the other members of the so-called Quetta Shura, or military council, have stayed on the sidelines for fear of losing their covert support from the Pakistani military...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Behind the Taliban's Resurgence in Afghanistan | 9/16/2009 | See Source »

...right now, that Afghan sixth sense is telling them that the U.S. and the other Western nations are losing the heart for battle. In the Pashtun strongholds of Afghanistan, it is now perceived to be a good idea for a tribe to start siding with the Taliban, even though members of the tribe may not agree with their harsh medievalism. A critical mass is gathering, experts say. Elders who belong to once neutral tribes in Kandahar province are now telling their youths to take up arms against the foreign invaders, as their fathers did back in the 1980s against...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Behind the Taliban's Resurgence in Afghanistan | 9/16/2009 | See Source »

Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | Next