Word: pashtuns
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...hopefuls turned up, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) took a quick look at the recruits' surnames and discovered they were almost all Tajik Panshiris sent by Afghan Defense Minister Fahim. But ISAF later accepted Fahim's second group, even though 154 of those 301 recruits were Tajik, 102 Pashtun and 37 Hazara. (The population of Afghanistan is 25% Tajik, 38% Pashtun and 19% Hazara.) Nor were the recruits interviewed to determine their allegiance to any of the armed factions. "Impractical and impossible," says ISAF spokesman Captain Graham Dunlop. Essential, says Karzai's adviser. "Loyalty isn't always about race...
...stocked with fruit. Mazar appears prosperous, with traffic jams a commonplace because of the many nongovernmental organizations in town. But it's all a veil over a disintegrating situation. Mazar's warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum is engaging in a wave of ethnic cleansing against the area's Pashtun minority. There are continuing stories of rape, looting and pillage against them. On the surface, Mazar appears to have moved beyond the war, but it is a powder keg. Kabul, on the other hand, is clearly a war zone. Reaching the city after a trip over the mountains, we went through...
...entirely free of the axe-grinding of local warlords, and Afghan observers believe that may have played a role both in the underestimation of the enemy's strength at Shah-i-Kot and in the performance of the Afghan forces initially deployed. Question marks over the reliability of local Pashtun militias were underscored by the Afghan government's decision midway through the battle to reinforce the allied contingent with 1,000 ethnic Tajik fighters from the Northern Alliance. But despite their solid battlefield performance, the Tajiks' presence has fueled ethnic resentment among the locals, even those fighting alongside...
...battle began, the enemy forces in Shah-i-Kot were reinforced from the surrounding areas. Many may have been al-Qaeda fighters who'd gone to ground in the area, but local lore had it that this was primarily a Taliban force, reinforced by local sympathizers from Pashtun communities on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border. And the enemy had help: U.S. and allied forces were forced to guard their backs in the battle zone against harassment by locals sympathetic to those holed up in the mountain fortress...
...Pashtun provinces of southeastern Afghanistan remain strongholds of Taliban support, and are gripped by ongoing power struggles between rival warlords. They regard with suspicion the interim government of Hamid Karzai, which is dominated by the ethnic Tajiks of the Northern Alliance. And that has prompted the Taliban and al-Qaeda to exploit Pashtun resentment in an effort to create a favorable climate for a new guerrilla war against the U.S. and its allies. Reports from the area cite mass distribution of pro-bin Laden pamphlets in the region, urging Afghans to fight the government in Kabul and its U.S. backers...