Word: pashtuns
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...this year. "Why are the Marines in Helmand?" General McChrystal asked at one of his first strategy briefings, I'm told. Helmand province is where the opium crop and a lot of the bad guys are. According to counterinsurgency doctrine, the troops should have been sent to secure the Pashtun population center - Kandahar city, which is now in the process of slipping into Taliban control. The military has been shockingly slow when it comes to matching U.S. training companies with Afghan battalions. No such joint units currently exist. The press has been led to a model town in Helmand, where...
...news was that Clinton allowed herself to be hammered with hostile questions from students, talk-show hosts and Pashtun elders - and that, on occasion, she pushed back, raising incredibly sensitive issues, like why no one in the Pakistani government knew where Osama bin Laden was, even though he had been in the country since 2002. Press accounts either emphasized the embarrassment of a Secretary of State's getting pummeled or fixed on Clinton's undiplomatic bluntness. But they missed the point: her candor, her willingness to listen to and acknowledge criticism, had begun to undermine the prevailing Pakistani image...
...government less legitimate," he reasons. Even if Karzai wins, it doesn't mean that most of the population voted for him, he says. "The best scenario is that the people of this country have confidence and vote in a free and fair election. The worst case is that Pashtun areas will not participate in large numbers, and this will provoke ethnic strife." With their most recent announcement, it seems that the Taliban are already counting on that outcome...
...Zazi's associates turn out to be mostly Afghans, that would strengthen suspicions that the Taliban are no longer limiting themselves to the Pashtun lands...
...Despite his growing paranoia - Karzai rarely leaves his presidential palace these days - and his failure to crack down on unsavory characters in his government (and perhaps in his own family), Karzai shouldn't be entirely written off. It is worth remembering a few of his assets: he is a Pashtun from the respected Popalzai tribe, credentials that may assist him in trying to negotiate with the predominantly Pashtun Taliban. (These recent elections reopened old schisms between the Pashtuns and the Tajiks, and if Abdullah, who is widely perceived as a Tajik leader, were to somehow win the runoff, the Taliban...