Word: pashtuns
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...Taliban forces ditching their guns and switching sides by the thousands, American commandos spent last week picking up bin Laden's scent--and nudging the six-week conflict toward a decisive climax. The Taliban faced devastation in its southern strongholds, and that shrank bin Laden's theater of operation. Pashtun operatives showered Western and Pakistani intelligence agents with information about bin Laden's hideouts. Pakistani officials told Time that U.S. forces, working from reports that Taliban informants gave to Pakistani intelligence agents, have zeroed in on the Tora Bora region near Jalalabad, where bin Laden was thought to have sought...
...With Kabul in opposition hands and Kandahar, the regime's spiritual center, under siege by opposition Pashtun, the Taliban was on the brink of total collapse. But inside the Pentagon, joy was tempered by the grim knowledge of the threats to American forces on the ground. The pace and scale of the Taliban's retreat last week left U.S. special-ops troops scattered throughout a ravaged land that lacks a central governing authority. Dozens of warlords staked claims to their own pieces of turf, and in several cities, ethnic tensions held the potential for fresh violence. And even...
...More ominously, though, former President Burnharuddin Rabbani had planned to return to Kabul Wednesday to take political charge of areas liberated by the Northern Alliance - although Rabbani desires reinstatement as the president of Afghanistan, he would be fiercely opposed by most Pashtun (the largest ethnic group). Even his Uzbek and Hazari allies in the Northern Alliance are not keen to see the Tajik Rabbani back in charge. Most Kabul residents remember his tenure as a nightmare of infighting between rival factions during which tens of thousands of Afghanis were killed. Alliance forces have already divided the capital into separate zones...
...Northern Alliance are the de facto rulers in Kabul right now, and that may be more than a little alarming, not only to the Pashtun but also to Pakistan, erstwhile patron of the Taliban and now Washington's key regional ally. Pakistan wants a friendly (and predominantly Pashtun) government in Kabul, while the Northern Alliance is antagonistic to Islamabad. And even as local, regional and global powers scramble to arrange a power-sharing formula for a new regime in Kabul, it's worth remembering that the Taliban are bloodied but not yet beaten - they've surrendered most of their territory...
...political risk in supporting the U.S. war effort. On the other, it can't afford to alienate the Northern Alliance forces that have served as its infantry in the war to unseat the Taliban. And there are clearly volatile conflicts both within the Alliance and among the anti-Taliban Pashtun warlords in the south...