Word: pashtuns
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...United Front is an alliance of convenience among widely divergent groups ranging from veteran anti-Soviet mujahedeen to commanders of the former Soviet-backed regime - a series of Uzbek, Tajik and Hazari militias based on ethnic lines, united mainly by an enmity to the Taliban and the majority Pashtun ethnic group they represent. Other than that alliance of convenience, they are extremely wary of one another. And nobody is going to make the mistake of calling them "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers," as President Reagan famously said of their mujahedeen forebears in the 1980s...
...West's most important ally in efforts to take down Bin Laden and his Al Qaida network, is hostile to the idea of a United Front takeover, insisting instead that an administration that replaces the Taliban must reflect Afghanistan's ethnic balance. (As Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtun constitute some 40 percent of the population compared with 25 percent Tajik and 19 percent Hazara...
...Pakistan attended by destitute refugees from the 1979-89 war against the Soviet invasion, the Taliban won military and political support from Pakistan. It rose to power by promising peace and order for a country ravaged by corruption and civil war and the prospect of re-establishing traditional majority-Pashtun dominance...
Already, some clerics, especially among the rifle-wielding Pashtun tribesmen of the northwest frontier, are calling for a holy war against America. They are of the same tribe as the Taliban across the border. Tribesmen believe that Musharraf is breaking their strict code of Pashtunwali, in which honor and revenge are paramount. In the village of Shakot, gunsmith Aziz Khan glanced up from a lathe as he bored holes to craft a homemade Kalashnikov rifle (price: $120) and warned, "In our culture, we give our baby son an unloaded pistol to play with in the cradle, so that he becomes...
...Already, some clerics, especially among the rifle-wielding Pashtun tribesmen of the northwest frontier, are calling for a holy war against America. They are of the same tribe as the Taliban across the border. Tribesmen believe that Musharraf is breaking their strict code of Pashtunwali, in which honor and revenge are paramount. In the village of Shakot, gunsmith Aziz Khan glanced up from a lathe as he bored holes to craft a homemade Kalashnikov rifle (price: $120) and warned, "In our culture, we give our baby son an unloaded pistol to play with in the cradle, so that he becomes...