Word: tajiks
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Karzai also knows that the U.S. commitment in his country is finite, and the need to survive after the Americans leave makes him more inclined to rely on such established hard men as Uzbek warlord General Rashid Dostum and Tajik strongman General Mohammed Fahim - even if that means turning a blind eye to their transgressions. He is also keen to take charge of negotiating a political settlement with the Taliban on his own timetable, and with less of a role for Pakistan than Washington might be ready to concede to Islamabad. Just as U.S. influence in Iraq declined precipitously once...
...worth remembering that Karzai was essentially parachuted into the country in the course of the U.S. invasion, tapped to lead a new post-Taliban government that would be founded largely on the Northern Alliance - the coalition of ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara former mujahedin warlords who had always fought the Taliban. A chieftain in the Popolzai tribe, Karzai was a prominent leader in Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtun, which is also the social base of the Taliban. Still, his power base was limited, and creating an effective government forced him to cut deals with all manner of unsavory...
...Pakistani army sees the conflict in Afghanistan being resolved through negotiations that lead toward the establishment of a new government with greater Pashtun representation and diminished Indian influence. Pakistan's security establishment has never embraced Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, which it sees as dominated by the ethnic Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara forces of the India-backed Northern Alliance. And it fears that India is expanding its influence there through massive development projects, even accusing India of using Afghanistan as a base from which to destabilize Pakistan...
...came into Afghanistan in October 2001 with the same willful blindness. The CIA knew that its ally the Tajik Northern Alliance was a paid-up proxy of Iran, just as it was fully aware that another ally, Uzbek General Dostum, was one of Afghanistan's great butchers (though Dostum has always denied the widespread allegations of his brutality). When it came to finding crucial partners on the ground, there were simply no alternatives...
...more U.S. troops to hold the line against the Taliban. The ANA ostensibly numbers some 95,000 troops right now, but its capacity to fight the Taliban remains difficult to assess. It is certainly not immune to the political conflicts driving the insurgency; it is dominated by an ethnic Tajik officer corps viewed with resentment by Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, who are also the Taliban's social base. Training may be just one challenge in developing an army willing and able to fight what at present would be seen as those on the side of foreign forces...