Word: tajiks
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...Karzai has one particularly good reason to bridle at Washington's refusal to help solve Afghanistan's woes: the U.S. has become a major part of the problem. By backing the Northern Alliance, Washington has empowered a group of warlords of minority Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek descent to rule over the Pashtuns?Afghanistan's largest ethnic group and the bedrock of Taliban support. And by rearming the warlords to hunt down al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the U.S. has also unwittingly helped fuel further conflict. According to U.N. special representative for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi, "The war against terrorism creates...
...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those fighting alongside the U.S. Pro-government Pashtun commanders in nearby Gardez have called for the Tajiks to be withdrawn, some saying their men would rather have the Taliban...
...Elsewhere, hundreds of Northern Alliance reinforcements sent from Kabul arrived in Gardez on Saturday afternoon. That raised murmur of discontent in the local Pashtun garrisons, because the reinforcements are Tajik fighters from the Pansjir Valley - longtime rivals of the Pashtun in Afghanistan?s complex tribal wars. One of the uniformed government infantrymen told Time they've been brought in to add punch to the Afghans? western assault...
...mockery of that claim. The United Nations and relief agencies picked up warning signals of these abuses from women refugees fleeing the conquering Taliban. Now it is clear from the testimony of witnesses and officials of the new government that the ruling clerics systematically abducted women from the Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara and other ethnic minorities they defeated. Stolen women were a reward for victorious battle. And in the cities of Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad and Khost, women victims tell of being forced to wed Taliban soldiers and Pakistani and Arab fighters of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network...
...Bonn. Top of the list: Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostum, who controls a big chunk of northern Afghanistan and who has already announced that the Uzbeks will boycott Karzai's government. Dostum is angry that the three most important government portfolios--Defense, Interior and Foreign Affairs--went to his Tajik rivals within the Northern Alliance. Another potential spoiler is Rabbani, the Alliance leader who was President from 1992 to 1996 but was excluded from the new government. Intelligence sources in Islamabad say that Rabbani's men, using money from Iran, are paying off Pashtun elders in the eastern regions...