Word: tajiks
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...first western reporters to reach Mazar-i-Sharif, I was ushered into the home of Ustad Atta Mohammed, the Northern Alliance commander who--along with warlords Rashid Dostum and Haji Mohammed Mohaqiq--had taken the city a few days before. An ethnic Tajik, Atta, 37, is a bearded giant given to joking and easy small talk. He invited me to sit on his carpet and share a meal of qabeli, the Afghan national dish of rice, raisins, mutton, carrots and onions. In the past week, he has established himself as the unofficial mayor of Mazar, presiding over meetings of tribal...
...cities, but defiant Taliban cadres made their stands. In the north, the estimated 6,000 Taliban troops who retreated to Kunduz from the decimated fronts at Mazar-i-Sharif and Taloqan had their supply lines and escape routes cut off. They had two options: surrender to the Uzbek and Tajik rebels or face death. As Taliban soldiers squabbled over whether to negotiate or fight?the Arabs arguing for the latter?U.S. B-52s on Saturday pulverized them while Alliance commanders promised to attack. Alliance troops in Kunduz killed scores of non-Afghan Taliban fighters?the much-loathed Sudanese, Egyptian, Saudi...
...there are divisions on the Northern Alliance side too. General Mohammed Daoud, a Tajik commander in charge of the Alliance forces to the East of the city was reportedly unhappy that Dostum was conducting negotiations in Mazar-i-Sharif, at the same time as he was talking to the Taliban from his headquarters in Taloqan. Long-running tensions between the Uzbek and Tajik factions of the Northern Alliance may become sharply exacerbated now that the Alliance is claiming control over large swathes of territory. And those divisions, too, could have played a role in prompting Thursday's advance on Kunduz...
...They drove out both Rabbani and his enemies, winning over most of the local warlords who dominate rural Afghanistan. Rabbani's ousted Tajik forces joined with the Shiite Hazari mujahedeen backed by Iran and with Dostum's Uzbek militia to create the Northern Alliance, which has now reclaimed Kabul thanks to the U.S. campaign against the Taliban. And while they're paying lip service to the notion of a "broad-based government," Rabbani is back in Kabul. Despite its internal divisions - Hazari fighters last week marched into Kabul to stake their own claim for a share of the Alliance...
...Prospects for an inclusive national government are bedeviled both by Afghanistan's awkward ethnic makeup, and its position at a geopolitical crossroads. There is no majority ethnic group in Afghanistan. The Pashtun are the largest minority, making up some 38 percent of the population, but like the Tajik (25 percent), Hazara (19 percent) and Uzbek (6 percent) they are part of a group whose majority lives in another country. Most Pashtuns live in Pakistan, Tajiks in Tajikistan, Uzbeks in Uzbekistan, and while the Hazaras are not ethnically linked with Iran, their Shiite brand of Islam gives them a common identity...