Word: tribalized
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...expected that a significant proportion of that movement may fight on against any new government. The Northern Alliance, for its part, remains united by their hatred of the Taliban rather than by any shared vision, and defeat of the common enemy may reopen old wounds among its various tribal factions. Moreover, while many Alliance leaders are inclined to accept the principle of a unity government formed around King Zahir, the Alliance is still nominally loyal to Barhanuddin Rabbani, the president overthrown by the Taliban but who is still recognized by the United Nations. And matters are complicated by Rabbani...
...bets on replacing the Taliban with the King are off if the U.S. launches a megascale attack against Afghanistan, according to opposition groups and tribal leaders. The better option, they say, is for the international community to home in on bin Laden and clandestinely help the Northern Alliance secure a few key victories, such as the recapture of Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. Once that happens, the thinking goes, the tide will swiftly turn against the Taliban commanders. Otherwise, a major U.S.-led assault could have disastrous effects inside Afghanistan--and in neighboring Pakistan too. "We have a saying...
...comes to it, some Pashtuns are itching for a fight. In the tribal belt just south of Peshawar, Pashtun elders announced they had recruited 12,000 volunteers to fight a holy war if the U.S. sends in ground troops. One commander from an eastern Afghan province was recently in Peshawar exploring the monetary incentives on offer for a mutiny against his Taliban ruler in Kandahar. He was approached by one of his fighters: "Is it true American soldiers wear boots that cost 5,000 rupees [about $80] each? I could sell them in the bazaar." In the same province, recounted...
...Chaman border, tribal leader Achakzai listens to a village cleric oozing messianic praise of the Taliban. When the mullah gathers his robes and exits from the dark, carpeted room into a courtyard of flies and the blinding white light of the desert, Achakzai says with a grin: "Once the Taliban falls, that mullah will be cheering the return of Zahir Shah." Loyalty is something the Taliban can no longer count on among all its fellow tribesmen...
...Karkhla plain is a stark portrait of Afghanistan's plight: one of the world's poorest and most battle-scarred people, plagued by superpower struggles and their own tribal and ethnic feuds, reduced to fleeing to neighboring countries to do menial work for a beggar's wage. Afghans are on their knees, and only international aid can help them back to their feet. "There is nothing in Afghanistan," says Ibrahim Khan Shinwari, Farras' father, who brought his family from the village of Battan in Afghanistan's Nangarhar province two years ago to make bricks for the GI Brick Co., owned...