Word: tribalized
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...allowed to move freely around Afghanistan. The Taliban destroyed satellite phones, and the Afghan ambassador in Pakistan moved down to Quetta for more secure contact with Taliban leaders in Kandahar. Taliban police are checking beneath women's body-length veils for disguised spies and keeping an eye on any tribal elder receiving guests or a sudden flow of money...
...privately believe that Mohammed Omar's refusal to hand over terrorist Osama bin Laden is akin to mass suicide. Says Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani author and expert on the Taliban movement: "The U.S. threat is helping to divide the Taliban." Rashid says the Taliban's "fellow travelers," the tribal leaders who don't share the Taliban's extremism, will be the first to shear off, leaving Omar with a die-hard band of devout followers...
Meanwhile, tribal chieftains such as Achakzai have their own game plan against the Taliban. In Quetta, the elders of the 23 million-strong Pashtun tribe, which is spread across western Pakistan and most of Afghanistan, are moving to bring back Mohammed Zahir Shah, the deposed Afghan King who is living in Rome. In high-walled and guarded villas, these elders receive a stream of whispering chieftains, Afghan ex-army generals, mujahedin commanders and Pakistani officials--all eager recruits for an uprising against the Taliban. "It's happening so fast," says Hamad Karzai, an influential Afghan Pashtun elder who is backing...
...Soviets and the turmoil afterward, he remained aloof from their suffering, silent in his gilded exile. But already a groundswell for his return is growing among the Pashtun tribes in Afghanistan along the frontier. Reports are sketchy, but in the southern Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia and Paktika influential tribal elders are so worried about rising support for the King among their clansmen that they are threatening to burn down the houses of anyone caught switching sides...
Traditionally uneasy with one another, Islamabad and many of the fiercely independent tribal elders along the Afghan frontier are uniting behind Zahir Shah. Islamabad is aghast at the possibility that the Northern Alliance--backed by Iran and Pakistan's enemy, India--might actually topple the Taliban with U.S. military help. The clan chieftains agree for ethnic reasons: except for a few brief and violent intervals, the majority Pashtun tribes have always ruled Afghanistan, and they want to see that happen again. As a Pashtun, Zahir Shah fits the bill. The ethnic minorities of the Northern Alliance find him acceptable...