Word: warlords
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...actually quite lovely in Mazar. There are signs of the coming spring, and the stalls are stocked with fruit. Mazar appears prosperous, with traffic jams a commonplace because of the many nongovernmental organizations in town. But it's all a veil over a disintegrating situation. Mazar's warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum is engaging in a wave of ethnic cleansing against the area's Pashtun minority. There are continuing stories of rape, looting and pillage against them. On the surface, Mazar appears to have moved beyond the war, but it is a powder keg. Kabul, on the other hand...
...Pashtun provinces of southeastern Afghanistan remain strongholds of Taliban support, and are gripped by ongoing power struggles between rival warlords. They regard with suspicion the interim government of Hamid Karzai, which is dominated by the ethnic Tajiks of the Northern Alliance. And that has prompted the Taliban and al-Qaeda to exploit Pashtun resentment in an effort to create a favorable climate for a new guerrilla war against the U.S. and its allies. Reports from the area cite mass distribution of pro-bin Laden pamphlets in the region, urging Afghans to fight the government in Kabul and its U.S. backers...
...discord suggests that the ongoing campaign in Afghanistan runs the risk of exacerbating ethnic tensions and warlord rivalries, which, in turn, work to the enemy's advantage. Shah-i-Kot has been the biggest battle of the war so far, but it's unlikely to be the last. Locals suspect that a number - U.S. commanders say it's less than 100 - of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters escaped Shah-i-Kot, and the Pentagon has warned that numerous pockets of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters are dotted across southern Afghanistan. And with ethnic tensions on the rise, even...
...plan. We thought that being patriotic meant supporting the government unconditionally. So nobody said anything when our pilots accidentally bombed and killed more than 3,000 innocent Afghan civilians. And nobody said anything when we aligned ourselves with war criminals like General Rashid Dostum—a ruthless warlord with a penchant for tying his prisoners to tank treads and making minced meat out of them. Criticizing our government at this time would have meant being unpatriotic, un-American. Bearing this in mind, it is easy to understand why the pro-Israel right is so sensitive about criticism leveled...
...have relied on untrustworthy informants who tricked the U.S. into sending in lethal air strikes on their tribal enemies. Both the Kabul-bound convoy and the Qila-Niazi wedding party, for example, were targeted by Pacha Khan, a former provincial governor, derided by one official as a "Pentagon-created warlord," who was using American munitions to take care of his own business, according to Afghan government sources and tribal elders in Gardez. Says tribal chieftain Saifullah Khan: "Pacha Khan would phone up the Americans, point out a village and say they are all al-Qaeda." Pacha Khan denies the charges...