Could Afghans unite?

MAHMOUD RAQI, AFGHANISTAN

Tucked away near the front line, north of the capital, Kabul, is a rich farming valley where Afghanistan's ethnic mix is stood on its head.

Few know its significance for Afghanistan's future better than rebel commander Mohamed Nazir. He is an ethnic Pashtun, fighting with rebel forces in this Pashtun valley, against the Pashtun-dominated Islamic Taliban militia.

As hosts of accused terrorist Osama bin Laden, the Taliban regime has been the target of nearly four weeks of American air raids. The strikes intensified further yesterday, with B-52 bomber attacks on a strategic Taliban stronghold in the far north, near the Tajik border. Also, yesterday, Turkey declared that it would send 90 special forces troops to train alliance soldiers.

But as Afghan opposition leaders begin to hammer out a post-Taliban political framework for their country - with strong American encouragement - the ethnic ambiguities on display at this front line may provide one reason for hope. They indicate that ethnicity does not always dictate political allegiance.

"The Taliban are selfish, and declare that they only want to help the Pashtun," says Commander Nazir, whose angular features are crowned with a shock of black hair. "They are making a mistake. They can't ever rule Afghanistan completely, without the other groups."

"In the future, if we succeed, we would let everybody in," he says, his AK-47 assault rifle so worn, it shines of pure silver. "We need everybody."

If genuine, that is a rare sentiment in Afghanistan, where a decade of violent civil war has polarized ethnic groups. The Pashtun make up some 38 percent of the population and have ruled over minority Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras for most of the past 300 years.

That history has helped spur the Taliban to pursue a strict Pashtun-only agenda, in the way Serb leaders in former Yugoslavia and ethnic Hutus in Rwanda in the 1990s galvanized their hold on power by fanning the flames of ethnic nationalism. Survivors of those bloody "ethnic-cleansing" episodes in the Balkans and Africa say it could take an entire generation to re-knit their communities.

But in Afghanistan, time is short, the stakes are high - and warlords are gauging the extent of their own ethnic division to design a multiethnic peace that will last if the Taliban is toppled.

Afghans here say that ethnic lines are far from rigid - Nazir's rebel front line being one example. But despite the US-led bombing, Washington has made clear that it will not enable the alliance to capture Kabul until plans for a multiethnic coalition are set. No one expects that to be easy. Deep divisions and historical animosity exist among alliance members.

A key could be former King Zahir Shah, a Pashtun deposed in 1973 and now living in exile in Rome, though he is considered to be "out of touch" by senior alliance officials. And there has already been a setback: One well-known chief of the Pashtun opposition, Abdul Haq, was captured by the Taliban a week ago and hanged, while attempting to win Pashtun elders away from the Taliban.

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