Could Afghans unite?

"The Pashtun people are in a very bad situation. But the Taliban do not govern Pashtun hearts, only Pashtun lands," says Abdul Qadir, a Pashtun leader who works with the rebel alliance, and is the brother of Haq.

The Taliban have carried out executions and village burnings against non-Pashtuns. In Pashtun areas, Taliban rule grates in another way, with high taxes and demands from families to supply sons as soldiers. The result is that only 5 percent of Pashtuns support the Taliban, Mr. Qadir claims. True or not, there may be ample room to stoke an anti-Taliban uprising among wavering Pashtuns.

Ethnic divisions are not as deep as they appear outside Afghanistan, says alliance Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, who himself is born of a Pashtun father and a Tajik mother.

"The reality of the 1980s is that all Afghan ethnic groups fought together against the Soviet occupiers," Dr. Abdullah says. Soviet ideology was "unacceptable" and had to be forcibly imposed. The same method is used by the Taliban to enforce its strict interpretation of Islam.

"The main problem is not ethnicity, it is rather these imported ideas," Abdullah says. The most recent example is the Taliban's execution of Pashtun Haq. Only nine people were allowed to attend his funeral, while a memorial service on this side of the lines - in a Tajik-dominated town - attracted over 1,000 mourners.

"The fact that the Pashtun are a bigger minority should not give them carte blanche," Abdullah says. "Then others will feel discriminated against. We are living in the 21st century. The people should choose their leader. Every group should have a fair say."

Such welcoming talk is in shorter supply on the rebel front line, where Pashtun officers command mostly Pashtun fighters, in a mix similar to that of the local population they defend.

"There is no difference between Pashtuns, Tajiks, and Hazaras - we are all brothers," says another Pashtun rebel commander, Ahmad Zahir. "It is only those with the Taliban - the Pashtuns who brought terrorists to Afghanistan. They are the enemy."

Failure to recognize minorities has been a Taliban weakness since it swept across most of the country in 1996. People were tired of battling ethnic-based warlords - the mujahideen factions that today constitute the Northern Alliance.

But it wasn't long before Taliban policies sowed divisions among Pashtuns themselves. "The Taliban are bucking the entire trend of Afghan history because they have no understanding of it," writes Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, in his recent book about the Taliban.

The Taliban are "unlikely" to "absorb Afghanistan's rich ethnic and cultural diversity," Mr. Rashid writes. "Fortunately, there is no Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein amongst the warlords."

Still, the ethnic dynamic complicates making peace and overthrowing the Taliban. One method, Qadir says, is to help Pashtuns themselves fight the Taliban - a risky gambit, in light of Haq's execution.

"America must think not only of the problem of terrorism, but of the Afghan future," says Haq's brother, Qadir. "If Pashtuns kill the Taliban and push the terrorists out, this is much easier than using American and British troops."

Page: 1 | 2