BACKGROUND: Resentment among the Pashtun tribes are composed of political, economic, and religious factors. The most obvious factor is the political: the Pashtuns are by far the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, yet have been sidelined in the interim government. Though no reliable demographic figures are available, the Pashtuns compose between 40 and 62 percent of Afghanistan\'s population (the latter figure is from a detailed study done by the WAK foundation), whereas the second largest group, the Tajiks, form from 15 to 25 percent. Yet the present interim government is heavily dominated by the Tajiks, and specifically from Tajiks from the Panjsher valley. While the nominal head of the interim government, Hamid Karzai, is an ethnic Pashtun, his power is restricted by the firm Tajik control over the power ministries. The most blatant situation is in the defense ministry, where 37 of 38 high-ranking officers in the embryonic Afghan national army are Tajiks, and of them, 29 are Panjsheris. Many Pashtun tribal leaders see Karzai, who only returned from exile after the U.S. military campaign started in October, as a puppet, a virtual \'uncle Tom\', in the hands of the Panjsheri power ministers; Bacha Khan openly argues as much. On another level, the tribal Pashtuns did not share the strong disaffection with the Taliban that Afghans in the North and in the urban areas (especially Kabul) felt. In fact, the codes enforced by the Taliban merely reflected their own traditional customs and ways of life, though implemented more severely. The brand of Islam espoused in the Pashtun areas is significantly more austere and closer to Taliban ideology than the more Sufi type of Islam practices either to their North by Tajiks, Uzbeks or Turkmens, or to their South by Punjabis or Sindhis. Finally, economically, the heightened border controls between Pakistan and Afghanistan since September 11 has done significant damage to the cross-bordr trade and smuggling that constituted a large part of the economy of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan. These areas are strongly feeling an economic pinch. Given the Pashtun code of hospitality and the strong ideological and ethnic affinity between tribes in areas such as North Waziristan and the Taliban, this has created a climate where fleeing Taliban have been welcomed as guests.

IMPLICATIONS: With brewing disaffection that is taking violent expressions, the U.S. is truly in a dilemma in Afghanistan. It relies on the Northern Alliance to keep security in Kabul, and cannot alienate the Tajiks as long as the fight against Al Qaeda remnants continues. Yet it depends on relations with a factual \'Southern Alliance\' in the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan both to keep peace and to prosecute the war against Al Qaeda. Unlike the battle-hardened Northern Alliance that had fought the Taliban for several years, the Southern Alliance needed to be built from scratch. It relied mainly on former, pre-Taliban governors of the main provinces, such as Gul Agha Sherzai in Kandahar. The Southern Alliance is marred by three main weaknesses. First, it is militarily weak, never having fought together in any serious fashion, unlike the Northern Alliance. Secondly, its leadership is tainted by the past. It should be recalled that the lack of law and order under their rule in 1992-94 and the mismanagement of these very leaders were factors that provided a fertile ground for the emergence of the Taliban. With the victories of the Taliban, they fled into exile, something that weighs heavily in honor-based societies like the Pashtun. The former leaders have little legitimacy in trying to restore their authority in areas they once fled. Thirdly, all its leaders have major interests, that sometimes contradict one another, in the extensive trade and smuggling (including opium and heroin) that takes place in Afghanistan and across the border with Pakistan. In this precarious situation, the glue that is holding the stability of southern Afghanistan together is the presence of U.S. Special Forces. The Special Forces act as armed diplomats more than as fighters in the area. They mediate conflicts among tribal leaders, and the Department of Defense and the CIA distribute financial largesse in the form of cash (\'allied\' Afghan fighters are paid handsomely), satellite telephones, Sport-Utility Vehicles, etc. Meanwhile, they hold the amply proven deterrent of U.S. military might in their hands. But while the Special Forces have so far kept the situation together, their presence is ultimately an artificial glue, and their ability to keep fulfilling this function could be compromised if Pashtun disaffection would explode if the upcoming Loya Jirga (Tribal Council) ends up legitimizing the current, Tajik-dominated government setup. Basically, what the U.S. could face then would not be \'remnants of Al Qaeda or the Taliban\', but a deeply rooted and widespread disaffection among the Pashtuns of Afghanistan. This would not be a marginal, extremist movement, but a mainstream nationalist opposition, a drastically different phenomenon.

CONCLUSIONS: A careful balancing act is necessary to keep order in Afghanistan. It is apparent to most observers that the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is understaffed and needs to be greatly enhanced. With a larger ISAF, that is soon to come under Turkish leadership, there would be a strong military contingent that would decrease U.S. reliance on the Northern Alliance. And while Washington\'s toleration of the Northern Alliance power grab is understandable under the circumstances, it has now reached a point where enough is enough. One way of helping alleviate the Pashtun dissatisfaction is for the U.S. to get more deeply involved in power-sharing among and between groups in Afghanistan. This involves the risk of alienating the Panjsheri Tajiks, but failing to do so entails a much more dangerous risk, that of a wider confrontation in the South, that could risk involving the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan as well. The implications of such a scenario are dire: most of the gains of the war so far, including U.S. ability to hunt down remaining Al Qaeda groups, would be compromised, and the security of the entire region, including General Musharraf\'s position in Pakistan, would be imperiled.

AUTHOR BIO: Awamdost Pakhtunkhel was a civil servant in the ministry of culture of Afghanistan until the Communist takeover in 1978. After the Soviet invasion, he joined the resistance movement, first as part of the Hizb-I-Islami (Khalis) movement and then under Jalaluddin Haqqani. He briefly joined the Taliban movement in 1995, before moving in disillusionment to his present home in the North Waziristan agency of the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan in 1997, from where he frequently writes on Afghan politics in the regional media.

Copyright 2001 The Analyst. All rights reserved