Word: pashtun
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...goes, never get into a war with a people who live in a half-hour time zone. The reference is usually to Afghanistan, a country no one has ever been able to subdue, for long at least. And it's even more true for the Pashtun, the country's largest ethnic group, who don't seem to live in any time zone at all. Last week the Obama Administration didn't propose going to war with the Pashtun. But a larger American presence in Afghanistan, and the Obama Administration's focus on the Taliban and al-Qaeda elements...
...Taliban is predominately based among Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group. Increasing Pashtun power in government would exacerbate ethnic tensions in the capital and in the relatively stable north, where Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara groups that helped Karzai into power are in the majority. Success in Iraq, moreover, was based on the presence of security forces numbering some 600,000 troops and police officers (Iraqi and foreign), whereas in Afghanistan, which is larger both in land mass and population, there are only 160,000 troops. The moderate Sunni insurgents in Iraq could be confident that they would be protected...
...wearing a T shirt, jeans and sneakers. His companion is a taller man who appears to be in his 20s, wearing a brown shalwar kameez (traditional Pakistani dress) and a beard. One senior police officer in Lahore was quoted by the local media as speculating that the men were Pashtun, the ethnic group dominant in Pakistan's militancy-wracked North-West Frontier Province and parts of Afghanistan...
...that he needs to successfully conduct the war. Meanwhile, allied forces have been forced to rely on local militia leaders for intelligence gathering, delivery of supplies and to better understand the country's southern tribal networks. In the north, where the Uzbek and Tajik warlords' historic hatred of the Pashtun-dominated Taliban has maintained a stability that has so far been unattainable elsewhere, both national and coalition leaders are loathe to upset the balance by pushing for prosecution. One former NATO official in Afghanistan compares the warlords to shrapnel lodged in an artery - infection is a risk, he says...
...Petraeus-led effort to turn the Sunni tribes away from the more radical elements of the insurgency. "Whether there are those same opportunities in Afghanistan I think should be explored," he said. In fact, senior U.S. military officials have told me that there is a possibility of splitting Pashtun tribes away from the Taliban in the south of Afghanistan. "But we have to do it through the Karzai government," a senior officer told me, referring to the fact that the Army had acted independently of the Maliki government in creating the Anbar Awakening. "That is one lesson we've learned...