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External Actors in the Afghan Problem continues.....
The rise of Taleban was partly due to Pashtun frustrations. It was the historic phenomenon of coming together of Pashtun tribesmen at a time of crisis. Pashtuns of different inclinations either openly supported or approved of them. They created an “artificial unity among Pashtuns”starting in the southern part of the country.
After stabilizing their base in Kandahar, they moved outwards, first taking eastern cities and later Kabul and the northern part of the country. The initial dramatic successes were partly due to the frustrations of general populace regarding total anarchy and infighting among the various Afghan factions that had brought unbearable hardships on them. Taleban rule brought the much-sought peace, though only military. The problem started when Taleban became more closely aligned with radical foreigners mainly the Arabs and started enforcing strictly their version of religious law, totally ignoring Afghan traditions. In this, the Taleban resembled their communist predecessors.
“Just as the isolation of Kabul-based Marxist leaders from the lives of the rural poor led them to formulate unrealistic social programmes, so the cloistered society of the all-male madrassa has led the Taleban to create an idealized vision of Afghan villages unmoderated by the domestic influences of women, families, elders, and the everyday realities of tilling fields, tending flocks, and raising children.” The civil war in Afghanistan has often been interpreted as an ethnic war where each of the ethnic groups (Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras) fought separately under its own commanders and military structure. The basic assumption of terming this conflict as an ethnic conflict during the Taleban period lay in the Taleban printing their ethnic stamp on all other ethnic groups of the country, and the non-Pashtuns being supposed to fight against Pashtun dominance and against the marginalisation of their own ethnic identity.
To be continued....