The idea of nation building is actually not a bad one, except for the part that there is no nation in Afghanistan that could be called a nation. Only the pashtoons take pride in calling themselves Afghans. But that really does not reflect the wishes of the whole nationalities living in that land.
The latest tensions show how deep the differences are, and as the time approaches, we are going to face another civil war period, to solve our problem. It may sound cruel, but if the society does not begin to think over the whole idea of Co-Existence, we would be running in the trenches and blowing each other with bombs away in no far future from now.
Here is an example of these problem, that has been published in Washington Post.
SHINDAND, Afghanistan - The Pashtuns say they fled persecution in their home villages, at the hands of Tajiks. The Tajiks say their homes have been raided by Pashtun fighters.
In an Afghanistan struggling to build a cohesive nation after 23 years of war, ethnic tensions have supposedly been submerged in the name of national unity. But recent fighting here in western Afghanistan shows that those tensions remain like spider cracks in china, and run all the way to the nation's capital, Kabul.
The fighting pitted a Pashtun commander, Amanullah Khan, who has long maintained a base near here, against the Tajik governor of Herat Province, Ismail Khan. Their animosity is bitterly personal, but it has also taken on an ethnic cast.
At issue is not just how their dispute is resolved locally, but the central government's ability to establish itself as a fair arbiter when it is also sometimes polarized along ethnic lines.
On the night of Aug. 13, Amanullah Khan's men carried out an apparently unprovoked attack against Ismail Khan's forces, capturing the air base here. One of the attackers' grievances, in this district that is 80 percent Pashtun, was that Ismail Khan had not appointed Pashtun officials, particularly to the district governor's office.
"Ismail Khan did not want Pashtuns to have a good life," said Abdul Zaher, an ally of Amanullah Kahn. "His men stole houses and cars. They killed commanders in Pashtun areas. They didn't give any Pashtuns positions."
A Pashtun official in the central government largely echoed that assessment, contending that Ismail Khan should be removed as governor partly because he had not appointed a Pashtun to any senior post, although they are a majority in the province.
"There is a feeling Pashtuns were discriminated against, they were terrorized, killed, their property seized," the official added.
Many of Amanullah Khan's fighters were Pashtuns from elsewhere in the province who were driven from their villages, they said, by persecution by Tajik soldiers loyal to Ismail Khan.
Zalmai, 26, a shopkeeper, said he had fled his district, as had 4,500 families, because of harassment by Tajik soldiers.
"After the Taliban left, the Tajik-Pashtun issue was raised," he said. "We finally had to start fighting against them. They got our cars, all our properties, they even cut our trees because they said they belonged to Pashtuns."
He and about 1,000 men from his district, Ghurian, joined Amanullah Khan, seen as a Pashtun champion, to fight or offer support.
Ismail Khan said in an interview that charges that he had been unfair to Pashtuns were "baseless." "The reality is that all ethnicities are involved in government and positions," he said. Besides, he added, if such accusations were true, it was up to the central government, not the rebels, to deal with the problem.
Whatever the truth, new grievances are being nursed here, in this case largely by Tajiks angry about what they say were atrocities by Amanullah Khan's soldiers in the recent attacks.
The United Nations and the Afghan Human Rights Commission have begun to investigate. At least 42 people were confirmed dead in the fighting, most of them Ismail Khan's soldiers, and some had been brutally killed.
One army battalion commander, Wali Muhammad Touhid, said he had seen the bodies of two soldiers who had been killed with their hands tied behind their backs. A senior Afghan official in Kabul said he believed that the commander of Shindand Air Base had been beheaded, and Mr. Touhid said Amanullah Khan's men had told him the same thing.
Rumors in villages near here put the number of casualties as high as 200, and villagers say the bodies were buried in unmarked graves. Mr. Touhid said local people had told of seven bodies hidden in a well, then moved. He said Afghan soldiers and American Special Forces soldiers who had searched the well had found clothes and three election registration cards.
After the initial attack, Amanullah Khan's men pillaged the area, officials in Kabul and here agree. Pashtuns and Tajiks were victims, but Tajiks in particular were singled out.
Three men in different locations here gave similar accounts of seeing Amanullah Khan's soldiers raid and rob Tajik homes, and, in some cases, kill the inhabitants. One man, who insisted on the protection of a wall and anonymity before he would speak, said the fighters had particularly sought to attack homes of Tajik soldiers and government officials.
The central government official in Kabul said Amanullah Khan had "dark, dark" spots, including a possible role in narcotics smuggling and ties with fighters who supported Afghanistan's former Taliban rulers. Many Tajiks here and in Kabul, then, question why the government has never acted against him, particularly now that he has attacked government installations and officials.
"If the central government, NATO and the U.N. want peace, they should act against these rebels because their job is insurgency, nothing else," said Noor Ahmad, 28, a tailor.
"Look at these wild people," said one Tajik in a village here as two of Amanullah Khan's fighters, guns on display, rode by on a motorbike. "If the central government does not react against these people then it's not the central government."
Ismail Khan's intelligence chief, Naser Alawi, said he believed that some in the central government who were trying to play the ethnic card supported Amanullah Khan's attack.
In Herat city, residents say the recent violence has worsened ethnic polarization. The fighting "is mostly an issue of Pashtuns and Tajiks," said Nasir Ahmad, a Tajik shop owner. "There was no problem in the city, but after the fighting there are ethnic problems."
During the fighting, he said, as word spread that Amanullah Khan's troops were approaching the city, Pashtuns mocked Tajiks, saying, " 'Your authority might be gone in an hour or two.' "
"They were happy," he said. "We realized there is an ethnic problem."
A Pashtun shoe salesman, Ahmadullah, 22, said he felt new tensions since the fighting. "People now are saying they don't like the people of Zirkot," Amanullah Khan's base, and a synonym, he implied, for Pashtun.
Against this canvas, the Afghan National Army, whose soldiers were sent here after Amanullah Khan's soldiers attacked the air base, stands apart. Its soldiers are drawn from all of the country's ethnic groups and provinces. One unit contained men from all over the country, Panshir, Paktia, Ghazni, Kunar.
A Pashtun battalion commander, Serbat Wardak, said he refused to view things through an ethnic lens, and did not believe that his men took such a view either, in part because they were from outside the area.
Speaking of the national army, he said, "This is now the only force that people can trust."
By AMY WALDMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/06/international/asia/06herat.html?
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