Posted on 06/29/2002 10:38:10 AM PDT by Dog Gone
GHAZNI, Afghanistan (AP) -- At night Maulvi Ehsanullah, once a senior inspector with the Taliban's defense ministry, slips out of his village and sleeps in the black slate mountains that loom nearby.
``He is very nervous. He doesn't know who is looking for him,'' says Mohammed Hashim, a neighbor. Last week a villager turned over a cache of weapons to the authorities. They had belonged to Ehsanullah.
``We give our weapons when they ask for them and then they want money. If we don't give them money they say we are al-Qaida and put us in jail,'' Hashim says of the soldiers who came to his Pashtun-dominated region to disarm the locals. The soldiers are mostly ethnic Tajiks from the Panjshir Valley, the new face of Afghanistan's defense ministry.
Confiscating weapons, especially from people associated with the Taliban, is widely seen as a necessary step if the new government is to bring peace to this country after 23 years of war.
But the heavy-handed approach is alienating the Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group and the core of the hardline Taliban movement. The program may be eliminating weapons, but Pashtuns say the way it is being carried out is planting the seeds of future conflict.
``If you wear a turban and have a beard, you are called al-Qaida,'' Hashim said. ``It is unfair. Even going to the bazaar can be a problem for us from these Panjshiris. They say they are with the government but they don't show us any identification and if we complain, they threaten us as al-Qaida.''
Pashtuns are a deeply tribal people bound by tradition. That includes the turban, worn for centuries but now identified as a Taliban symbol.
The former monarch, Mohammad Zaher Shah, is another bond shared by Pashtuns. Many of them felt slighted when Zaher Shah was forced out of the race for president during this month's grand council, or loya jirga. Again, the Pashtuns blamed the powerful Tajiks.
Like many Pashtuns, Hashim's loyalties are with Afghanistan's former king. He waves an identity card he has laminated and saved. On the card are written these words in the Dari language, ``United tribes of Afghanistan. The movement for the protection of Zaher Shah.''
Hashim leaned against a brightly colored pillow on a carpeted cement floor, his lip curled over a chunk of chewing tobacco and explained the longings among many Afghans for the days when Zaher Shah's ruled.
``Today we have nothing, no schools, no hospitals,'' Hashim said. ``They beat us because we are Pashtun. The same people who killed before are in power, and the mullahs teach our children that the Taliban will come back.''
Pashtun rumblings could have serious implications for the U.S.-led war on terrorism and for the new government of President Hamid Karzai, himself a Pashtun but widely perceived among his people as outflanked by the Tajiks.
Most of the schools in rural Afghanistan are in mosques, and in Pashtun-dominated areas, Islamic clerics capitalize on Pashtun discontent with the new regime. In a nearby mosque, the local cleric rails against the U.S.-led coalition and warns that the Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar will return.
``No one is giving us any teachers. We have to send our children to the same teachers as before, and they are the mullahs,'' Hashim said.
His nephew, 10-year-old Atmul, who is also learning English, said the local cleric tells them that ``Mullah Omar is coming back, that God will finish the non-Muslims.''
Atmul says he is not interested in those lessons,-- that he is eager to learn English. ``What is your country? What is your name?'' he says, showing off the results of his lessons. His father, Mohammed Saddar, is proud and pushes the boy forward to show him off.
Sitting nearby, a former commander of Ehsanullah's who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisals, yearned for a normal life. His beard is still long ``because that's my religion,'' and he still wears a turban ``because that is my tradition.''
``This isn't Taliban or al-Qaida. It is my father's and grandfather's tradition and it is mine,'' he said.
However, he said, many members of those groups are still in the mountains that run like a spine along the border with Pakistan.
Some Taliban leaders, he says, have slipped in with the nomadic tribes -- including Mullah Abbas, the former minister of health.
Across a flat arid plain, through giant clouds of dust, the former Taliban commander gestures to the mountains: ``After Kandahar fell Osama (bin Laden) crossed from these mountains, heading toward Khost. The Arabs did nothing good for us. They ruined our country.''
But bin Laden was profitable for the Taliban, he said. Close to Ehsanullah and informed about the money the defense ministry received from bin Laden, the commander says the world's most wanted man gave $12 million to the Taliban's defense ministry.
Nearly nine months after the war on terror began, former Taliban foot soldiers still are nervous. And Afghanistan seems no closer to healing its wounds caused by relentless attacks by every ethnic group in the country.
``All the leaders have been the same. They come with a promise for us and then they beat us,'' said Saddar.
Karzai has tried to heal the wounds. At the loya jirga, Karzai said it's time to turn the page and leave the ordinary Taliban to return to their homes.
But Ehsanullah is not sure he qualifies. He no longer wears his turban, his beard has been trimmed and he travels on a motorcycle, inconspicuously moving from village to village, sleeping most often in the mountains.
``We have to find a way to bring everyone together. But today the ones in power aren't interested in sharing power,'' says Hashim. He accused the Defense Minister Mohammed Fahim, a Tajik, of dictating terms to Karzai because he controls the army.
``Karzai doesn't have men with guns. In our country today they still rule.''
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