The Pashtuns say they fled Tajik persecution in their home villages. 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 in western Afghanistan shows that those tensions remain like spider cracks in crockery, and run all the way to 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 governorship.
"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 hold a majority in the province.
"There is a feeling Pashtuns were discriminated against, they were terrorized, killed, their property seized," the official added.
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," Ahmad 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 his men took such a view either, in part because they are drawn from outside the area.
Speaking of the national army, he said, "This is now the only force that people can trust."
Ismail Khan said 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 said, if such accusations were true, it was up to the central government, not the rebels, to deal with the problem.
Whatever the truth, there are 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 killed brutally.
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 the targets.
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.
The central government official in Kabul said that 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.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not