Op-Ed Contributor - Afghanistan's Tyranny of the Minority - Selig S. Harrison, nytimes

AS the debate intensifies within the Obama administration over how to stabilize Afghanistan, one major problem is conspicuously missing from the discussion: the growing alienation of the country’s largest ethnic group, the Pashtun tribes, who make up an estimated 42 percent of the population of 33 million. One of the basic reasons many Pashtuns support the Taliban insurgency is that their historic rivals, ethnic Tajiks, hold most of the key levers of power in the government.

“They get the dollars, and we get the bullets,” is the common refrain among Pashtuns critical of the government. “Dollars” refers to the economic enrichment of Tajiks and allied minority ethnic groups through an inside track on aid contracts. The “bullets” are the anti-Taliban airstrikes and ground operations in Pashtun areas in the south and east of the country.

It was understandable, then, that Pashtun leaders tried to make the last king, Zahir Shah, the president of the interim government that ruled from 2002 until the first presidential election in 2004. The king, revered by the Pashtuns, was to have limited powers, with Mr. Karzai, as prime minister, in day-to-day control. The Tajiks, however, objected, and on the eve of the national assembly that set up the interim government, the Bush administration’s special envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, sided with the Tajiks and had a bitter 40-minute showdown with the king, who then withdrew his candidacy. - Op-Ed Contributor - Afghanistan's Tyranny of the Minority ...