Tajik Grip on Afghan Army Signals New Ethnic War

by Gareth Porter, November 29, 2009

"Contrary to the official portrayal of the Afghan National Army (ANA) as ethnically balanced, the latest data from U.S. sources reveal that the Tajik minority now accounts for far more of its troops than the Pashtuns, the country’s largest ethnic group.

The massive shift in the ethnic composition of ANA troops in recent years is leading to another civil war between the Pashtuns and a Tajik-led anti-Pashtun ethnic coalition similar to the one that followed the fall of the Soviet-supported regime in 1992, according to some observers......

The previous civil war between Pashtun and Tajik-led armies was triggered by the disappearance in 1992 of the national army of the Soviet-supported Najibullah regime, which had maintained a tenuous balance between the two major ethnic groups.

The collapse of the Najibullah regime and its army was followed immediately by fierce fighting between the Northern Alliance, which had gotten to Kabul first, and the forces of the Pashtun warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who had previously been allied with the non-Pashtun mujahedeen against the Soviet-backed regime......"