Afghanistan - Mujahedin, "Afghan" and the Camps

Warlords have to start somewhere. There is no formal way to become a commander or leader; you just have to have the chops and then other people will follow. The Pathans encourage a culture of independence and being "strong" fighters.

The Wiley Pathans (called Pakhtuns in their own language) are not a generic group of evil-looking, bearded men waiting perpetually in ambush along Afghanistan's mountain passes. The Pathans are a group of tribes that make up 40 percent of Afghanistan's populace and 13 percent of Pakistan's. They are primarily rural, clan based and aligned in major ethnic or geographic alliances. Their love for freedom, guns and adventure are probably their most publicized traits but they are also loyal, honest and moral.

Years of war and over $3 billion in covert U.S. aid have created three new warrior castes in Afghanistan. The older generation of Afghani mujahedin are Tajiks and Pathans who spent their young lives in nomadic columns killing Russians in the early '80s. The second group are the infamous "Afghans"ัthe people the CIA (through the Pakistani secret service) hired and trained to fight the Russians. They are called "Afghans" because they are not Afghani. (Stay with me, this stuff is complicated). These "Afghans," estimated to be around 5,000 in total, were primarily Baluchis, Algerians, Egyptians, Saudis, Filipinos and Palestinians. Most of these men have returned to their home countries and are wreaking havoc everywhere from Zamboango, Philippines (Abu Sayeff), to Algiers, Algeria (GIA) and Manhattan, New York (World Trade Center bombing).

Both these groups were well trained, impoverished and savvy in the arts of deception, marksmanship, explosives and terror, and they have been in great demand in other parts of the world by Iran and Sudan for their absolute devotion to jihad.

The third group or new generation of mujahedin are youngsters who grew up in the squalid, mud-walled refugee camps of Peshawar and Quetta. These are the young men who grew up under the brutality of the warlords and are heeding the call of the Taliban.

http://www.subcontinent.com/sapra/terrorism/tr_1998_11_001_s.html

The Artist Formerly Known as Cat

If you are wandering through Kabul and you think a cat is being boiled alive, you probably just heard the Taliboogey. Highly amplified chantings and singings without musical accompaniment blasted from loudspeakers, usually outside Talib military barracks. One of the big hits a few years back was a bootleg version of a song by Cat Stevens, now called Yusuf. Yusuf first wrote the song for mujahedin fighting the Soviets in 1979. The version had been recorded when Yusuf did a live performance in the '80s in Pakistan. He recently recorded an album of freedom songs for Bosnia. Cat, or Yusuf, was born a Roman Catholic and lives in London.