Thanks for your service.utahbob wrote: > John, Thanks for the update on the Hazaras in Afghanistan. When I
> was dealing with the Afghan National Army (ANA) we had to be very
> careful on the tribal/ethnic make up of squads and platoons and
> who was a leader of each. Sometimes it was bad. There is a lot of
> animosity between the tribes that go back generations. The
> Pashtuns gave the Hazara a bad time due to some had diffuculty
> growing a beard due to their DNA. Also many Pashtuns feel
> Afghanistan is theirs and all other ethnic groups are second class
> citizens. I found out that some Pashtuns said that it was a sign
> of masculinity to grow a beard and mustaches and some Hazara had a
> time hard to do, due to DNA. So they were bullied. In turn the
> Hazara became the some of the best scouts or recon commandos since
> they were motivated to go after the al Qaeda and especially the
> Taliban, since the Taliban is mostly Pashtun, the same ethnic
> group of their bullies. It was really double since the Hazaras are
> also Shia and the Pashtuns are Sunni. Simply it is a lot of bad
> blood between the two groups, it will take a lot of time and
> effort to heal the rift between and most likely not in our
> lifetimes.
> ISIS is just throwing more gas on the fire. If ISIS persist in
> Afghanistan, I can see the Taliban become Americas BFF. Everybody
> hates ISIS. Stranger things have happened.
Afghanistan's last generational crisis war was the extremely bloody
civil war, 1991-96, which mostly pitted the ethnic Pashtuns, who are
Sunni Muslims, versus the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Hazaras and
Uzbeks in northern Afghanistan.
The Pakistani jihadist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) issued this
statement in 2003:
"Our mission [in Pakistan] is the abolition of this
impure sect and people, the Shias and the Shia Hazaras, from every
city, every village, every nook and corner of
Pakistan."