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In Potential Setback for U.S. Strategy, Powerful Tribes Resent King's Union with Northern Alliance
Tuesday, October 02, 2001
(3:46 PM)
By Kathy Gannon / The Associated Press

"If people inside Afghanistan think that the king is being imposed on them by the outside and by non-Muslims, they will support the Taliban."

PESHAWAR, Pakistan -- AP
He was king once, and they were ready to support him again.

But now, powerful tribal leaders who hold sway along the Pakistan-Afghan border are upset by the exiled Afghan monarch's apparent decision to align himself with a U.S.- and Russian-backed northern alliance trying to topple the ruling Taliban.

If these fiercely independent tribesmen from Afghanistan's dominant Pashtun ethnic group withdraw support for the 86-year-old Mohammad Zaher Shah, it would be a serious setback to Washington's strategy for wiping out Osama bin Laden's terror network in Afghanistan.

"The king now has an alliance with the northern alliance, and this force is a military force. How can you bring peace with a military force? It is not possible," said Sayed Jalal Siddiqi Adakhiel, a tribal elder from Afghanistan's southeastern Paktia province, which also happens to be a bin Laden stronghold.
(More: New Jersey Online News Source)
Copyright 2001 Associated Press.

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