"In small mountain villages on Taliban turf in eastern Afghanistan, Pashtun tribesmen took up arms to fight the insurgents this summer, fed up with their heavy-handed tactics of closing schools and threatening families whose sons had joined the Afghan Army. Connect With Us on Twitter Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines. Twitter List: Reporters and Editors . The New York Times Ghazni and Laghman provinces have fought for the Taliban. “They wanted to make our children illiterate and miserable,” Malik Ghulam Rusal, a district elder, said about the Taliban. “We told them that if you want to wage jihad, go and fight the foreigners, not ordinary people. But they did not listen " NY Times
----------------------------------------
Afghans will be Afghans. This error on the part of the Taliban is much the same as the gross error made by AQ in Iraq. The Wahhabi salafism of the jihadis does not allow for local variants of Islam. The attempt to impose uniformity of practise was a fatal mistakr in Iraq.
My advice to the NATO command would be to stay away from this revolt. If you touch it you will contaminate it in the eyes of the counter-insurgents. pl
