Ethnic Divisions in Afghanistan

The new RFE-RL Afghan Report contains some interesting discussion on the role of ethnic differences in Afghanistan today. Experts quoted are concerned that these divisions may become a means for warlords to mobilize popular support for their personal ambitions. And at least one fears international policies may be making the situation worse and not better:

"My concern really has been that the process of creating the constitution, and most particularly the Constitutional Loya Jirga, has been one that instead of bridging divisions between people -- especially the ethnic divisions, which have been the most polarizing in Afghanistan -- in some ways, it has actually exacerbated these divisions by throwing the major debates on the constitution, by casting these almost entirely on ethnic lines."

This is the same phenomenon that bothers me in Iraq, where too many analysts seem inclined to unintentionally promote a divisive Sunni-Shi'ite split when Iraqi nationalism is itself a strong factor and when people I who know Iraq have told me their Iraqi friends are bothered by having to start identifying themselves as members of a religious group for political purposes. There are a lot of notions floating around policy circles about how people who are "different" are likely to interact based mainly off what happened in the Balkans after the fall of communism. The underlying social concepts in southeastern Europe are, however, not the same as those in Central Asia or the Middle East, and everyone needs to remain vigilant lest they apply the wrong lessons.