Pushtun

As a mark of a time-honoured accommodation, Pushtun elders and mullahs often insist there is no contradiction between the two prerogatives.

Some of its soldiers and spooks sympathise with and help the Taliban, out of both ethnic-Pushtun fellow-feeling and strategic intent.

By forcing entry into the mud-fortress home of a Pushtun, with its lofty buttresses and loopholes, they dishonour his property.

In other words, he might have said, paraphrasing Mr Khan: it is his sin that he is Pushtun.

but much worse was the wide-scale disenfranchisement of the Pushtuns, the country's largest ethnic group, through fraud and poor security.

The Taliban are a Pushtun faction, not a national movement; their insurgency is largely limited to the southern half of the country.

An American-funded effort to plough up opium poppies, the main cash crop in much of the Pushtun south, has been wasteful and self-defeating.

In Ghazni election-day violence and rampant fraud led to many votes from Pushtun districts being either uncast or disqualified.

Pushtun ranks have been swelled by tens of thousands of people fleeing the north-west, where troops are battling the Taliban.

But the Taliban began as a Pushtun movement, rural and primitive, supported from neighbouring Pakistan, which then headed to Kabul.

To encourage that, many American and European officials now speak more respectfully of the Taliban, as peeved Pushtun nationalists.

Less than 3% of recruits are from the troublesome Pushtun south, from where the Taliban draw most support.

His main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister of mixed Pushtun-Tajik blood (but considered Tajik), has campaigned hard.

Some even swallowed a delicious Pushtun claim to be descended from a lost tribe of Israel.

In dusty Pushtun villages today, few bearded men would not nod approvingly at this.

Gushing with Islamist zeal, Pushtun youths rushed to join them as they swept the feuding militias away.

Designed to fight tank - battles against Indians, it is ill-equipped to take on Pushtun guerrillas in their mountainous terrain.

That could be because few Pushtun lads and lasses elope or, more likely, because they are more likely to be killed when they do.

For several years previously, the Marwat had been feuding with their neighbours, the Bhattani, another small Pushtun tribe.

And though Mr Karzai is a Pushtun, a member of Afghanistan's biggest group, many of his kin consider the Taliban a better champion.

A small-time leader in the anti-Soviet jihad, from a noble Pushtun family, he was installed as Afghanistan's leader by America in 2001.

The Punjabi Taliban poses a greater threat to the Pakistani state than does the Pushtun Taliban.

Even Mr Abdullah probably knows that his election could worsen the insurgency in the Pushtun south.

In Gardez, capital of south-eastern Paktia, 100 Pushtun elders gathered last month to discuss worrying local insecurity.

"I am a Pushtun and have given this man refuge, " the woman told her blood-lusting husband and brothers. "Take him to safety. "

For their part, non-Pushtun northerners are hardly going to cheer a Taliban return.

As it happens, a blueprint for achieving this was prepared last year by Pushtun notables after extensive consultation with tribal councils.

The Kuchis, who are Sunni Muslim and ethnic Pushtun, probably number fewer than 200 fighting men together with their families and livestock.

[color=#000000]In addition, the honourable Pushtun embraces two obligations.

But not all Westerners fell for the Pushtun.

Nor is it remarkable that senior members of the government, including Mr Karzai, a Pushtun, should speak with the insurgents.

Moreover, for most Taliban fighters, the ideology of global jihad is less important than other things: Pushtun nationalism;

more effort by the government to reach out to the remote Pushtun tribes who shelter the Taliban;