In Afghanistan, there are realities that almost everyone can see, yet few are willing to name. Ethnicity is one of them. Ethnic identity can influence the distribution of power, political appointments, networks of influence, and access to resources. Yet the moment someone questions that role, they risk being accused of ethnic nationalism.
The contradiction lies precisely here: the concentration of power within one ethnic network is not necessarily described as ethnic, but challenging that concentration is quickly labeled ethnic politics. A monopoly on power can continue in the name of national unity, while opposition to that monopoly is portrayed as a threat to national unity.
That is why, whenever someone asks whether Afghanistan’s current conflict has acquired an ethnic dimension, the familiar response comes immediately: “Do not equate the Taliban with the Pashtuns.”
That warning is valid. The Taliban are a terrorist organization, but they are not synonymous with the Pashtun people, and no ethnic community should be held collectively responsible for the actions of such a group.
But should avoiding one dangerous generalization require us to deny another reality? Does refusing to equate the Taliban with Pashtuns mean that we should also avoid discussing the ethnic composition of Taliban power?
For nearly five years, the Taliban have controlled virtually all political and security power in Afghanistan. Available studies indicate that more than 90 percent of senior and mid-level officials within the Taliban establishment are Pashtun. The country’s most important centers of decision-making are also largely controlled by political and military networks rooted in southern and southeastern Afghanistan. Had this been the case only during the first few months of Taliban rule, it might have been dismissed as temporary. But after five years, questioning the ethnic composition of power is no longer a marginal issue. It is a question about the nature of the system itself.
The issue is not simply the ethnicity of a minister or provincial governor. The more important questions are: Who commands? Who makes the final decisions? Who controls access to resources? And which networks are able to convert political authority into economic influence? When politics, security institutions, public administration, and economic opportunities increasingly become concentrated within a narrow network that is now overwhelmingly Pashtun-centered, it becomes difficult to argue that ethnicity plays no role in the structure of power.
This political logic is not produced only in Kabul or Kandahar.
A significant segment of Pashtun elites living in Europe and the United States enters debates about Afghanistan with university degrees, fluent English, the vocabulary of democracy, and all the outward signs of modern political thinking. Yet when the discussion turns to the Taliban and resistance against them, the standards suddenly change.
For the Taliban, there is a vocabulary of “political reality,” “stability,” “engagement,” and “the necessity of dialogue.”
For those who oppose them, another vocabulary quickly appears: “warlord,” “thug,” “ethnic nationalist,” or “destabilizing force.”
This double standard is not accidental. For more than two decades, the Taliban consolidated their power through war, terrorism, suicide attacks, and the killing of civilians. They eventually returned to power in an environment shaped in part by Western withdrawal and political engagement. Yet today, the gun once wielded by the Taliban is treated as the instrument of a state, while the gun raised against them is dismissed as thuggery or banditry.
This is where language itself becomes part of the politics of power. Afghan resistance did not emerge from a vacuum. At different moments in the country’s history, communities have resisted authoritarianism, monopoly, and domination. Foreign powers have repeatedly inserted themselves into these struggles, co-opted parts of them, distorted their direction, and in some cases transformed them into proxy wars. But proxy warfare should not be confused with the principle of resistance itself. The co-option of a resistance movement does not erase a people’s right to resist.
One of the most significant political achievements of recent decades has been the ability to discredit almost the entire history of Afghan resistance with a single word: “warlord.” Of course, those who have genuinely lived by the logic of warlordism, and make little effort to deny it, belong in a different category. They should not be counted as part of popular resistance. The point is that popular resistance to authoritarianism, the monopolization of power, and political repression should not simply be dismissed as “warlordism.” There is a fundamental difference between fighting for personal power and people resisting in defense of their freedom and political rights. Labels such as these erase the distinction between someone who fought for personal interests, someone who served a foreign patron, and communities that stood up to defend their homes, freedom, or political rights.
The result is clear: a society taught to feel ashamed of its own resistance is more easily persuaded that there is no alternative to the power ruling over it.
This brings us to the central question: Has Afghanistan’s conflict become an ethnic war?
It would still be inaccurate to say that Afghanistan has entered a full-scale war of Pashtuns against Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks. And I hope it never reaches that point.
Many Pashtuns oppose the Taliban. The Taliban themselves have persecuted Pashtun opponents, women, former members of the security forces, journalists, and political critics. There are also non-Pashtuns within Taliban ranks.
But the more important question is this: Is Afghanistan’s current political structure creating the conditions for a future ethnic war?
When power is overwhelmingly concentrated within one ethnic and geographic network; when other communities feel that they have no meaningful place in the political system; when political parties and peaceful political participation are eliminated; and when resistance increasingly emerges from regions that see themselves as excluded from power, the line between political conflict and ethnic conflict gradually begins to narrow.
There is another question that should not be considered taboo: why have many Pashtun-majority areas in southern and southeastern Afghanistan not produced broad and organized resistance to the Taliban on the scale seen in some other parts of the country? Raising this question is not the same as accusing Pashtuns collectively.
The Taliban have deeper family, social, and security networks in the south. The cost of opposing them is extremely high, while organized political alternatives remain weak. But these realities are themselves part of the issue. They should be examined openly rather than pushed aside for fear of being labeled ethnic nationalism.
Silence is not always a sign of national unity.
Perhaps one of the most dangerous mistakes is to assume that refusing to talk about ethnicity somehow makes Afghanistan more united or more national. If a political system can rely on ethnic networks to preserve its power, while anyone who questions those same networks is accused of ethnic nationalism, silence is no longer neutral. It can become a means of protecting the status quo.
At the same time, opponents of the Taliban must be careful not to equate the Taliban with the Pashtun people.
If resistance to the Taliban is framed as a war against Pashtuns, the Taliban will receive perhaps the greatest propaganda gift imaginable. They will be able to tell a young Pashtun in Kandahar or Helmand: “This is no longer about the Taliban. Your people are under threat.” This is how turning the enemy into an ethnic category can end up saving the very system that has benefited from the ethnic concentration of power.
Two truths therefore have to be stated at the same time:
The Taliban system is overwhelmingly Pashtun-centered, and ethnicity plays a fundamental role in the distribution of power within it.
But also:
Being Pashtun does not mean being Taliban.
Afghanistan’s problem cannot be solved by taking power away from one ethnic group and handing it to another. If that happens, only the holder of the monopoly will have changed. The real question is why, in a multi-ethnic country, political power should belong to any one ethnic group, network, party, or movement in the first place.
Afghanistan may not yet have entered a full-scale ethnic war. But that should offer little comfort.
The central question today is this: If we continue to deny the ethnicization of political power, will we eventually make the conflict itself ethnic?
Sometimes silence is not peace.
Sometimes silence simply allows a crisis to grow until, by the time we finally dare to name it, it is already too late to stop it.
