Afghan ethnic minorities fear Taliban will return

PANJSHIR VALLEY, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai's moves to make peace with the Taliban are scaring Afghanistan's ethnic minorities into taking their weapons out of mothballs and preparing for a fight.

Mindful that Karzai's overtures come with NATO's blessing, and that U.S. and NATO forces will eventually leave, they worry that power will shift back into the hands of the forces they helped to overthrow in 2001.

Such a peace deal won't be easy in a country with a complex ethnic makeup and a tradition of vendetta killings. With ethnic and tribal differences having sharpened during the violence of the past 30 years, there's little indication that Karzai's overtures are gaining much traction.

Still, some mujahedeen - commanders of the Northern Alliance of minority groups that fought the Taliban - are taking no chances. They speak openly of the weaponry they have kept despite a UN disarmament drive.

In the Panjshir Valley, heartland of the Northern Alliance, Mohammed Zaman says that when the UN came looking for weapons, "the mujahedeen gave one and hid the other 19."

"We have plenty of weapons, rocket launchers and small arms and we can get any kind of weapons we need from the gun mafias that exist in our neighboring countries," he said. "All the former mujahedeen from commander to soldier, they have made preparations if they [the Taliban] come into the government."

Karzai's spokesman did not respond to requests for comment on the reports of rearmament.

Somah Ibrahim, a UN spokesman, said 94,262 small arms and 12,248 heavy weapons were collected by the time the disarmament program ended in 2005. But fewer than half of them were destroyed; some went to the army and police, which many of the militiamen joined.

The Hazara, a mainly Shia ethnic group, are also worried.

"We have lots of weapons but they are not modern weapons. They are simple weapons," said Abbas Noian, a Hazara legislator. "It is very bad, America announcing they will leave Afghanistan. It has given more power to the militants, more energy. Already we minorities are afraid. We want peace but we are afraid of a strong Taliban," he said.

In late 2009, President Barack Obama spoke of starting a gradual pullout in July 2011 if conditions allowed, but then clarified that he was not envisaging a mass exodus at that time. Lately, attention has shifted to 2014, when Karzai expects his forces to be ready to take the lead in securing Afghanistan.