Der Afghanistankrieg - Die Ethnisierung eines Konflikts

Abstract The terrorists ' attacks of 11 th September catapulted the war in Afghanistan, a forgotten crisis, into the centre of world events. Almost all policymakers, journalists and academics tended to reduce the conflict in Afghanistan to its ethnic dimension. In full accordance with this assessment the United Nations strived to end the "ethnic conflict" in Afghanistan with an "ethnic solution" at the Petersberg Conference in December 2001. What this approach ignored is the fact that, despite the ethnicization of the conflict, the ethnicization of the Afghan masses failed. Although ethnicity became a political-military force to reckon with during the 23 year ongoing Afghan war, the significance of ethnicity as basis of political articulation and social organisation remained strictly limited. Hence, ethnicity was opposed by competing identities as well as by strategic considerations of the war factions. Against this background the accentuation of ethnicity as well as the attempt to apply an "ethnic solution" to Afghanistan marks a serious risk.