The Afghan War Comes Home

The most spectacular acts of terrorism in the last decade have not been committed by Afghans. The September 11 attacks were perpetrated mostly by Saudis, the Madrid train bombings by North African immigrants, the London Underground bombings mostly by British citizens of Kashmiri descent, and even the Bali bombings by homegrown Indonesian Islamists. The Taliban's ethnic Pashtuns were not generally like the group they chose to shelter, Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda. They were mostly partisan locals, not international terrorists. But that may all be about to change.

Last weekend, agents in Denver and New York arrested three men of Afghan decent—including Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old Afghan national suspected of involvement in a Qaeda plot to blow up targets like Grand Central Terminal—raising the question: is the Afghan war now coming to American shores? Zazi is beginning to look like part of a trend.

For most of its 20 years, Al Qaeda's commanders recruited very few Afghan militants into their ranks because their parochial world views, their lack of international travel experience, and their poor education made them useless as global operatives. But when the Taliban was forced from power across the border in Pakistan—where it became a target in what the Bush administration called "the global war on terrorism"—its members became much more worldly. As they came to see the United States, rather than rival Afghan tribes, as their enemy, Pashtuns were radicalized in the border region, where they had easy access to Al Qaeda's training facilities. The war in Iraq, the mushrooming of Internet cafés in the region, and Al Qaeda's relentless propaganda efforts have widened the horizons of Pashtun militants who, a decade ago, had little concept of the outside world, let alone global jihad.

A sense of grievance against the United States has risen sharply (not least because of Washington's alliance with the Punjabi-dominated government in Islamabad) among the 40 million Pashtuns living in the mountain terrain between southeastern Afghanistan and northwestern Pakistan, lands that many Pashtuns want to become an independent state. Airstrikes against militants in these mountains—by coalition forces in Afghanistan, by U.S. Predator drones in Pakistan—have also killed many Pashtuns, adding fuel to the flames. Pakistan's infrequent but heavy-handed military forays to retake control of these disputed territories have also claimed many innocent lives.