Abdul Haq (Afghan Leader) - Pashtun-Tajik-Hazara-Uzbek Alliance

Pashtun-Tajik-Hazara-Uzbek Alliance

From 1999 onwards a process was set into motion by the Tajik Ahmad Shah Massoud and the Pashtun Abdul Haq to unite the ethnicities of Afghanistan against the Taliban regime. Massoud united the Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbeks as well as several Pashtun commanders under his United Front. Besides meeting with Pashtun tribal leaders and acting as a point of reference, Abdul Haq received increasing numbers of Pashtun Taliban themselves who were secretly approaching him. Some commanders which had worked for the Taliban military apparatus agreed to the plan to topple the Taliban regime as the Taliban lost support even among the Pashtuns. Senior diplomat and Afghanistan expert Peter Tomsen hoped that "he ‘Lion of Kabul’ and the ‘Lion of Panjshir’ would make a formidable anti-Taliban team if they combined forces. Haq, Massoud, and Karzai, Afghanistan’s three leading moderates, could transcend the Pashtun—non-Pashtun, north-south divide." The senior Hazara and Uzbek leaders took part in the process just like later Afghan president Hamid Karzai. They agreed to work under the banner of the exiled Afghan king Zahir Shah in Rome.

In November 2000, leaders from all ethnic groups were brought together in Massoud's headquarters in northern Afghanistan travelling from other parts of Afghanistan, Europe, the United States, Pakistan and India to discuss a Loya Jirga for a settlement of Afghanistan's problems and to discuss the establishment of a post-Taliban government. In September 2001 an international official who met with representatives of the alliance would remark, "It's crazy that you have this today ... Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazara ... They were all ready to buy in to the process".