Media Mayhem rehashes "Who's REALLY Afghan(i)?" Arguement

Today, the New York Times posted a story about ethnic unrest continuing in Afghanistan. General Abdul Wahid Taqat, a former intelligence official, said on the network Zhwandoon TV, “Pashtuns are the rulers and owners of Afghanistan; they are the real inhabitants of Afghanistan,” This caused a much deserved public censure and outrage among Afghan(i)s, and led to the eventual arrest of Taqat and a chastisement by the Afghan(i) president to the media outlets who were “whipping up hatred”. Journalists Azam Ahmed and Habib Zahori continue by explaining the different ethnic groups that reside in Afghanistan; the major group mentioned throughout the article are the Pashtuns, who control a vast majority of the country and represent a great deal of the population, and the Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek, the much smaller ethnic groups who live in uneasy harmony with the Pashtuns. Following the horrifyingly tragic Afghan(i) Civil War in 1989 ("a conflict that broke largely along ethnic lines, among the Pashtuns and the Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek populations"), the ethnic groups have lived in an uneasy ethnic ceasefire,where the ethnic groups coexist in a country where ethnic tension seethes in everyday media consumption and where political issues (such as what identification cards should read) fall in factions where they are not bound by ethnicity, or the black-and-white of patriotism, but the murky messy gray of unrelieved bigotry and decades old fear of political upheaval.

The reason that this story is globally relevant to race relations is because the unrest and coupes happening in Afghanistan continue to affect the world. Racism and discrimination against those of Middle Eastern descent is global, affecting parts of their lives that have nothing to do with air terminals; these issues have a wider scope of racism than the average American imagines, and the problems in their homeland continue to plague Afghan(i) immigrants who are (supposedly ,uneasily, “relatively”) safe on US (and foreign) soil.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/world/asia/afghan-ethnic-tensions-rise-in-media-and-politics.html?hpw&rref=world