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Colonel,
Mujaheedin is a generic term. It encompassed many a faction.
There were 7 major groups.
In so far as the sectarian divide eight Shi'ite parties formed a Coalition at Qom and came under banner of Hizb e Wahadat (Unity Party) in the Hazarajat regionof Afghnaistan. They stayed aloof from the Sunni factions.
The Sunni Mujaheedins came into existence in 1978 after the Communist coup in Kabul. The Old Moslem Youth movement split into three parts. The first one, Hizb i Islami, was led by Hekmatyar and his followers like him were uprooted ethnic Pashtuns of the Ghilzai tribal confederation.
The second splinter group was also called Hizb i Islami. This was headed by Mawlawi Younis Khalis, a cleric. His followers were from tribal eastern areas.
The third broad group out of the Moslem Youth Movement was the Jamaait i Islami was led by Professor Burhaniddin Rabbani of the Afghan State Faculty of Islam,ethnically a Tajik and the only Persian speaking amongst the Sunnis. He was a cultured person who spoke six languages! He was not anti West or anti US.
There was a Fourth Party which was Wahhabi and called Ittihad and was financed by Saudi Arabia, It was led by an Afghan intellectual, Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf. (700 of this group moved later after the Afghan War to Philippines to operate as the Aby Sayyaf group).
The other three group were 'moderates' working under the umbrella of Harkat e Enqela. The Leaders were Maoulavi Nabi, Pir Giliani and Hazrat Mujaddadi.
These Sunni factions members, after the Afghan War, did not vanish. The organisations transmogrified into what was known as the AQ and then the Taliban. Obviously, fresh recruits from Pakistan joined in and the organisations underwent changes.
The Northern Alliance was divorced technically from the aspirations of the Sunni factions.
Notwithstanding, it maybe recalled that there is a distinct divide between the majority Sunni Pashtun who are from the East and South and the minority Shia Hazara and Tajik, who are the North and NE.
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"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."
I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.
HAKUNA MATATA
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