Pushtuns are a large minority in Pakistan and the biggest ethnic group in Afghanistan.
So were those of its main rival, the Awami National Party (ANP), which is dedicated to Pushtuns.
They believe they have the most to lose from peace talks (though plenty of Pushtuns are also fearful).
Amanullah Khan has accused Ismail Khan, an ethnic Tajik, of denying roles to Pushtuns in his regional government.
The Pushtuns have numbers on their side but, the king apart, no widely accepted leader and little military clout.
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Hard to imagine that it was once thought the division of the Pushtuns would make the frontier easier to defend.
But most Pushtuns want nothing to do with them, especially the police.
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He was one of the few influential Pushtuns in the Tajik-led alliance.
In Pakistan's war zones, a policy based purely on jamming, and confiscating kit, would upset local Pushtuns, for whom radio is a vital medium.
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Many Pushtuns were hoping that the loya jirga, the grand council that nominated a new government in June, would produce a rebalancing of the cabinet's ethnic composition.
But in order to win he will have to convince fellow Pushtuns that he is not a puppet of America and has enough authority to defend their interests.
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The constituency is made up mostly of people who are not Pushtuns, the country's biggest ethnic group, who live mainly along the border with Pakistan and from whom most insurgents are drawn.
After visiting the region, he said the Northern Alliance had made no effort to marginalise southern Pushtuns and that southerners (and Pakistan) acknowledged that the Alliance would be part of a future government.
It is a compromise between the claims of the Pushtuns (the country's largest ethnic group, to which both Mr Karzai and most of the Taliban belong) and the Northern Alliance of minority Tajiks and Uzbeks.
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For most Pushtuns, who claim to be a majority and are certainly Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, the emerging bargain between the former monarch and the minority tribes of the Northern Alliance cedes too much power to the latter.
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The Pushtuns are meant to be reassured both by the nomination of Mr Karzai and by the fact that the ex-king, Mohammed Zahir Shah, will open the loya jirga, or tribal assembly, which will take place in six months' time.
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The biggest challenge for the international force will be maintaining the equilibrium between the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance, whose unpaid fighters are still camped out around Kabul, and the Pushtuns who, as the largest ethnic group, will want a bigger slice of power as efforts to form a new government gather pace.
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