Q&A: Ahmed Rashid.

• Position: On the Line

Ahmed Rashid is a journalist based in Lahore, Pakistan. He has been covering Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia for more than twenty years for The Far Eastern Economic Review and The Daily Telegraph. He is the author of Taliban (Yale University Press), which has sold a million copies and has been translated into more than twenty languages. His latest book is Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia (Yale). David Barsamian spoke with him by phone on August 23.

Q: General Tommy Franks, head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, says his troops will be in that country "for years." What are the implications of that?

Rashid: Very serious. You have a lot of suspicion among the neighbors of Afghanistan about U.S. intentions. Certainly, if the United States is going to be there for a long time, it's going to exacerbate regional tensions. And the idea of a permanent U.S. military presence, as opposed to an economic presence, is going to create a new wave of hostility toward the United States within Afghanistan. In the south amongst the Pashtuns, that sentiment is already strong. And I don't equate this with the Pashtuns becoming pro-Taliban or pro-Al Qaeda. Pashtun nationalism is reasserting itself. Its political history spans several hundred years. The Pashtuns are angry at the Americans because, one, they're still being bombed, and two, they perceive that the Americans are backing the Tajik faction, which controls the army and security forces in Kabul.

The problem right now, which I've been pointing out very bluntly to...