To date, they have killed at least 55 Tajik civilians and injured over 200.
Among the public, solidarity with the Tajik-speakers of northern Afghanistan mostly outweighs any Islamist sentiment.
Mr Qadir was one of the most prominent Pushtun figures in the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance.
For them, Kabul, with its large Persian-speaking Tajik and Hazara community, comes as a culture shock.
Under Soviet rule, Central Asia was carved into the Kazakh, Kirgiz, Tajik, Turkmen and Uzbek republics.
The most senior is an ethnic Tajik with close links to Herat's former Tajik warlord-ruler, Ismail Khan.
Amanullah Khan has accused Ismail Khan, an ethnic Tajik, of denying roles to Pushtuns in his regional government.
Although a Pashtun, he had been a member in the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance.
Many Tajik migrants were rounded up in Moscow after the initial guilty ruling.
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In its strongly worded statement, the Tajik embassy in Moscow accused the Uzbek authorities of deliberately creating the blockade.
Tajik opposition leaders called Sunday for a halt to the government offensive, warning that it may spin out of control.
The Tajik president, Imamali Rakhmonov, called an emergency meeting after the fall of Mazar to discuss events to the south.
Kamgar, a 50-year-old ethnic Tajik, is a stocky man and an animated talker who sometimes flicks back a lock of hair.
Khan, an ethnic Tajik, is a former deputy to Ahmad Shah Massoud, the leader of Jamiat-e-Islami, who was killed in 2001.
Some Central Asian states, such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, have joined Afghanistan's proxy war by backing the Uzbek and Tajik factions.
The only real change was to give the interior ministry, so far held by Younis Qanooni, a Tajik, to a Pushtun.
The Tajik government said it moved its forces into Khorog, which sits on the Afghan border, in order to detain Mr. Ayombekov.
He was one of the few influential Pushtuns in the Tajik-led alliance.
Three senior jobs will be taken by prominent Tajiks associated with the legendary Tajik commander, Ahmad Shah Masood, who was killed in September.
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Only Mr Rabbani, an icon of the Northern Alliance, stayed inside Mr Karzai's tent, with a thuggish vice-president, Mohammad Qasim Fahim, another Tajik.
They fly on seven different sets of papers that make moving through every border, be it Jordanian, Israeli or Tajik, a tough task.
But, according to the Tajik news agency Asia-Plus, the alliance has admitted losing control of a key district in the north to the Taleban.
The Tajik effort aims to create smaller-scale, lower-carbon centers and then to build these centers alongside schools, hospitals, and small to mid sized farms.
Karzai is a Pashtun, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, while his top opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, is half Pashtun and half Tajik, the second-largest ethnic group.
Pentagon experts are currently looking at a Tajik military airfield, although so far there is nothing to compare with the intense involvement in Uzbekistan.
Most residents of the province belong to the Pamiri ethnicity, which follows the minority Ismaili sect of Islam and speaks languages distinct from Tajik.
The government accused Mr. Ayombekov, a Gorno-Badakhshan native, of assassinating days earlier a general commanding the provincial branch of the Tajik state security service.
General Musharraf must try to ensure that the victory of the Northern Alliance, mainly Tajik and Uzbek, does not imply the defeat of Pushtuns.
The Northern Alliance is made up mostly of the country's Uzbek and Tajik minorities, while the Taliban draw their support from the country's dominant Pashtun.
The Taleban now control all but the far north of the country, which is the last stronghold of the ethnic Tajik commander Ahmed Shah Masood.
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