The Taleban movement's Minister for Refugees and Martyrs, Mavlavi Abduraqib, is himself not a Pashtun. He is an ethnic Uzbek.

And he says that the Taleban is a religious movement, not a political one, so does not distinguish between the various ethnic groups which make up the Afghan population.

In the three-quarters of the country they currently control, he said, there was no discrimination against non-Pashtuns.

People in the northern areas recently captured by the Taleban, he added, had welcomed Taleban soldiers with flowers.

The ethnic factor

Opinions vary on the importance of the ethnic factor in Afghan politics.

A Taleban militia member on the front line north of Kabul

Some say it was not such an important issue before the arrival of the pro-Soviet regimes of the late 70s and the 80s. Under ideological pressure from the Soviet Union these governments tried to introduce positive discrimination in favour of non-Pashtuns, to break the previous political and social domination of the Pashtuns.

And when the communist regime collapsed after the withdrawal of Soviet forces, the various groups which replaced it became increasingly divided along ethnic lines.

Others argue that, whatever the situation was in the past, recent conflicts have deepened ethnic divisions, and that it will be very difficult for the Taleban to win the trust of people like the Hazaras in Central Afghanistan and the Tajiks of the north-east, led by Commander Ahmed Shah Massood.

This is particularly true of the Hazara, who are Shia and not Sunni like their neighbours and are undoubtedly viewed with deep suspicion by the strictly Sunni Taleban.

When Kabul was threatened by the forces of Ahmed Shah Massood last year the Taleban authorities rounded up hundreds of people in the city, many of them Hazaras.

Desire for peace

It is generally agreed, however, that for many Afghans the desire for peace and stability is stronger than any ethnic suspicions.

Afghan nomads at a well north of Kabul: People want peace and stability

There has been remarkably little unrest so far among the population of the Taleban-held areas. That might be different in northern Afghanistan, where the Pashtuns are a minority.

But even here the non-Pashtuns may well be inclined to tolerate Taleban rule if it means an end to the fighting.

How long the population goes on tolerating Taleban rule may depend not so much on the ethnic composition of a given area as the manner in which the Taleban rule.

The main cause of unhappiness with Taleban rule, among Pashtuns and non-Pashtuns alike, has been the clumsy and dictatorial way in which they have often tried to impose their strict Islamic ideology on ordinary people.