1. The following text and others that appear in the epilogue were taken from the soc.culture.pakistan and soc.culture.afghanistan newsgroups between November 4 and November 8, 1994. Misspellings and awkward syntax abound on computer newsgroups, and consequently I have had to edit these postings in places to ensure comprehension. Where comprehension was not at stake, I have left errors intact to preserve the sense and syntax of the original. I have also removed identifying information regarding the posters and have employed pseudonyms throughout rather than actual names. Since newsgroup posters themselves frequently use pseudonyms, however, it is quite possible that my pseudonyms are pseudonyms of pseudonyms, but that somehow is in keeping with the strange amalgam of secrecy and openness that one encounters on the Internet.

2. Member of the Jama‘at-i Islami Pakistan political party, which was founded by Maulana Ala Maududi. The Jama‘at has been the principal voice for radical Islamic reform in Pakistan.

3. Douglas Bakshian, VOA correspondent report, No. 2–168709, 3 November 1994, Islamabad.

4. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (988–1030), the ruler of the Ghaznavid empire.

5. The references are to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, amir of Hizb-i Islami Afghanistan, Burhanuddin Rabbani, amir of Jami‘at-i Islami Afghanistan, and Qazi Hussain Ahmad, amir of Jama‘at-i Islami Pakistan. The first two groups are the principal political parties fighting for control of Afghanistan. The third is the dominant Islamic party in Pakistan, which has repeatedly aided and abetted the two Afghan parties since the late 1960s.

6. References to Hera Mundi occur repeatedly in this exchange. The implication of being born in Hera Mundi is that the individual is a Punjabi rather than a Pakhtun. For many Pakhtuns born in Afghanistan or the North-West Frontier, this is considered especially insulting.

7. The more cultivated and refined image that Pakistani Pakhtuns have of themselves is seen by Afghan Pakhtuns as quite the opposite. To them, Pakistanis are citified and slightly effeminate, and they might advise you to look at the clothes favored by each side in order to understand the essence of the difference: Pakistani Pakhtuns favor shalwar-kamez made from light-weight, light-colored fabric that is carefully tailored and that shows dirt at the slightest soiling; Afghans wear darker-colored clothing made from rougher, thicker cloth that can be worn for long periods of time and that holds up to the vagaries of hard living. For a similar distinction that held between city and country Pakhtuns in Afghanistan prior to the war, see Jon Anderson (1983).

8. Expatriate posters to the Internet may be insulated from such distinctions in their own lives, but their arguments and debates nevertheless reflect the same sentiments of identity and difference encountered on the frontier. Thus, Pakistani Pakhtuns on the Internet often manage to convey the same smugness vis-à-vis their Afghan interlocutors as I repeatedly saw in the behavior of Pakistani refugee-camp administrators dealing with Afghan tribal elders. In the same fashion, Afghans on the Internet will condescend to Pakistanis, often on the presumption that their paternity is impure compared to Afghans' and that their honor is so much the less secure as a result.

9. However problematic the term fundamentalist might appear to academics, particularly in relation to Muslim radicals, it has nevertheless become a standard term in the discourse of the news groups. Among refugees in Pakistan, fundamentalists are usually referred to—sometimes interchangeably—as hizbis and as maktabis. The former refers especially (but not exclusively) to members of the Hizb-i Islami Afghanistan political party led by Engineer Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The latter, which can be translated as something like “schoolies,” refers to young, secularly educated adherents of Islamist ideologies. The relevant distinction that is implied by the name, maktabi, is to mullas and maulawis who have been trained in religious madrasas. A large number of maktabis (especially Pakhtuns) belong to the Hizb-i Islami party, and they can usually be identified by their short-trimmed beards and general air of trained efficiency and righteous condescension. On the development of the Islamist parties in Afghanistan, see Roy (1986) and Edwards (1993b and 1995). On the role of the parties in the refugee camps, see Edwards (1986d and 1990).