Die Taliban: Wie sie werden, was sie sind:

“Like the Spartans, the Pashtun are trained as warriors from birth. But the technique is not collectivist. Although the Pashtun are powerfully constrained by kinship and custom, in an important sense, a Pashtun boy is raised in a state of nature — forced to learn toughness, and self-reliance in a world self-consciously understood as violent, deceitful, and cruel. A Pashtun boy is actively encouraged to respond to the harshness of his world by himself becoming violent, deceitful, and cruel. And although the severity of Pashtun life is moderated by an ideal of friendship, and by the famous Pashtun code of honor, what emerges out of a Pashtun’s early training is an almost Hobbesian society — Hobbes with a Kalashnikov — in which every man is ready to stand alone against the world. It is hardly surprising that the Taliban have refused to collapse under the weight of our bombing. We have to be realistic about what will be required in order to subdue the Taliban, and that realism must stem from an understanding of who the Pashtun are.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/contributors/kurtz110501.shtml