South Asia Notes December 1996 - Issue 34 Although the scale of brutalities in Afghanistan's civil war is not comparable to the ethnic cleansing that has occurred in states of the former Yugoslavia, both war-torn regions share disturbing characteristics, including: Intermingled settlement patterns. Most Afghan ethnic groups inhabit core areas where they form local majorities, although settlement patterns are rarely well defined ( see map ). For instance, ethnic enclaves--some with substantial populations--exist in most Afghan provinces. Complicating matters, some ethnic groups--Turkmen, Uzbeks, and Baloch, for instance--comprise tiny minorities within Afghanistan but maintain ties to much larger population of ethnic kinsmen across Afghanistan's national borders. Ethnic rivalries thus have no real internal or international boundaries. Refugees. Some 2.3 million Afghans drawn from most every ethnic community still languish in Pakistani and Iranian refugee camps. The picture is ...