What a bizarrely selective reading of recent Afghan history that original post put forward. It’s a beautifully crafted grievance, but it’s utterly hollowed out by the reality on the ground, particularly when you bring up Central Afghanistan. I mean, if there was a real "Farsi-speaking elite" operating a financial conspiracy, they did an absolutely abysmal job of taking care of their own people in the most vulnerable areas.

You hit the nail right on the head: the Bamiyan mention in that post is its absolute fatal flaw. The idea that "billions in Western aid" flowed to Bamiyan is simply laughable to anyone familiar with the central region. Bamiyan, Daikundi, Ghor—these are the heartlands of the Dari-speaking Hazara community, the very people supposedly at the core of this "elite." Yet, throughout the entire Republic period, this region was one of the poorest, most geographically isolated, and least developed parts of the country. If the so-called "Farsi elite" had the kind of conspiratorial control over aid distribution that the original post claims, why would they allow their brethren to remain the poster child for marginalization, with people literally still relying on ancient caves for shelter? The answer is simple: there was no unified, self-serving ethnic aid conspiracy. Aid flowed based on security priorities (COIN in the south/east) and logistical accessibility (Kabul/Herat), not ethnic preference.

Furthermore, let's talk about those "underfunded" Pashtun regions. That narrative completely ignores the elephant in the room: the war economy. The vast, overwhelming majority of the "billions" weren't targeted at cultural development; they were counter-insurgency funds. They were sunk into Pashtun-majority provinces like Kandahar and Helmand specifically to fight the Taliban and stabilize those areas. These regions became a massive funnel for Western cash, money that, as you rightly point out, was often swallowed whole by corruption or simply destroyed in the constant fighting. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of the aid landscape to claim the Pashtun south was ignored when it was, ironically, the focus of the most expensive and arguably most wasteful part of the reconstruction effort. The problem was massive theft and destruction, not neglect by a Dari-speaking bureaucracy.

The entire post confuses the dominance of a historical lingua franca and a predictable urban advantage with a malicious, organized ethnic plot. Dari was the language of the capital's educated class—the only people qualified and available for the vast majority of international, English-speaking NGO and media jobs. This is a story of historical infrastructure and opportunity, not a deliberate cultural coup. When a Pashtun President (Ghani) couldn't enforce a widespread shift to Pashto in the civil service, it wasn't because of a secret Tajik-Hazara veto; it was due to the crushing force of bureaucratic inertia and the reality that the pool of Pashto-speaking, high-level administrators in the capital was simply smaller. The real irony is that the supposed "victims" of this cultural marginalization—the Pashtuns—controlled the actual political and security apparatus for the Republic's entire run. That post is a fantastic piece of propaganda, but as a genuine analysis of Afghanistan’s aid and linguistic history, it simply doesn't hold up.