However, while the alliance provided the Hazara mujahedin with a common political voice in negotiations and bargaining with the Sunni organizations based in Peshawar, Pakistan, it failed to tackle the incessant ideological friction within the party.

This was happening at a time when the Kabul government and the ruling Hezb-e Demokratik-e Khalq (People's Democratic Party, PDPA) were experiencing intensive factional and ethnic rivalries.

Declining faith in the future of the government facilitated the emergence of new political alignments largely between members of the same ethnic groups, cutting across the ideological divide between the mujahedin and the PDPA officials.

Once it was formed, its leaders faced the challenge of convincing their representatives at the Shuray-e Eatelaf and officials of the Iranian government, who were more at ease with dealing with a coalition of separate parties in Tehran.

The fragmentation of the Hazara mujahedin had given the Iranians effective leverage to control small organizations, often tied to various religious authorities and government agencies in Iran.

Furthermore, the increasingly evident ethnic discourse within the party was seen unfavorably by the Iranian authorities who had for years tried to promote a more pan-Shiite political Islamism during the period of jihad.

Husain Ibrahimi, the representative of the Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei in Afghan affairs at that time, is alleged to have tried to prevent the formation of Hizb-e Wahdat in order to maintain his influence.

[11][12] In its organizational hierarchy, the party included the following key structures: The search for change and unity was instigated and led in particular by the senior leaders of the two main organizations, Pasdaran and Nasr, which were the most exposed to the threat of deligitimisation as a result of their loss of control over their military commanders.

However, it did lose a substantial section of its Hazara following to Hezb-e Wahdat, a fact underlining the growing importance of ethnic identities in the aftermath of jihad in the country.

His decision to participate in the unification process was a turning point in the development of clerical leadership in the Hazarajat, as it symbolized the recognition of Khomeinist hegemony by important non-Khomeinist elements of the clergy.

He was a follower of the Khoei school of thought, a moderate, non-political and conservative line of thinking opposed to Khomeini’s revolutionary Islamism and dominant among Afghan Shiites until the early 1980s.

The process was accompanied by the gradual rise to dominance of the clergy in the political leadership of the region, and in fact it marked the final victory of the clerical Islamists.

With the fall of the communist regime in Kabul and the failure to form an Islamic government, the warring factions turned to their ethnic and regional support bases.

While Islamism remained the officially proclaimed ideology of most groups, ethnic demands and power struggles surfaced as major sources of political mobilization.

The result was an Islamic ideology used to express and further the rights of a historically disadvantaged community; a strong desire for unity of the Hazaras was its main driving force.

[19] Abdul Ali Mazari, a former member of Nasr and first secretary general of Wahdat, was the main agent of the explicit transformation of the party into a platform for the rights and political demands of the Hazaras.

Most notable in this regard was Muhammad Akbari, who consistently opposed Wahdat's alliance with non-jihadi groups such as General Dostum’s Junbish Milli and the Hazara leftists.

In a central council meeting in Bamyan, the delegation headed by Abdul Ali Mazari raised the issue of deliberating a new political strategy.

In opposition to Hezb-e Wahdat's demand of a quarter share in future power-sharing arrangements, some of the Sunni parties stated that the Shiites did not count as a significant community, deserving to be included in the negotiation process.

[21] Three days of deliberations in the party's central council in Bamyan produced a new strategy: working out an alliance of the country's historically deprived ethnic communities.

Massoud was chosen as head of the new council, Mohammad Mohaqiq from Hezb-e Wahdat as his deputy and General Dostum as commander of its military affairs.

Consequently, the election of secretary general gained a paramount importance for both sides in the civil war to maintain or change the political alignments of the party in their favour.

He and his supporters believed that by dominating the cultural and military committees they could manipulate the war and propaganda machine of the party in favour of the Rabbani government, their external ally.

For instance, Ali Jan Zahidi, Ghulam Hussain Shafaq, Hayatullah Balaghi and Abdul Ahmed Fayaz, previously important local leaders of Pasdaran, threw their support behind Mazari.

A few weeks after the party elections, in response to an alleged coup plan by Akbari and sections of Harakat Islami against him, Mazari ordered his troops to attack and expel all his opponents from the western part of the capital.

While the exact details of the alleged plot remain unknown, Mazari later claimed that Qasim Fahim, then Rabbani's head of the intelligence department, was working with Akbari to militarily force him out of leadership.

Wahdat It never managed to recover after the fall of Mazar e sharif and Bamyan into the hands of the Taliban, because of the high losses in its rank and file and at the leadership levels.

This entailed disbanding their military wings, disarming under the UN-led Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration programme and operating under the new legal and political environment.

While the need to change and broaden the party leadership has frequently been acknowledged by both Mohaqiq and Khalili, most reformists (including clerics) have been frustrated by lack of practical will and determination of the senior leaders.

[32] With the disintegration of its military structures and the necessity to transform into a full political party, Hezb-e Wahdat faced an extremely difficult challenge that required radical changes.