Afghan warlord Dostum returns to personal fiefdom
Andrew Marshall (Reuters)
(Islamabad, November 10)
General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who said his forces took the key Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif on Friday, is an ethnic Uzbek warlord with a reputation for ruthlessness who ran the city as his personal fiefdom for years.
Dostum, 47, is unlikely ever to emerge as a serious candidate to run Afghanistan, analysts say, but he commands a force who could influence who does. The former communist general returned to Afghanistan in April after being driven out of the country by the fundamentalist Taliban militia in 1998.
He has seen decades of war in Afghanistan -- he rose through the ranks of the Afghan army after the Soviet Union invaded in 1979, but has changed allegiance almost as many times as the country has changed government.
At the height of his power, the burly moustachioed fighter ran a mini-state centred in Mazar-e-Sharif whose well-equipped army kept the Taliban at bay until 1997.
He printed his own money, set up his own airline, drove an armoured Cadillac and vowed never to bow to a government that banned whisky and music. He also promoted efficient health and education systems, including a university that counted hundreds of women among its students.
LAVISH LIFESTYLE
He made his home in the town of Shiberghan to the west of Mazar-e-Sharif where he kept a large and modern house equipped with numerous satellite phones and a swimming pool and furnished with ornate French-style furniture. He served lavish lunches to guests and handed out carpets to visitors.
His officers dressed in crisp Soviet army surplus and his fighters carried a razor in their packs to distinguish their clean-shaven chins from the bearded Taliban.
But he was forced to flee the country in 1997 when one of his top commanders switched sides and brought the Taliban into Mazar-e-Sharif. He returned later that year when that alliance fell apart.
He fled again when the Taliban re-captured Mazar-e-Sharif, this time for good, in August 1998.
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But on Friday he said he was back in the capital of his former fiefdom.
"We have taken Mazar-e-Sharif," he told CNN Turk television by satellite phone. "The Taliban troops have fled. The only Taliban left behind are the prisoners we have taken. We have full control of the town. The airport is in our hands, too."
Dostum has gained a reputation for treachery and brutality during his career, analysts say.
Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid said in his book Taliban that Dostum wielded power ruthlessly while his forces held Mazar-e-Sharif and its 19th century fort.
"The first time I arrived at the fort to meet Dostum there were bloodstains and pieces of flesh in the muddy courtyard. I innocently asked the guards if a goat had been slaughtered," Rashid wrote.
"They told me that an hour earlier Dostum had punished a soldier for stealing. The man had been tied to the tracks of a Russian-made tank, which then drove around the courtyard crushing his body into mincemeat."
After his rise in the Afghan army, Dostum established his own militia in northern Afghanistan in the mid-1980s with 20,000 fighters. He joined the communist government of late President Najibullah, with his soldiers often acting as the shock troops of the government.
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He also staged an unsuccessful revolt, in alliance with former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, against then President Burhanuddin Rabbani in 1994.
Distancing himself from Kabul, he established his northern stronghold in Mazar-e-Sharif, until its fall to the Taliban.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/nonfram/101101/dLAME05.asp
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