Afghan warlord reclaims his former stronghold

Afghan warlords have a long tradition of changing sides in mid-battle, and none has switched teams more often than Rashid Dostum, the gruff and burly leader of an ethnic Uzbek faction.

Dostum, 46, who was in exile in Turkey until recently, returned to prominence when his troops on Friday rolled into Mazar-e-Sharif, the city that served as the headquarters of his northern fiefdom until he was driven out by the Taliban three years ago.

While the triumph raises Dostum’s stature in the Afghan opposition, he has a long history of bad blood with many northern alliance commanders. Right now, the outmanned alliance needs all the friendly warlords it can find as it attempts to advance against the ruling Taliban.

But the long-standing frictions could swiftly resurface, particularly if the alliance gains more ground and attempts to establish a government to replace the Taliban.

’’Dostum is a mercenary,’’ said Hamid Gul, the former chief of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, who has encountered all of the major figures in the Afghan conflict over the years.

’’Dostum’s men are dogged fighters. But they have always fought for money and loot. They used to be known as the ‘carpet snatchers’ militia’. They have a terrible reputation,’’ Gul said in an interview in Pakistan.

The capture of Mazar-e-Sharif, the first major opposition victory since the US bombing campaign began a month ago, could begin to expose the serious rifts in the alliance, Gul predicted.

Dostum’s troops made up one of the columns that entered Mazar-e-Sharif on Friday. Another belonged to Atta Mohammed, an ethnic Tajik and a bitter rival.

The commanders may now have to co-operate closely to help the United States bring weapons and other supplies into Afghanistan from nearby Uzbekistan, just 45 miles to the north of the city.

In a military career spanning two decades, Dostum has an abysmal record of sticking by his nominal allies.

A high-school dropout, Dostum began his military career in the communist Afghan army, fighting alongside Soviet troops who occupied Afghanistan throughout the 1980s.

But after the Soviet army left, and the communist government began to wobble, Dostum made his first big switch, defecting from the government army and joining the Afghan guerrillas, taking many of his men with him.

The move hastened the collapse of communist government and left Dostum in control of a large swathe of northern Afghanistan, home to the ethnic Uzbeks. He commanded thousands of fighters and inherited a vast stock of Soviet weaponry, including dozens of MiG fighter jets.

His offices included a splendid walled villa in the dusty northern town of Shiberghan, with crystal chandeliers, a swimming pool and a satellite dish that pulled in Western music videos. He periodically invited journalists for interviews, offering carpets as gifts. It was considered unwise to decline.

Dostum’s power was unchallenged, and his mini-state was the most prosperous pocket of a shattered land. Mazar-e-Sharif had not been heavily hit during the war in the 1980s. The region’s rich farmland was the country’s breadbasket, and was also endowed with natural gas exported to Central Asia.

Dostum established an airline, Balkh Air, that brought in expensive imported goods in a country where millions were struggling to find enough food.

But Dostum had larger aims, and when the former Afghan guerrilla groups began fighting each other for control of the distant capital Kabul, he joined the fray.

In 1994, Dostum sided with warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, contributing to the intense, random shelling from the hills outside, a daily barrage that flattened much of the city, killing thousands of civilians and terrorising the rest.

But unable to capture Kabul, Dostum then turned on Hekmatyar, joining the forces of President Burhanuddin Rabbani that were defending the city.

Today, Dostum is again aligned with Rabbani, the titular leader of the northern alliance.

When the Taliban captured Kabul in 1996, Dostum retreated to Mazar-e-Sharif. He held on for another year until he was betrayed by his number two, Abdul Malik, who made a deal with the Taliban to oust Dostum.

Dostum returned to take back Mazar-e-Sharif in 1997, only to be driven out again by the Taliban in 1998.

Those back-and-forth fights for control of the city were marked by widespread atrocities on all sides, including summary executions that numbered in the thousands.

After all the dizzying twists and turns, Dostum seemed out of the Afghan picture, settling in Turkey. But he returned recently with a reduced fighting force believed to be fewer than 1,000 men.

Despite his chequered past, he holds some appeal for the United States.

He has close ties to Uzbekistan and Turkey, both countries that are part of the US coalition against global terrorism. In contrast, a number of other senior figures in the alliance are linked to Iran, a US rival.

Also, Dostum is the most secular of the Afghan leaders, a man motivated by money and power, not religious fervour, said Gul.

Dostum has grown a beard and sought to portray himself as an observant Muslim in recent years. But his fighters have never lost their reputation for looting and pillaging. They are also known as the faction that rarely prays and have not traditionally observed the dawn-to-dusk fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.