Word: dostum
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...heading up to the capital, Kabul. "That's where my focus is now," he says. When he formally takes charge there on Dec. 22, he will find his 30-member Cabinet assailed by regional warlords who were elbowed out in Bonn. Top of the list: Uzbek leader Abdul Rashid Dostum, who controls a big chunk of northern Afghanistan and who has already announced that the Uzbeks will boycott Karzai's government. Dostum is angry that the three most important government portfolios--Defense, Interior and Foreign Affairs--went to his Tajik rivals within the Northern Alliance. Another potential spoiler is Rabbani...
...those present at the talks did were far from a representative cross-section of the many armed formations which currently wield effective power on the ground in different parts of southern, northern and western Afghanistan. Already General Rashid Dostum, whose Uzbek Northern Alliance forces captured Mazar-i-Sharif, has vowed to boycott the new government and prevent it from functioning in his domain. Although the Northern Alliance holds 17 of the 30 cabinet posts, Dostum feels slighted by his Tajik alliance partners who got the plum jobs. And that's not the half of it: The Tajik Northern Alliance representatives...
...bright, warm Saturday, 300 Taliban soldiers who had fled the American bombardment of Kunduz, their last stronghold in the north of Afghanistan, laid down their weapons in the desert a few kilometers to the north of Mazar-i-Sharif. They surrendered to Northern Alliance General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who crowed that his forces had achieved a "great victory" as the POWs were herded 50 at a time onto flatbed trucks...
...Even by the standards of Afghanistan's warlords, Dostum has an unsavory reputation. In earlier episodes of Afghanistan's wars, he was reputed to have killed those of his soldiers who broke the rules by tying them to the tracks of his tanks. But outside Mazar, his soldiers told their prisoners that Dostum wanted to make a gesture of reconciliation to help unite Afghanistan's warring tribes. Afghan members of the Taliban would be free to return to their homes, while foreigners would be detained before being handed over to the U.N. Dostum didn't search his prisoners; that...
...Taliban fighters, many of whom were foreigners, were transported from the field of surrender to a holding site in Qala-i-Jangi, a sprawling 19th century prison fortress to the west of Mazar, where Dostum stabled his horses. The convoy of prisoners had to pass through the city center; two weeks before, the Taliban had ruled the streets. The prisoners now peered out from under their blankets with shell-shocked, bloodshot eyes. The people of Mazar stared back at them with open hatred...