Word: dostum
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...first western reporters to reach Mazar-i-Sharif, I was ushered into the home of Ustad Atta Mohammed, the Northern Alliance commander who--along with warlords Rashid Dostum and Haji Mohammed Mohaqiq--had taken the city a few days before. An ethnic Tajik, Atta, 37, is a bearded giant given to joking and easy small talk. He invited me to sit on his carpet and share a meal of qabeli, the Afghan national dish of rice, raisins, mutton, carrots and onions. In the past week, he has established himself as the unofficial mayor of Mazar, presiding over meetings of tribal...
...know why they kept fighting." Some of the Pakistanis did run out of the building and did lay their weapons on the ground to be taken prisoner. But others were shot the moment they stepped outside. Losing patience as Tuesday came with the school still uncaptured, Dostum and Atta ordered their men to storm the building at all costs. So Alliance forces made a final ferocious push. In the afternoon, the guns inside fell silent, and Alliance troops entered what was left of the smoldering school. But the resistance still was not finished; when Red Cross workers began carting away...
...first, pivotal defeat of the Taliban, in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, was greased by local Pashtun fed up with taking orders from "these village idiots from the south," as a foreign aid worker put it. Those fighters cut a secret deal with Alliance commander Rashid Dostum to allow Dostum's cavalry to pour through the Taliban front line. After that, the Alliance achieved its rout of the Taliban in typical Afghan fashion: by bribing Taliban commanders to defect...
...Tales of treachery and travail at Kunduz dominated world headlines late in the week, and Britain's Guardian provided a riveting account of the bizarre negotiations over a Taliban surrender there. According to reporter Luke Harding, the talks between Northern Alliance general Rashid Dostum and Taliban commander Mullah Faizal were held in Dostum's castle near Mazar-i-Sharif, with three uniformed U.S. special forces officers in attendance. "Over cups of tea and biscuits, the terms of the surrender were agreed: all the Afghan fighters trapped in Kunduz would be allowed to go home. The Arabs, however, would be taken...
...Alliance commanders had been discussing surrender terms all week with senior Taliban commanders from Kunduz. The Alliance had given the Taliban forces until Thursday morning to surrender or face a frontal assault, but Dostum's cease-fire announcement appeared to have averted a bloodbath. Hours later, however, the guns were blazing and Alliance tanks were driving towards the city. Initially, the Taliban commanders had sought safe passage for the foreign fighters to Pakistan, but the U.S. was having none of a deal that might allow Al Qaeda fighters to escape...