Word: mazar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Three commanders of different ethnic backgrounds have taken Mazar, and they are the city's key players for the foreseeable future. Two of the commanders, Ustad Mohammed Atta (of Tajik descent) and Haji Mohammed Mohaqiq (a member of the Hazara tribe), set themselves up in palatial villas in the city center. General Rashid Dostum, an Uzbek, took over Kalai Jangi, an ancient mud-walled fortress to the southwest. In public, all three insist an alliance born of necessity is holding. They say they are cooperating in the primary task of emptying Mazar of armed men and establishing a joint security...
...history has proved, the dust never quite settles in Afghanistan. At night, the streets of Mazar aren't exactly safe; residents lock themselves in high-walled homes and the pop and crack of gunfire sounds across the city until dawn. Even in daytime, people tend to remain within their neighborhoods, which are lumped into three zones under the control of Dostum, Atta or Mohaqiq. The Hazaras catch most of the blame for the city's violence. In fact, they have most cause for revenge: when the Taliban took the city in 1998 they singled out Hazaras...
...paying respects and requesting his signature on a flurry of papers. In turn, both Atta and Mohaqiq are required to drive out of the city to Dostum's fort when the veteran warlord summons them. (Dostum also maintains a castle-like complex in Shiburghan, some two hours west of Mazar.) And while the popular Atta talks loftily of democracy and elections to form a new city administration, Mohaqiq's aides scoff at what they see as provincial politicking. Mohaqiq himself proposes an appointed governor and staff to insure the minority Hazaras are represented. Meanwhile a Dostum aide is disdainful...
...Already, some Mazar residents are muttering that the Taliban, as a united and centralized government, got some things right. Former judge Maulavi Mohammed Afzal says, "The root of their control was just terror?they would kill five people at a time without trial?but some people did support and admire them because they did cut crime." Aid workers are already finding the post-Taliban regime more cumbersome to deal with: they need to negotiate with several different commanders to get anything done. "They are like small businesses," says Linda van Weyenburg of M?decins Sans Fronti?res. "Everything becomes more complicated...
...Afghanistan, nothing is ever what it seems. Including surrender. On Nov. 24, a 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...