Word: mazar
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Dostum brought the Najibullah regime down when he mutinied in 1992 and joined forces with the northern mujahedin. He and his cohort seized Mazar and set up their Jombesh. The following years raised to national art forms both the alliance of convenience and the stab in the back, and Dostum outperformed the rest. He moved in and out of alliances with Ahmed Shah Massoud, then the Jamiat commander; with Massoud's arch-enemy, the Islamist radical Gulbuddin Hekmatyar; and finally with the ultra-fundamentalist Taliban, enemy of both. Meanwhile, differences of policy and personality at the top of the Jombesh...
...suburb outside the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif last week, Dostum was in campaign mode. Next month the country will hold its long-awaited loya jirga, or grand assembly, which will choose a transitional government. Dostum relaunched his old political party, the National Islamic Movement. Known simply as Jombesh, the group has a platform that rests on secular democracy (despite its name) and respect for minority rights, which translates to a federalist agenda. Addressing a congress of 2,000 party functionaries, Dostum hit out at "extremism" and "fundamentalism." Read: the Islamic politics of Jamiat...
...Driven into exile by the Taliban, first in 1997 and again in 1998, Dostum returned to Afghanistan last spring to join Jamiat commander Ustad Atta Mohammed in leading anti-Taliban forces in the hills south of Mazar. But last year's wartime alliance has soured. Tensions between Dostum and his northern rival - who also now prefers to be seen in elegantly tailored business suits - have centered on control of Mazar. Capital of the north and key to the area's agricultural, oil and gas wealth, the city once dominated by Dostum has fallen increasingly under Jamiat's sway. Failure...
...have already spilled into sporadic armed clashes. Both sides have been rearming and conscripting fresh troops. Atta enjoys the support of Defense Minister Fahim in Kabul, who recently promoted him to full general without consulting Deputy Defense Minister Dostum. Fahim has also approved moving more tanks and armor to Mazar to support Atta. In late April a full-blown fight nearly erupted as Jamiat, in preparation for a parade to mark the 1992 fall of the communist regime, moved more tanks into the city. Dostum followed suit. When clashes broke out in outlying districts to the south, the city looked...
...correspondents can't do much more than find a palatable mai tai. But Alex Perry, who joined TIME ASIA primarily as a travel writer last year, turned out to be different. He not only asked to cover the Afghan war but became one of the first journalists to reach Mazar-i-Sharif after it fell. He was the only reporter to stay at the Qala-i-Jangi fort when prisoners rioted. Now the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund has named Perry the first recipient of its War Correspondents Award. Perry deserves a vacation, and he surely knows where to take...