Word: turkmen
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...Dostum truly has evolved, there's no doubt a strong element of realpolitik behind the transformation. Since the defeat of the Taliban, Dostum has reasserted control over his home turf, the ethnically Uzbek and Turkmen provinces of Jowzjan and Faryab. But the onetime master of the north now finds his position challenged by the growing power of his erstwhile ally in the Northern Alliance, the mainly Tajik Jamiat-i-Islami faction. Jamiat's ascension has prompted an unlikely alignment between Dostum and Hamid Karzai, the patrician Pashtun tribal leader who heads Kabul's interim government. In December Karzai appointed Dostum...
...command first of a militia battalion, then of a division. His big break came with the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan in 1988-89. As the troop convoys headed home and the rebel mujahedin sharpened their knives, Dostum and his Soviet-funded army of tough Uzbek and Turkmen irregulars emerged as the only real mobile outfit the communist regime of President Najibullah could count on. "In 1989 he had a budget for 45,000 troops, but we knew he had only 25,000 on his payroll," says a former Soviet diplomat. "When our advisers confronted him over it, he'd laugh...
...through Mongolia. Getting the local touch often means bedding down in rather unusual accommodations. Last year, for example, he stayed in a yurt in Turkmenistan. "They wanted me to have the experience, so I stayed one night," says Kaplan. "I was sitting in the middle of the yurt, on Turkmen carpets, and they roasted a lamb outside. The vodka is sitting in the middle of the yurt in the middle of the desert." Though Kaplan enjoyed his stay, being the affable guest can take a toll. "You're not sure all the time what you're eating," he says...
...Herat for the remaining 3 1/2-hour ride to the frontier. As soon as the vehicles rumbled across the Soviet border into Kushka, broad smiles spread across the faces of troopers who had been tense through much of the journey; a few jumped off their vehicles to dance with local Turkmen women. For the men in the convoy and an additional 10,000 withdrawn during the past two weeks, the war was over. Asked what the pullback meant to them, the soldiers generally repeated the official line of having "fulfilled their internationalist duty," though one lieutenant was more candid. Said...
...Central Asia, bordering on Iran, that were subjugated by czarist armies only a little more than a century ago?Samarkand, for example, fell in 1868. The Soviets have soft-pedaled antireligious propaganda and allowed the Muslims to maintain mosques and theological schools. Consequently, the Azerbaijanis, Turkmen and other Muslim minorities in the U.S.S.R. could eventually become targets for Khomeini's advocacy of an Islamic rebellion against all foreign domination of Muslims...