Word: uzbek
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...echoing the Gettysburg Address as he spoke recently to a large political gathering in northern Afganistan. His speech was a booming appeal for a future that offered Afghans "government by the people, for the people." To accompany his new rhetoric, Dostum also has a new look. The powerfully built Uzbek general has shaved his beard - his thick trademark moustache remains - bought some new neckties and found a good tailor...
...warlords—minus a few notable exceptions—are back to their old tricks. Do not be fooled by those pictures of Hamid Karzai posing with George Bush and Tony Blair. Everyone in Afghanistan knows that real power resides with people like Rashid Dostum, the ethnic Uzbek warlord who controls Mazar-i-Sharif; Ishmael Khan, ruler of Herat and recipient of Iranian tanks and money; and the exiled Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a religious fanatic who currently resides in Iran but who is rumored to be staging a comeback...
...Karzai has one particularly good reason to bridle at Washington's refusal to help solve Afghanistan's woes: the U.S. has become a major part of the problem. By backing the Northern Alliance, Washington has empowered a group of warlords of minority Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek descent to rule over the Pashtuns?Afghanistan's largest ethnic group and the bedrock of Taliban support. And by rearming the warlords to hunt down al-Qaeda and the Taliban, the U.S. has also unwittingly helped fuel further conflict. According to U.N. special representative for Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi, "The war against terrorism creates...
...some areas, such fighting has already started. In the north around Mazar-i-Sharif, ethnic Uzbek General Abdul Rashid Dostum and Hazara warlord Mohammed Mohaqiq have used the hunt for al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders as an excuse for a pogrom against Pashtuns. Human Rights Watch has documented 150 separate cases of looting, rape and killing in the area that have sent thousands of Pashtuns fleeing south. There are also persistent accusations that Afghan commanders are calling in U.S. air strikes against rivals, not terrorists. Meanwhile in Kabul, local factions have begun turning their newly acquired firepower on one another...
...personnel who had joined up with local fighters loyal to unrepentant Taliban commander Saifur Rahman Mansoor in his home base. Later, U.S. commanders were talking about an al-Qaeda force numbering more than 1,000. Reports from the battlefield certainly confirm the presence of a substantial number of Chechen, Uzbek and Arab fighters, but many of those wounded and captured by the allies were Afghans...